The White Lotus's costume designer Alex Bovaird discusses the vacation style of the show's self-obsessed characters.
, the other half of us have spent late summer transfixed by the sequin caftans, ruffled beach cover-ups, and lime green tankinis of HBO’s. Set in a fictional Maui resort for the top 1% of high-net-worth individuals, the show paints a cringey, haunting portrait of the annals of resort life for both the oblivious guests and the staff meant to “disappear,” as the hotel manager says in the pilot.
That also feels like an experience so authentic to those characters, traveling to the Caribbean or South America and just coming back with a wardrobe of things that they had purchased. There are times where she’s just kind of over the top, but it works. I realized early on that the hotel was actually quite big, so you could really go for it with the costumes, and it would make sense dwelling in such cavernous, beautiful places. That’s why I definitely put big earrings on people and, like, over-jeweled people.
It was a bit nerve-wracking looking out for that jewelry. We put it in the safe, just like she puts it in the safe, and it was kind of an ordeal every time she wore that jewelry, which was every dinner scene. She even wears it out on the boat; I was like, “Oh no, why did I do the real thing?!”They sent it in an armored car from the airport! It actually came in a series of armored cars all the way from New York. They’re very special.
The internet is obsessed with Olivia and Paula. How did you approach costuming these two Gen Z characters who, while they’re so-called best friends, have an underlying tension? A little bit, yes. At one point Paula wears a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt. They both, when you meet them, are wearing slogans: One says “Post Hope,” which is a riff on the Obama T-shirts, and one of them is wearing a sweatshirt that says “Bardo.” That’s a joke because we imagined that she might be going to Bard college, but it was also sort of a comment on the state of the world that seems like we’re in some sort of purgatory.
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