How the funny and feminist fashion in ‘Palm Royale’ further the storytelling

When Kristen Wiig steps out of a vintage Rolls-Royce in the opening scene of Season 2 of “Palm Royale,” she’s sporting a tall, yellow, fringed hat, gold platform sandals and sunny bell bottoms, with fabric petals that sway with every determined step. It’s the first clue that the costumes on the female-driven comedy are taking center stage. The Apple TV show made a splash in its first season with the starry cast, high production values and ubiquitous grasshopper cocktail.

Wiig’s character, Maxine, tries to break into Palm Beach high society in 1969 and bumps heads with co-stars Carol Burnett, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb and Laura Dern. But also playing a starring role are the vintage designer frocks that reflect each character.

For Season 2, which premiered this week, Emmy-winning costume designer Alix Friedberg says she and her team coordinated “thousands” of looks that reflect the characters’ jet-setting style. She says 50-60% of the brightly coloured and graphic print costumes are original vintage designer pieces, sourced by shoppers and costume designers.

“The looks are so iconic. Sometimes Kristen will walk in in something, and it brings tears to my eyes,” Kaia Gerber — who plays Mitzi — told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

If not original vintage, Friedberg’s team builds the costumes, and if a character has to wear an outfit in multiple scenes or in big dance numbers, the team may create duplicates to preserve continuity. Friedberg says she was lucky to find so many vendors with vintage designer pieces in great condition. “(Bibb’s character) Dinah wears a few original Oscar de la Renta pieces that are really so perfect. Bill Blass was a big one, Oleg Cassini,” Friedberg says. “There’s a dress that (Janney’s character) Evelyn wears that’s this all emerald green jersey, it’s an original Halston and it’s so stunning on her and it really does sort of evoke what’s to come in the 70s.”

Janney calls Friedberg “brilliant” and marveled at her talent at finding pieces that are like works of art. Some of her favorites were the characters’ après-ski looks in the Swiss Alps — but she finds it hard to pick an ultimate favourite.

“All of them just make me feel divine. And the hair is just a masterpiece, and the makeup — it all goes together to just create Evelyn and I barely have to do anything,” Janney says. The costumes also help heighten the comedy. Friedberg says Evelyn’s stoic and deadpan character elicits laughs with some of her over-the-top getups.

“She’s delivering this dialogue, these lines with, like, seven wigs on top of her,” Friedberg says. “The absurdity comes out really in how these women present themselves time and time again. ... It was just so much fun to get to laugh and wink at the audience.”

Burnett called costume fittings on the show “great fun” and said they helped her find her character, the scheming Norma. “I work from the outside in. I have to know what I’m going to look like,” she says. Norma’s signature turban started as a practical idea to help Burnett save time in hair and makeup. “The first time she put it on, we were both like, ‘Oh, that’s really so fabulous,’ and every time she came out as Norma without the turban, I really missed it,” Friedberg says. “Each time we built her a dress, we always had to sort of think about what the turban would be, and then it started to switch, and we started designing the turbans before the dress!”

The costumes also help set the tone for the female empowerment theme that permeates this season. “Evelyn wore a lot more pants — which seems ridiculous to say today — but back then that was a real power move,” Friedberg says.

Bibb had ideas to show how Dinah evolves from her trophy wife persona. “I knew this season was about her finding sort of her own wealth without a man ... and what that looked like. I always have been obsessed with Sharon Stone in ‘Casino,’” Bibb says - and so they “stole” a bit of that look. “We really have Dinah going into pantsuits and just a different sense of her and she’s really becoming her most modern self.”

Friedberg conveyed the privilege and simplicity of the rich men in the series through clothing as well. Josh Lucas plays Douglas, who suffers some disappointments this season, reflected in his costumes.

“What if we approach Douglas where he’s always been dressed by women in his life? He’s always been dressed by someone else. He’s never shopped,” Lucas says he posed to Friedberg (who happens to be his sister-in-law in real life). “And for the first time, (his wife’s) character is not doing that, so he only has three hole-filled Hawaiian shirts.”

He’s in fact the rare character who repeats outfits, Friedberg notes. “You can kind of see them, as the series goes along, getting a little bit more and more threadbare,” she says.

Gerber’s character gets a major makeover this season after coming into money. The actor gushed about Friedberg’s intentional designs as Mitzi finds her “womanhood and her power.”

“It was so fun to be able to be wearing these expensive gowns and jewelry and the hair and the makeup, and how that really sort of parallels Mitzi’s inner journey as well,” she says.

The costumes may be eye candy, but Friedberg says each look also carries deeper meaning.

“Maxine wears this dress that was an original Oscar de la Renta dress,” Friedberg says. “It’s very much something that Norma would wear, and it is saying to the audience without saying to the audience that she’s arrived, it’s her time, it’s time for her to rule.”

Associated Press