Colin’s shirts. Cressida’s sleeves. Pen’s glow up.
Fans have had a lot to say (and re-create, to our collective amusement) about the costumes in the first batch of season three of Bridgerton, and with good reason: Lead designer John Glaser tells Shondaland that this season’s costumes were the most challenging and elaborate thus far. “We wanted it to look fresh and different from season one and season two, not go back,” Glaser says. “We felt that by season three the audience knew who these people were, so we started to blend things a little bit and not make it so obvious. A little more subtle. The costumes are a little more mysterious than they’ve been.”
What were some of the biggest changes, and how did the team arrive at them? Read on for more.
PART ONE
Getting shady
Color was by far the most significant part of the planning, design, and storytelling, Glaser says. By now, eagle-eyed viewers have long been hip to “Bridgerton blue” — and its associations with status and prestige. “We had to gracefully pull ourselves away from that a little bit and make it a little more [fashionable]. That’s why we came up with the different color palettes.”
Colin Bridgerton, who’s been off traveling the world, looks rougher and more rugged thanks in part to earth tones, while Penelope Featherington has a wider range as well, steering away from the yellow ordained to her by her mother in the books and previous seasons.
Levels and layers
If you thought you saw more bling on the ton’s garments, you’re not wrong — but that look wasn’t achieved the way you might expect. In keeping with Glaser’s edict to keep things mysterious, he says the team relied on layering effects in order to create hard-to-pin down shades and textures. “What we’ve done is layered fabrics, like the first layer is a sequined fabric with something like a net over it. Then, there’s one that has flowers on it, and then maybe another layer of things that sparkle. So, the sparkle is built into everything.”
Flower gardens became a huge inspiration — the ways they go from light to dark, their shadows, and the ways flora catches light. Yet gardens were hardly the only inspiration: Glaser says that while the team does plenty of research for period accuracy when creating costumes, the costumes we end up seeing are the result of a wide set of influences, particularly contemporary fashion. “It’s always amazing that even today you can look at any [modern] fashion, and there’s always a Regency influence. The human body hasn’t changed much,” he says. “There’s always going to be a sleeve or a waistline that have Regency influences.”
Crafting Colin
Dashing, dangerous, and daring were the guiding principles for making Colin’s new look, says Dougie Hawkes, who oversaw the men’s costumes for season three. Having worked on Bridgerton from the beginning, Hawkes enjoyed the process of transforming Colin from a boyish chap to a worldly, sexy sophisticate.
“We wanted to create a strong maverick, maybe cowboy, maybe pirate look,” Hawkes tells Shondaland. Colin looks swashbuckling and swagger-ific thanks to heightened necklines, coats that sway and swish when he moves, colors that flatter his skin, and riding boots — a slight breach of etiquette for the time that hints at his bad-boy vibe.
Hawkes says Colin’s essence is really expressed in the very first outfit of the season when we see him arriving from his travels. “The long coat continues throughout the season — I made probably four different varieties of that coat. They’re all slightly different fabrics. He arrives in that coat, which we considered that he wore onboard a ship, and he may have traveled in it; he may have slept in it. He’s got a leather-ish, fake-ostrich vest on with his dark blue chambray shirt, and denim pantaloons that go into his riding boots. So, I wanted to get that whole cowboy thing. We added belt loops to it and had a very, very special custom belt made for him, which is really unique. That outfit has got to be my favorite because it says everything that I was going to base the rest of his wardrobe on.”
Elusive Eloise and crabby Cressida
Though they’re supporting characters, both Eloise and Cressida, with their newfound friendship, take up a lot of space in season three, and their clothing whispers clues. TikTokers and commenters have had much fun lampooning Cressida’s exaggerated shoulders — just one element of a gradual buildup into her inner world.
“She’s the mean girl, but we find out why when you watch part two,” Glaser says. “We actually get to see her bedroom. And you’ll see her bedroom is — you know the sleeves that she wears that are made out of feathers? That’s what her bedroom looks like. So, you begin to realize what her parents have done to her, how she lives. She really has no friends, and so you’ll see her room is her sanctuary or safe haven, and everything in there is to give her comfort from the world. She’s like a butterfly trapped in a mausoleum, a bird in a cage. We were trying to say she’s entrapped, so we thought, ‘Let’s entrap her in her clothes.’”
Eloise, he says, is the trickiest to dress. That’s because we never really know which way she’s going to go. “She walks a very fine line,” Glaser says. “She’s been out, but she’s never found a man, right? We continually walk that line because you don’t want to make her like Cressida; you don’t want to take her [in too strong] a direction. We keep her in the same pale-color palette.
She actually is one of the people that has the most period cut to her costumes because that helps to ground her. If we changed her silhouette a lot, people would start reading into ‘Oh, my gosh, she’s going to become a dancer; she’s going to become a secretary!’ We just kind of wobble with her back and forth, but we’re actually thinking for this [next] season, ‘What can we do differently?’”
Creating Queen Pen
Obviously, Penelope goes from slept on to stunner in season three, and one of the first times we note her transition is in the first ball scene in the first episode. Gone are the girlie citrus flavors: Penelope stuns in an emerald tulle-adorned frock that accentuates her bust and announces womanhood. “The reason we chose emerald is it’s the furthest away from citrus colors you can do,” says Glaser. “It was dark, and she would never have worn black. It was a test for her — one that doesn’t go well because of what Cressida does to her, stepping on and tearing her dress.”
Post Cressida-gate, Glaser says the team “pulled back” Penelope’s colors to make her skin softer and still give her the wallflower effect that, while elevated, recalls Pen’s reluctance to be anywhere near attention. “She didn’t always have to be in the front row,” Glaser says. “We gave her the versatility to move back and forth. And you’ll also notice that Penelope, Eloise, and Cressida at some times are wearing virtually the same color combinations. And that was a choice that we consciously made to put them all on the same playing field. Because this audience reads so much into everything, every color, everything that we did … we always want to give them Easter eggs, but we don’t want to give away the story.”
That was especially true with Pen’s carriage dress with Colin; the team were careful in creating it not to reveal too much.
“It’s the only one of her dresses that has no embellishment,” Glaser says. “It’s got the sheen to it with the gold shimmer, but if we had put flowers on it, people would have known she’s going to get kissed. It’s just a plain dress that’s got a shimmer, and that’s also for technical reasons because she’s sitting in a dark carriage, so we wanted her to be able to glow. It’s made of a very thin fabric so that Colin can move the dress easily, and then it falls back down. If it had been overly embellished and he pushed it up, it would just have stayed there. You don’t want to take away from the action.”
PART TWO
Penelope, the blushing bride
When Penelope finally sashays down the aisle in the moment she (and fans) have been waiting for forever, viewers might be slightly scandalized to see that the bride of the season isn’t wearing white but instead a pale blush tone. That’s for a few reasons: historical accuracy (white wedding dresses didn’t start trending until after Queen Victoria wore white to her 1840 wedding to Prince Albert) and also to subvert expectations for the audience.
“Some people thought it would be over the top, but we spoke to Nicola, and we all decided that we wanted nothing to take focus away from her character,” Glaser says. “We didn’t want to do a white dress because I said, ‘She’ll look like a nurse.’ We started off with a pale blue. That was a little harsh against her skin color. So, we thought, ‘Let’s just do blush.’”
Also, you’ll notice how, at the wedding, the Featheringtons are on one side in green and citrus colors, and the Bridgertons are in blue. “A blush color wasn’t from any family,” he says, “so, again, [it was] showing her independence.” Simplicity was key, and it works: Penelope looks gorgeous and ethereal. The gown is cut to her body, and the train comes off so she can boogie on the dance floor after the ceremony. “We wanted her to be able to move, look beautiful, and have a great silhouette. We wanted her to be completely different from her mother when her mother gives her away and just to look as classy as she possibly could. This was her moment,” Glaser says.
Francesca’s floaty wedlock frock
There’s not a ton of significance and meaning in Francesca’s wedding gown (“It says, ‘I’m getting married,’” Glaser deadpanned), but the costumers want you to know the exceptionally made dress — inspired by a sheath dress Grace Kelly once wore — was not easy to construct.
“What’s interesting about that dress is that we usually have to buy six meters of fabric to make a dress,” Glaser says. “There was only two meters of that. It’s extremely expensive. There’s no embellishment on it; all that trim and all beading was already in the fabric.”
Cressida’s demon-time look
Cressida may have the most attention-grabbing looks of any character in season three, but with the crimson dress she wears in episode seven (“Joining of Hands”) when she goes into full-on villainess mode by blackmailing Penelope and Colin, the meaning isn’t subtle. “It’s a ‘F–k you’ dress,” says George Sayer, assistant costume designer.
The red dress was written into the script, and after making a big impression with Cressida’s clothes all season — “Cressida sleeves” are now cemented in pop culture, for sure — the designers wanted to mix it up with simple lines and hard angles. “She is going in there to make a point,” Sayer says.
Clothes make the men
It’s certainly a challenge to make the men of Bridgerton stand out among the phalanx of well-dressed women, but Hawkes, who designed the men’s costumes, rose to the challenge. For Colin’s journey from playboy to settling down with Pen, Hawkes wanted to continue with the silhouette he created in the first half but also slowly and subtly refine it. “When we get into part two,” Hawkes says, “we see a crescendo building to a stronger, sharper look until we get to the wedding, where you’re softening him into a family man.” Hawkes and Glaser say another reason the men look so great is that they’re not wearing black, opting instead of midnight blues.
Of the men, Earl of Kilmartin John Stirling (Victor Alli) may be the most elegant; throughout the season, he’s polished and sophisticated in ways that convey how suited he is for the genteel Francesca.
“I kept him very, very sharp, very proper,” Hawkes says. “We knew he was going to head towards parliament in Scotland, so I wanted to keep him very sharp.” One way was by making the frills on his shirts pleated and clipped, as opposed to the raw edges on other men’s shirts. “Nobody would ever notice that,” Glaser adds, “but your mind sees it, and you understand.”
Another man of note in the second half of the season is Benedict (played by Luke Thompson), who begins a journey of sexual exploration and discovery. Were there clues all along in his clothes that he’d be open to fluidity? Yeah. “We’ve seen Benedict the artist, and we’ve seen that grow from season one, exploring his artistic side,” Hawkes says. “Now we’re seeing him explore his sexuality. So, I’ve kept Benedict the artist going, but here I molded his clothes tighter to his body. And I used much softer wools.”
Featherington yellow returns
After all the drama and conflicts are resolved, the season ends on the happiest note of all: babies!
