If I asked you to picture your best-dressed self, you’d probably be on holiday, wouldn’t you? Now imagine you have more money than you know what to do with. Now imagine there are 20 of you.
This is what it’s like outfitting the cast of The White Lotus, the hit HBO show currently approaching the end of its third and most popular season yet. Set in Hawaii, then Sicily, then Thailand, the backdrops are almost as gorgeous as the stars sitting in front of them.
The fictional hotel’s guests float around Four Seasons properties (with amended branding) wearing Gucci sun hats, Valentino mini dresses and Loewe sunglasses, like a resort collection sprung to life. And that’s just one character.
But thank God! Costuming in recent cult TV shows tends towards the drab, with the suits and shirts of (undeniably brilliant) 2020s favourites Succession and Severance replacing the colourful costuming of the 2010s, which included the likes of Mad Men, Girls and Game of Thrones.
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Checking in to The White Lotus is a “golden ticket”, says costume designer Alex Bovaird, who is responsible for all three seasons of looks on the show. The show’s opulence has increased with its viewership and, in turn, its budget. Back in the early days of season one, when episodes would average 544,000 viewers in the US, “the characters had two pairs of shoes”, says Bovaird. Four years later, the most recent episode of The White Lotus reached 4.8 million US viewers, making it the show’s most watched episode ever, and the series has become an official business partner of the Four Seasons hotel group. “Now they have 100 shoe choices,” Bovaird laughs.
The success of season two, which starred Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza and Leo Woodall and won a Golden Globe for Best Limited or Anthology Series, meant the pressure was on Bovaird from the start. “[Creator] Mike White said, ‘The next season is going to be bigger and better!’” So began a summer spent moodboarding, shopping and sewing.
Bovaird sourced hundreds of clothes from England, where she was on set for another job, and shipped them over to Koh Samui in Thailand. Her first port of call is always taking inspiration from the real guests of the hotel, or other luxury hotels nearby. “With Instagram, it’s easy to put in the hashtag of Four Seasons Koh Samui or Mandarin Oriental, and there’s all these people projecting their best selves at these hotels,” Bovaird says. “And that’s what The White Lotus guests do; maybe dressing a little bit extra. So it’s perfect for real life. But, having said that, we do have our own little world where people change four times a day.”
Bovaird searches high and low for the clothes. The outfits you see White Lotus guests wearing on screen may be straight off the Jacquemus runway, or from a boutique in Ibiza, but they could just as easily be from a charity shop. “There’s a vintage Marks and Sparks camp shirt from the British Heart Foundation in Kent that somebody wears this season,” Bovaird says. She also relies heavily on the British high street, adding: “I’ve never done a show without high street clothes.”
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However, there are some ground rules. “We avoid black or grey or denim,” says Bovaird, who wants to keep The White Lotus world as “juicy and fun and colourful” as possible. Of course, the characters are not all well-dressed former models swanning about in Jacquemus resortwear (though some are. See the pink boat look worn by ex-model Chloe, played by Charlotte Le Bon, this season). Some are distinctly unstylish, like Patrick Schwarzenegger and season one star Jake Lacy’s “douche” frat bros with their wraparound sunglasses and boat shoes. And some are invisible: Bovaird’s team handmade 34 uniforms for The White Lotus staff, who work to keep entitled guests happy. Or placid, at least.
This season, its outfits are earning an increasingly aspirational quality, evidenced by Bovaird’s recent H&M collaboration (now sold out) that offered the chance to “get The White Lotus look” for a fraction of the cost. And season three has a plethora of well-dressed women to play with, with many of the show’s actresses giving input on their looks. This includes lorazepam-addicted Southern mum of three Victoria, played Parker Posey, whose idea of a perfect holiday is essentially being put under general anaesthetic while wearing a kaftan.
“Parker had a lot of ideas,” Bovaird says. “She’s got a good sense of style, so it was fun to jump in with her.” Bovaird compares Posey’s character to Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge in seasons one and two, who was equally zany. “The idea for her was that she doesn’t go to the pool, she doesn’t go to the beach. She does leave the hotel once but, generally speaking, she is just sitting around getting massages, gacked out on her tranquilisers.” However, Victoria’s outfits aren’t actually as prohibitively expensive as they may seem. The green shift dress she wears in episode one is Banana Republic, and the striped blue and white beach dress she wears in episode three is Ganni.
Another fan favourite is fun-loving British girl Chelsea, played by Aimee Lou Wood, who Bovaird says “has an eclectic wardrobe made up of market finds, vintage pieces and some designer bits from a few years back”. To get her look, Bovaird turned maxi dresses into minis and repurposed bikinis to be worn as bras beneath sheer tops.
Then there are the “three ladies” of season three, described by Mike White as a “big blonde blob” until they become differentiated episode by episode. “The idea was that they’re almost identical at the beginning,” Bovaird says. “They’ve got very similar bright, yellow-toned sundresses; sparkly accessories; Cartier watch; Valentino bag; Chanel shoes, you know.” Then, as time passes, Laurie (Carrie Coon), who is a working mother in New York, gets more casual. Stay-at-home mum Kate (Leslie Bibb) becomes more conservative. And actress Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan) starts to stand out, with her Bottega Veneta beach bag and Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses.
As for the men, the biggest inspiration this season comes from troubled oddball Rick, played by Walton Goggins, who has a fabulous array of patterned shirts. “I knew Rick’s shirts would go down well, because everybody was obsessed with them while we were making the show,” Bovaird laughs.
“When I went to Hawaii the first time, I was mesmerised by all the men wearing Aloha shirts. Even the police, even businessmen. So it just adds a little bit of fun and flavour. In every season, there are loads of Aloha shirts.” And while some are from the bazaars of Thailand, some might not be from that far afield. “There’s one brand new one that I bought at a shop in Whitstable,” Bovaird says.
Even though The White Lotus paints a picture of exotic opulence on-screen, the costuming of the show is actually surprisingly homegrown. In fact, if anyone has a good chance at recreating it from scratch, it’s someone trawling through the high street shops of the south-east. Although it wouldn’t hurt to add a little sprinkling of Jacquemus, for good measure.
