Mohinder shops at the Banana (and other resale shop discoveries)

Oh, dear.

So this afternoon, I popped into The Best Store in Los Angeles, better known as the It's A Wrap studio wardrobe resale shop on Robertson. Seriously, this place is pretty close to paradise. It's just a big old thrift store, where all the clothes are provided by film and television wardrobe departments.

Here's the odd thing: Because this is Los Angeles, and because the entertainment industry is just another industry here, the whole studio-wardrobe/potential collector's-item aspect is rather aggressively downplayed. If you're looking for something from a specific show or film, be prepared to hunt for it. The price tags generally have a two- or three-letter code hand-scrawled on them; there's a key taped to the far wall that deciphers what the codes stand for (for example, wardrobe from Criminal Minds -- i.e. endless racks of Hotch's crisp white shirts -- is marked "CRI"), but you really have to search for it.

Anyway, this place is filled with awesomeness. This shop is why I'm the proud owner of three tiny, short, tight, skimpy, shiny, spangly, beaded, sequined, rhinestone-bedazzled cocktail dresses worn by the models on Deal or No Deal. They were ten bucks apiece. I wear them while vacuuming. Really, I do.

So I popped in today... and they had the Heroes wardrobe.

Oh, man.

I know I've criticized Heroes plenty, but the wardrobe was always pretty bang on. I had a blast rummaging through racks (clothes from all the shows are mixed together in no special order, so I just looked for "HRS" scrawled on the price tags), looking for trench coats and tailored shirts and cute halter tops and crisp jackets. Cool stuff.

The Heroes wardrobe also had the advantage of being labeled by character in permanent ink on the size tag or on the inside collar. Because I am no fool, I picked up two t-shirts labeled "SURESH": a maroon/rust Banana Republic crewneck ($10) and a dark teal H&M v-neck ($5). Both were size small, which totally dovetails with my recollection of meeting lovely Sendhil Ramamurthy during the WGA strike: He's not short (5'10"? 5'11"?), but, like almost all actors (except for Jack Coleman, who is much taller than expected), he's extremely petite and compact in person.

And I think I speak for all viewers when I say, "Mohinder shops at Banana Republic? Really?"

Neither shirt features the mad, crazy, bright patterns and colors that made Mohinder's wardrobe so, uh, memorable, especially in the first season (trust me, I was looking for his turquoise paisley shirt. Or his brick-red/burnt-orange vertically-striped shirt. Or his hot pink pullover. Or his olive-green corduroy blazer. Or his insane blue striped scarf), but these two shirts are nonetheless very late-model Mohinderish -- say, Season Three, at a guess. In fact, I'm relatively certain that maroon shirt is the one Ramamurthy was wearing when the paparazzi caught him making a variety of strange poses on set with Greg Grunberg during the third season. Awesome.

Edited on 7/13 to add:

Okay, one more. I stopped back in today and did a pretty thorough, comprehensive sweep through the shop, looking for gems. Plenty of Heroes stuff there. I saw a few more shirts marked "SURESH" -- weirdly, other than Mohinder's clothes, I didn't see anything else marked for a specific character. This might be because a lot of Mo's stuff was pretty casual (so many t-shirts!), so the wardrobe department might've had fewer reservations about marking them up with permanent ink than they would with, say, expensive dress shirts or blouses or suits. I don't really know.

There's nothing costume-y or immediately iconic in the shop -- you're probably not going to find, say, Claire's cheerleading uniform, or Peter's hospital scrubs, or Hiro's kimono. The place really specializes in wearable everyday clothes that just happen to have been used in films or television productions.

I picked up another of Mohinder's t-shirts. This one was on the clearance rack on the sidewalk outside the store. Eight dollars, bluish-teal, crewneck, short sleeves, Banana Republic again, size small again. This was a score: Some helpful wardrobe person had safety-pinned a handwritten note to the hem (blurry photo attached), reading "SURESH CH. 2." Easy process of elimination to figure out in which episode this shirt was used:

Volume 5, Chapter 2: Mohinder did not appear in the episode, being dead or in an asylum or whatever.

Volume 4, Chapter 2: Mohinder wore a baggy orange prison jumpsuit the entire episode.

Volume 3, Chapter 2: Mohinder was shirtless the entire episode while he swung from the rafters and sexed up Maya.

Volume 2, Chapter 2: Mohinder wore a blinding white tank top under a blinding white shirt while he was gallivanting around Haiti.

Volume 1, Chapter 2: AHA! No, this isn't the shirt he wore while threatening to bonk the faux exterminator over the head with an elephant statue. It's the shirt he wore while (adorably) crawling around on his hands and knees with Eden while searching for Chandra's missing lizard. Good episode. Good shirt.

Edited yet again to add: Oh, yeah, I also have this classic season one shirt (not the glorious paisley one, sadly, but the soft turquoise one beneath it):


And just to mix things up, a plain black t-shirt from American Apparel marked "PETER." Size small, again. Those actor boys are tiny little things.