We All Want to Dress Like Orna

When the show Couples Therapy debuted in 2019, Brooklyn-based therapist Orna Guralnik expected viewers to have strong opinions on her counseling style. But her clothes?

“It was the last thing I expected,” says Guralnik to me over the phone from her car on a recent summer afternoon.

After the debut, friends began to reach out, and her two children pointed out for the first time that she had gone viral. Emails began to flood in asking for all sorts of details about her clothes: who made the rings she wore, where a top or necklace was from. “That was utterly shocking to me,” she says. Guralnik, who describes her style as sitting “somewhere between liking abstract geometric shapes and punk rock,” had struck a chord.

For many years, The Sopranos’s Dr. Melfi served as TV’s most famous therapist. Dressed in a range of monochromatic power suits, she asserted a sense of professionalism even when in the room with a certified mob boss. Culturally, Eileen Fisher may be the brand that best aligns with stereotypical therapist garb: comfortable, luxurious, but decidedly simple. “Are you allowed to wear Eileen Fisher if you’re not a therapist?” joked one commenter in Guralnik’s Reddit AMA in 2024.

Fans on Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram share blurry screenshot-laden slideshows of her best outfits from every season and try to track down favorite pieces like her Issey Miyake pants, oversize winter coat, chunky sweater, and striped Boden tee. They swap notes in a dozen posts on the r/CouplesTherapy sub-Reddit calling out her favorite brands — Vince, Theory, Melloday, and Bottega Veneta — as well as Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto and other luxury labels like Tory Burch (a printed skirt), McQ (an ombré sweater), and Proenza Schouler (a number of tie-dyed tops). “I wear a lot of Proenza,” she tells me, adding that her signature jewelry includes pieces from Brooklyn-based Page Sargisson and a ring from Monica Castiglioni. “The rest of my jewelry is all from Mexico; they make really good black jewelry there. And then some pieces from a lovely designer in Israel.”

“The second she appeared on my screen, I was like, Oh yeah, that’s my kind of woman,” says Talia Mayden, an art and design consultant and Substack writer. “It could lean into this therapist trope, but you can tell she has such a strong perspective.” Guralnik, who describes herself as “not a super-fashion-oriented person,” credits her daughter, Ruby, 24, with helping to shape that perspective — managing to eschew unassuming workwear for more sculptural shapes, rich textures, and edgy details. “She feeds me clothes, she feeds me music, she’s my only fashion consultant.”

Living in Brooklyn, Guralnik sees her personal style as an extension of the city she calls home. “Orna is who everyone in Brooklyn is trying to be,” says Mayden. “It’s a blueprint for everyone else in that she’s this majorly intelligent but majorly bohemian woman.” Perhaps Guralnik’s final calling card — what has become something of a style signature for her — is the occasional small rebellious braid that peeks out from under her gently cascading brown hair. Though her daughter once ribbed the braids as “race and age inappropriate,” Guralnik disagrees. “I just love having them; they’re a tiny little playful thing.” Her fans agree. “Any time she has a tiny little surprise braid, I’m excited,” says Mayden.

There’s no uniform for mental-health professionals, but if I think back on my time in therapy, the practitioners’ style never stood out to me. They sometimes dressed a bit hippie or bookish or unremarkably professional, but they were always put together — in the vein of what an aunt or a friend of my mom’s would wear. Guralnik describes dressing for her sessions as a matter of avoiding any big statements. “You don’t want to take up too much space in what you’re wearing,” she says. “You try to be subtle and not provocative.” Despite the simplicity, she notes that “aesthetics matter a lot in a treatment, both in terms of visual aesthetics but also in the way a session unfolds; you want it to be aesthetic.” Guralnik adds that, like many working people, she’s much more casual in real life. “In my private practice, it’s probably somewhere in between,” she says. “On the show, I try to take it up a bit.”