Rich Looks, Dark Secrets: Inside the Costume Design of Netflix's Sirens

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Step inside the lavish world of Sirens and discover how costume designer pieces helped bring power, privilege, and pressure to life. In this behind-the-scenes look, the creative team reveals how every outfit worn by Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy, and Milly Alcock was carefully crafted to reflect the characters’ inner lives and social status. From beachside elegance to subtle class warfare through fabric, see how fashion becomes its own character in Netflix’s dark comedy Sirens, streaming May 22.

Transcript

00:00The siren story is so much about ambition, power, it's about greed, it's about wealth.

00:08That's a tough order for a costume designer. Everything that we wear is pretty much a statement.

00:14Molly and I spoke a lot about the tone and where the intersection of humor and

00:18darkness and the mythos of these women on the island and how that would influence their wardrobe

00:25in the fabrics and the colors to match the moods and sounds and spirit of the island.

00:30A lot of the dresses were built for us because she wouldn't be very particular about how each of us looked.

00:37Molly wrote really specifically that there was a lot of pastel in this world and anyone who spent

00:43time in Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard, you see it. There's a very, very specific palette

00:48that people who populate these very wealthy enclaves in America tend to gravitate towards.

00:54No, no, no, no.

00:58Caroline was so thoughtful about the three women and the arc that their costumes go on over the

01:03course of the show to sort of look particularly at Simone's costume arc, which is magnificent because

01:09she goes from little girl to woman, but she also, there's a real visual story for her as a siren as

01:14well. The first dress that we see her in is this lily polizza and she's using it as this like mask of

01:20I'm okay. I'm fine. I am happy. Hey. A lot of the beauty and the humor lies in that Stepford Wives

01:28element. Michaela is this person of great wealth and there's not a lot of practicality to how she

01:35dresses. So hot. Devin's entry into the whole world of that is a little bit different. Over time we sort of

01:42see her assimilate to her surroundings and what she looked like when she's what we call undercover.

01:51I got to wear some extraordinary jewelry, some beautiful pieces. We felt really honored that they

02:02lent them to us. That I think I love more than anything. It was very clear that we were going to

02:08have to build a lot of this world. Even Ethan's ducky blazer. I like his ducky. No, you like his Rolex.

02:14That was a fabric that we had custom made. The team here just did such an amazing job designing hand

02:19dyeing the fabric. They knew that they wanted this area, the bust area, to be this pink and then I put

02:26a little purple on the side so that the bust is pink but then it's kind of highlighted with the purple

02:31to give it a little more depth. That just takes time and experience to acquire that sensibility.

02:37The dress moves beautifully and every time she turned it's something lovely. So the dress just kept

02:43giving. The dress for the gala and the finale that was handmade definitely has a bit of that Greek

02:49mythological vibe. She looks like a goddess. This very much to me feels like a dress that

02:55Aphrodite would have worn. It's dreamy and watching it feels like a dream. Don't you look beautiful in

03:02that dress I had made for you.

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