“He is so brilliant and so warm and imaginative and optimistic, everything seems possible when you’re talking to Zac,” she says, “and then he turns it into a reality.”

“It’s really such a privilege to be in these longer conversations with designers and admire them and know them. We have a real intimacy,” she says. Of course, fittings with dear friends have more perks than just fashion: “It’s also an excuse to gossip.”

With this particular look, which includes a functioning chest pocket, Danes says she toyed with putting a pen in the pocket as a nod to her character’s profession, or with bringing a piece of her seven-year-old son, Rowan, with her to the show. And I mean a literal piece.

“It would have been fun to put Rowan’s tooth that he just lost in there,” she says. She decided against it in the end, not in the least because Rowan’s teeth are often not available, thanks to a habit of accidentally swallowing them or otherwise misplacing them before the Tooth Fairy has a chance to do her work. Luckily, Danes has a stash. “We’ve had to repurpose our older son Cyrus’s old teeth that we still have” on more than one occasion. (Rowan can’t read yet, so no need to worry about shattering any illusions for him.)

As a multidecade veteran of the industry, Danes says awards shows “don’t feel so exotic anymore, but they’re never not special.” She has getting-ready rituals, but not, like, crystal meditation or anything. It’s a little more low-key and routine than that.

Evan Mulling.

Evan Mulling.

“I’ve worked with the same team forever,” she says. “Peter Butler and Matin will do my hair and makeup. They did my hair and makeup at my wedding, you know. My parents live here, I live in New York, but they’ll come over [during prep] and say hi. Again, you just try to exploit these chances to visit with people you love.”

She always tries to exercise the morning of award shows to regulate herself, and eat “some kind of brunchy thing that’ll keep me going for a while.” She doesn’t write out a full speech in advance—though she did recently find “my sad little speech from the Emmys that I didn’t win for My So-Called Life when I was 14” in an old purse—but has “a rough sense of what I might say” if her name is called.