‘The White Lotus' wants you to look the part

Washington Post

23-02-2025

'The White Lotus' is back, baby! As the season progresses, we can't wait to soak up those quotable bon mots, to envy the lush bungalows of Thailand, to shake our heads at the immoral multimillionaires and to ... get the look?
The frenzy of this new season, the third of Mike White's startling satire of the ultrarich on vacation, arrived with a record number of collaborative tie-ins.
There are Away suitcases in beige, complete with lotus flower lining; Kiehl's body lotion and face oil, gussied up with White Lotus branding and arriving in a raffia White Lotus tote bag. Abercrombie & Fitch can help you look like a White Lotus guest in a striped shirt and matching beach pants (or a staff member in a White Lotus Thailand graphic T-shirt, already sold out). An Australian caftan brand called Camilla has a whole line of floral printed gowns for pool- and oceanside lounging. H & M and Bloomingdale's have also created collections.
Banana Republic, whose dress was worn by Parker Posey's Southern pill-popper Victoria Ratliff in the season's first episode, may have gone further than anyone, with a capsule of safari suiting, animal print separates and floral print ensembles for men and women, to be released early next month.
The mall brand's head of marketing, Meena Anvary, described the collection in a news release as 'both aspirational and attainable,' adding that 'it embodies the spirit of adventure.'
And the spirit of murder? That, after all, is the real crux of this formulaically quixotic series: we open with a cadaver reveal, and then we while away several days with immoral, bad, and sometimes just lazy or lost people, trying to guess which one of them gets offed and who, if anyone, dunnit.
To be clear, 'The White Lotus' is no morality play. It is a guilty pleasure, one that found traction amid pandemic-era cabin fever and the resulting lust for travel, twinned with a revived obsession with tracking the behaviors and style of the one percent.
And the costumes, by Alex Bovaird, help tell this story. They are genius, but the reveal is subtle. The frenzied ugliness of Portia, Season 2's Gen Z assistant to Jennifer Coolidge's permanently lunching out Tanya McQuoid, is perhaps her greatest achievement, putting a finger on how 20-somethings dress before any journalist (or parent) could wrap their head around it.
But just as interesting are Lani's mayonnaise stain on her shirt in Season 1, which Armond frets over obsessively while missing that she's gone into labor; the Dior swimsuits purchased by the Italian sex workers from the hotel gift shop in the second season, which winkingly suggest that the obsessive rules about what the rich and wannabe-rich wear are really nonexistence; and businessman Cameron's ridiculous Etro outfits after his luggage is lost. Remember Tanya dressing up as Monica Vitti and the sarcastic hotel manager Valentina telling her she looks like Peppa Pig? This is a show about the delusions of the wealthy, with a particularly astute and contemporary lens on the way people, whether rich or trying to seem like it, use clothing to give their lives meaning or texture.
This season, we already have sartorial intrigues brewing — just what is the deal with the incestuous suggestions of those three Southern siblings, and why is the sister, mocked by her older brother for appearing to be sexually inexperienced, wearing all those vaguely Amish schmattas?
While HBO's 'Succession' chronicled characters with hang-ups about their status in the world and, perhaps more important, within their family, 'The White Lotus' shows the wealthy in their most solipsistic element. Nothing gets people shopping like planning for a vacation — it is a moment for escapism and role-playing. So you costume yourself.
But whether these characters look silly or great, the show encourages viewers to revile these people. It mocks them. The rare characters above reproach are the staff, the working stiffs. Yes, part of White's genius is that he shows sympathy even for terrible people, like his beloved Tanya. But he is also willing to make their deaths into pratfalls.
Which brings us back to these collabs. Why would a show that compels us to loathe these characters push us to dress like them? Of course, nothing comes into this world anymore without an attendant selection of merch. There is never enough money to be made. And the aspirational ploys of the show are so obvious it's almost beyond comment — the resorts at which the show films become outrageously popular following their appearance on the show, despite the fact that they are all stage sets for notorious deaths. In real life, can you imagine a murder inspiring people to visit a hotel?
But perhaps this is White's ultimate grimace-grin reveal. Victoria's Banana Republic dress, marked down from $150 to $39.97, sold out almost immediately after fans identified it.
We hate the rich — and there is no one we would rather look like.