Animal skins, clothes-swapping, and those terrifying masks: How ‘Yellowjackets' costume designer works with Liv Hewson and cast

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a day ago

Talk about a fashion emergency.
It's not easy dressing teenage girls under the best of circumstances — add in a plane crash in the wilderness, brutal winters, a devastating fire, and some mild cannibalism, and you've got to do some pretty creative costume work.
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Such is the challenge faced by Yellowjackets costume designer Marie Schley, an Emmy winner for her work on Transparent. Even in its third season, Schley says her job has actually gotten easier, as she's able to collaborate with the actors who've come to fully embody their characters — that is, the ones who've survived.
Here, she talks with Liv Hewson, who plays teen Van (and who uses they/them pronouns), about their favorite costumes, the one look that defined their character, and what they took from the set.
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Gold Derby: How do you work together in creating your character's look?
Marie Schley: In terms of this season, it was a different process, because for the pilot, you put together a concept for your director and your showrunners, and then you do your fitting. But the characters evolve — certainly, Liv's character has. And so for this season, we are piggybacking on what's been established before, but also bringing in new ideas, more input, from the actors, because they're really living these characters.
Liv Hewson: One of my favorite things about the process of figuring out the clothes on this show is how collaborative it is working with Marie. The restriction of Yellowjackets costume-wise is fun in that there literally is a finite amount of clothes that all of these characters are working with. The actor nerd in me really gets a kick out of tracking who would be wearing what, and what would they be using the clothes for. Something that is always really important to me is that Van is a butch lesbian, so what does her clothing say about her and communicate about her within the restriction of where they are? And how does her style evolve out in the wilderness? So it's about coming up with little nods, like her cutting the sleeves off of things, and masculinizing the clothes that they're all sharing. That was something that was really important to me. So it has been this beautiful process of discovery of these characters over the course of the experience they're having, while having to work within the framework of what they packed in the suitcases they have with them.
Schley: I remember in our first fitting this season, there's this concept that they're sharing clothes amongst them. And Liv was, like, it really should be either Javi or Travis's clothes that she wears. So you'll see that Co-Ed Naked soccer T-shirt go between those two because they have a more similar aesthetic. In the first episode, we did a lot of different costumes for the summer solstice ritual and Van has this amazing storytelling monologue, which you did so beautifully. So there was this Ren Faire kind of poncho with shredded things on it that we fit in our first fitting. And Liv was definitely like, no flowers, let's minimalize this. It's really important to have that give and take to make sure it feels really authentic to that character. I think that it turned out really well. It turned out to be one of my favorite costumes, actually,
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with Showtime
Hewson: I love it. I remember saying this very much in the world of what the others would be wearing. But with Van, it's Peter Pan, rather than like witch coven. With her gender expression plays a bigger part in her clothes. It felt really good to be wearing a garment like that.
How does your process work? Do you sit together down together at the start of the season with the scripts saying, "OK, here's where we're going, so here's what the looks are going to be?"
Schley: I wish we had that much time! You guys don't even get the scripts. I get them more ahead of you all do. So I'll give you kind of an idea. Sometimes I show you pictures, if I have them. It's a surprise in that first fitting I think, and I try to have enough there that we can cover ourselves.
Hewson: We had a really cool opportunity to have more back and forth this season about what Van is wearing, and the scenes that she has with herself. That was a unique costume opportunity. So that was an instance in which the two of us were emailing back and forth, and I remember sending you a couple of reference images, and we were talking about what would be on the T-shirt. That was a fun new opportunity to get into the nitty gritty of who the character is with clothes.
Schley: That was an important scene, because that is the bookend to Van's journey. So it was really important I know for Liv that it had a heroic element to it which it should have, because Van is a hero, by the way, and finding the right thing that felt right to you so you could perform that scene in the way it should be. There is an outline in the writer's mind of what is happening on the show, but it does change, as each season comes to fruition and it's put out in the world. So many times we're working backwards, like we establish certain things in the pilot for your characters, and then we're not really sure what is going to happen leading up to those scenes. It's an interesting puzzle that we're piecing in backwards. And I think that's true in this scenario too, where it's Van's demise — we don't really know what happens between season three and the future.
Kailey Schwerman/Paramount+ with Showtime
Hewson: Exactly. That outfit on the plane is beautifully out of time at the moment, but we don't know if we'll see it again. We don't know if that's a version of Van that we might get to be reintroduced to later. It's something that I really admire about the work that Marie and the costume team does on this show, that there's all these threads that you establish, and then, because of the parallel timeline nature of the show structurally, there are these images that you need to keep returning to, and things become imbued with significance because of what happens later. You don't necessarily know that pair of shoes is going to be one of the most important things that everybody's staring at for three years. But as you're doing it, you have to keep track of the symbols that we've established and what matters when, and what to draw the audience's attention to. So it's incredibly resourceful what Marie and the team do, and it's impressive.
SEE'I was terrified — she has an Oscar for "Million Dollar Baby"': Melanie Lynskey on her epic 'Yellowjackets' fight with Hilary Swank
How do you track all of that? Is it situation on your office walls?
Schley: It is! In the pilot, it was in the script that the camera pans up to a pair of shoes at the edge of the pit. So we knew those shoes were going to tell a lot. And then, of course, because they were focused on they became very much a symbol. But we never knew who was going to be wearing them. That's why we also came up with the idea that people were going to be sharing. It wasn't just because it makes sense story-wise, but also for us, we had to move the shoes around, because we just didn't know where they were going to end up.
Hewson: There were a couple of moments you had flagged things that needed to be seen on certain people just before we got to the end of this season, like this sweater. I remember you saying to me, we need to see you in this at least once, because it becomes the mask that Van is wearing in the hunt from the pilot.
Schley: It's also what gives birth to a lot of ideas. For instance, that sweater, it was a mask. So we actually made the mask before we ever made the sweater, and then we made multiples of that sweater so that the audience would see it evolve. Ben wears a baseball cap, and then we made that into a mask for Shauna. When you have those limitations, it springs new ideas. In our first fitting, we were using blankets that had survived the fire. And I was like, we can use these as clothing. I gave them to Liv, and Liv draped them in a very particular way around their body. And I was like, Oh, that looks very cool. And you were like, that seems like how Van would do it. It was across the body with the belt. And then that became what all the Yellowjackets wore in the trial, it kind of distinguished those who were the lawyers.
Hewson: And that's a fun game, too, as an actor, to have these fabrics that your character has snuck out of a burning building, and then looking at them and being like, well, what would I do with this?
SEE
Liv, how rare is that for you as a performer to be able to get that opportunity to inject yourself into your character and your character's wardrobe?
Hewson: I definitely count myself very lucky to be having that experience on this show. I'm very passionate about the work that I do and I see the work that I do as a part of a larger puzzle. And I know that clothing, especially for a show like this, where clothing is so loaded and significant is a big part of that.
Schley: My question for you, Liv, is where there's a specific piece of clothing in that first fitting, whether it's a motorcycle boot or a dangling earring, all of a sudden, there's a turning point where the actor's like, "Oh, OK, this is my character. Now I'm vibing with it. I'm feeling it, it's coming to life." Was there any kind of thing like that for you?
Hewson: I think there always is. I hear so many actors describe a version of that with characters that they play, and I think that's really part of the alchemy of the magic of costuming, is being able to watch a person come together in the work that you do. I know with Van a big part of clicking it in was the slouchy, '90s, androgynous, masculine, leaning silhouettes. The other things that come into play when I'm thinking about a character and clothes are things like class and bodily comfort and background, how this person might be presenting themselves to others, versus how they might see themselves. Is this an anxious person who is going to be using fabric to hide and shrink into or is this someone who's really out? Clothing in that way can inform how you stand, it can inform how you face the world or shrink away from the world, and sometimes, as an actor, you're not conscious of those things until you get dressed completely. I think with Van, it ended up really being the shoes, because she's in this one pair of shoes the whole time, until you see her in the pink Converse a couple of times before the final hunt. Because in real life, people have their comfort objects or their pieces of clothing that make them feel like themselves. And characters have that, too.
How do you balance that all with Van's look in present day for Lauren Ambrose?
Hewson: How she appears is informative for my journey with this character going forward. As we see these characters age and dress differently, there's a real point A and point B aesthetically as well as within the story. It's like, OK, now we've got to build me towards that.
Schley: Adult Van really does have a lot of '90s references in their clothing. But it's such a different context for the adult storyline, because different things are happening. They're not stuck in the woods. Van is living with Taissa with a limited amount of clothing, and also Taissa's maybe buying some things for them. But it's always been an interesting challenge trying to link the two different actors who are totally different people without being really heavy-handed. We were going for classic American kind of thing for both versions, iconic silhouettes during that moment, because it's a surreal scene about dying.
Anything you can tease about what's to come come for next season?
Hewson: There's definitely a lot of ground to cover in between the point in time that our versions of these characters are at versus where they are in the present. I have always been really curious about that kind of unknown, blank window of time. And I think, like all of us, are excited at the possibility of wearing clean things one day.
Schley: That'll be a whole new show.
Is there one piece of clothing you're going to take from the set when all is done?
Hewson: I do have a couple of pieces, actually, because, for the outfit that I end up wearing in the scene between Lauren and I on the plane, I actually went shopping for some jewelry for Van, a silver chain and a couple of delightfully gay rings, because I was, like, because Lauren wears so many rings as Van, I need to have a little nod to that.
Schley: You're going to be so sick of all those clothes you're going to want to burn them!
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