‘Bridgerton’s Season 3 Costumes Include Carrie Bradshaw’s Favorite Shoe

The creative team behind the fantastical costumes in the world of Bridgerton don’t view their jobs as a lesson in history. Instead, this series presents them with a unique opportunity to play, explore, and create elaborate costume designs that blend historic and contemporary references. 

Costume designer John is the brains behind the entire operation. “This is a show about beauty, glamour, enhancing the characters, and to help tell the story,” he says in the video above, the latest installment of InStyle‘s Behind the Seams video series. “So, how we get there is not always in a traditional way but in an abstract way. We bring that abstract vision, and we focus it in.”

In Bridgerton, now streaming part 1 of its third season on Netflix, creator Shonda Rhimes reimagines the period drama genre by infusing it with modern sensibilities, especially with its lavish costumes. To accomplish all the video eye candy seen on camera, Glaser works closely with Associate Costume Designer George Sayer, who focuses on women’s costumes, and Assistant Costume Designer Dougie Hawkes, who focuses on the men’s costumes.

When the initial design process for Bridgerton season 1 began for Glaser, who had worked with Rhimes before, he knew that there would be an emphasis on a wide range of color and fabric. “All we knew was that it was 1813 and that there would be no women’s bonnets,” he says. “That kind of gave us a clear vision as to where we were going. And I always say that our initial inspiration boards were very clear where it shows a fashion reference, it shows an historical reference, and hopefully a painting in there too, which sums up exactly where we went.”

This pattern of drawing inspiration from historical references, art, and fashion allows the team a lot of flexibility in conceptualizing where to take each character’s wardrobe each season because they do not have to adhere to strict historical accuracy. “We use the silhouette of the period, but we don’t necessarily use period fabrics. We don’t use period detailing,” Glaser explains. 

The team also focuses on layering multiple fabrics to create more texture and a more dynamic design, as well as 3-D printing some aspects of the clothing embellishments. 

“Penelope’s dresses are a good example. You don’t really know what’s going on with the fabrics, but it’s due to having maybe up to four layers of different patterns going on or textures going on. So it looks a bit like a painting,” Sayer says.

“This season, we actually tried to make it look like a painting or like a garden. We used a lot of ombré, from light to dark,” Glaser says. “Just like flowers change colors and the seasons change colors, we wanted to make it look like a soft painting.”

In addition to presenting unique design opportunities, Bridgerton showcases aspects of English culture rarely captured onscreen. As Hawkes explains, “We’re looking at high society London, which is very rarely filmed. You see Jane Austen, which is very rural. But you very rarely see this period of regency in London. It’s in an echelon of fashion where it’s not particularly well documented. So that gives the opportunity for fantasy to be explored.” 

After establishing their setting, the team then zoned in on determining the lanes for the costume designs—and colors—for both the Bridgerton and Featherington families. 

“Our starting point was from the book, where it stated that Penelope is in citrus color. So for the Featheringtons, we actually used all citrus colors, oranges, limes, lemons. We put them in gold and we made them the Versace family,” Glaser says. “And for the Bridgertons, we went with Tiffany, Wedgewood blue, the Kennedys, old money, and silver. Nothing gaudy—they had nothing to prove, nothing to show. They just were beautiful.”

This third season stretched the costume department even further than before, as Glaser’s team took the show’s look in a more artistically ambitious direction. Fabrics added up to 4,500 yards of material for the show’s third season. The first season alone, which Glaser also worked on, required the creation of 7,500 wardrobe pieces. 

“It was just the beginning of our stock of clothing because we rented nothing. Everything was made. So, add up 7,500 pieces of gloves, shoes, shirts, dresses, petticoats, underwear, boots, hats,” Glaser says.

As the characters evolve in season 3, so too does the fashion, particularly on Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope Featherington and Luke Newton‘s Colin Bridgerton who emerge with fully reimagined appearances. 

For Penelope, this season marks a notable shift away from the typical citrus colors her character has embraced in the past as she looks towards more independence from her controlling family. “She’s had enough of her family and the control, and she just wants to change. So we see her go to the modiste and ask for a new look, which leads us on to this dress, which she reveals at the first ball of the season,” Sayer says. 

To help visualize Penelope’s big entrance, showrunner Jess Brownell drew inspiration from the 1999 film She’s All That. Penelope’s looser hair in season 3 was inspired by icons like Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, and even Jessica Rabbit; it contrasts with the tighter curls she wore in the past.

“It’s the first time we see her new hair, which is a beautiful color of red. And in this dress, this fabric goes from green to rust to help with their hair. And that’s why this cloak is rust. So it just becomes one nice solid image,” Glaser says.

Similarly, the team put thought into the way the new color palette for Penelope’s outfits would also reflect her character’s narrative arch as well. “Another point we wanted to make about the colors that we use for Penelope when it’s softer is that we didn’t want her to stand out. She’s against the wall quite often gathering gossip. And so this kind of paler palette helps her sort of disappear into her surroundings,” Sayer says. 

For Colin, Hawkes zoned in on the recent travels that Colin is returning from as the inspiration to guide his costumes this season. Viewers will see a more mature side to Colin’s fashion and overall appearance.

“With specific reference to Colin, we saw this traveler, this maverick, coming from his long travels on the grand tour and being inspired along the way himself,” Hawkes says. “I wanted to make him daring, dashing, and dangerous. Those were the three elements I wanted to bring into his costume.”

And as the romance between Colin and Penelope evolves this season, the costume design team had to imagine the way they would handle Colin and Penelope’s intimate scene in the carriage—a scene eagerly anticipated by fans of the Bridgerton Julia Quinn novels.

“For the dress that Penelope wears in the carriage scene when Colin and Penelope first get intimate, it’s from the full moon ball, and so we didn’t want it to go for anything too obvious. That’s why you’ve got a hint of the sparkle going on,” Sayer says. “Fabric-wise, we wanted to use something soft and slippy to help with the action when Colin is lifting up her skirt. It’s just a much sort of sexier fabric, really, whereas something stiffer might have looked a bit clunky.”

But “Polin” aren’t the only characters going through big changes this season. One character’s big change may be particularly exciting to viewers: Lady Violet Bridgerton. This season, Violet’s sparkling wardrobe indicates that the family matriarch may soon find her “garden in bloom.”

“We wanted to mix her up a bit. Her garden is in bloom. She’s been through her period of mourning. She’s still, you know, she’s still a mother, but we also want her to get, like, a spring in her step a bit this season,” Sayer says.

Eloise Bridgerton’s wardrobe also shifts. Previously, her outfits featured high collars and long sleeves, giving her a scholarly appearance. Now, her clothes are somewhat more feminine, reflecting her growing societal awareness and the embrace of her own femininity and independence. 

Eloise also has a friendship developing with Cressida Cowper this season, which gave the team a chance to play with using color to reflect their friendship. Cressida’s soft palette contrasts sharply with her foreboding family home, a space that shows her in a new, more sympathetic light

“People are going to talk about the colors of the families and colors of characters. With Eloise and Cressida, this is an area where we soften the colors on both of them and made them a little more on the same level now,” Glaser says. “It’s like a friendship that’s forming. And so the colors are sort of tying through. and we see a softer side of her coming out, saying how important it is to have a friend. And it’s a little bit more sensitive than the Cressida that we’ve seen before.”

With a wide range of character development and plot unfolding in season 3, the design team is grateful for how the series has allowed them room to express their vision and creativity. “Bridgerton is the gift that keeps on giving,” Hawkes says. “It’s a designer’s dream because it’s so imaginative and it brings out all the creative aspects throughout the departments. And we’re a group of artisans, really, rather than designers.”