Are you watching The White Lotus season three? I’m excited for the 90-minute finale coming up on Sunday. This week, I was thrilled to speak to Alex Bovaird, the brilliant costume designer behind all three seasons, about Parker Posey, boat shoes, and lots and lots of sweat…
Your career sounds like a dream! But of course every job has hard parts, often behind the scenes. What’s something tricky you faced?
All the sweat. A person is either a sweat-er or they’re not, and if you’re a sweat-er, you’re going to profusely sweat in Thailand. Walton Goggins, who plays Rick, was profuse. We brought Thompson Tees from the U.S. to soak up everyone’s sweat; we cut out the necks so you couldn’t see them underneath clothes. The armpit material looks like a sanitary towel — pretty gross!
What about Tim Ratliff? He seems sweaty, like, as a personality.
Tim was bone dry; we actually had to apply costume sweat.
My British grandfather always said that men sweat and women glow.
The women had ice packs; Parker [Posey] had one almost continuously between her thighs.
Was it fun to dress Parker Posey’s character, the Southern matriarch Victoria Ratliff?
Yes! We knew she and Timothy would open and close her bag a lot for the Lorazepam, so we had to find the perfect chic bag — the Gucci one with the bamboo handle is old-school and looks good with everything. In a perfect world, it would look more worn, but I borrowed bags from the brands and I have to give them back.
I love Piper’s dresses. She wears at least three from Ciao Lucia. Was that a choice, since she’s a recent college grad who might be loyal to a favorite brand?
We actually just found a collection that hit the right notes. Ciao Lucia dresses are whimsical, and Piper is ethereal — or at least thinks she is. You can style the dresses to make them sexy, but at Piper’s height, the length of the dresses felt chaste.
What about the boys? Saxon is so…that guy.
As a costume designer, you want to stereotype a little, so the audience can say, oooh I know who this person is. Particularly in the arrivals episode, we turned that up and made it louder. My husband and I live in the South, and there are brands that I’ve only seen there, like Southern Tide. We also dressed Saxon in Polo and Brooks Brothers. We wanted to make him cheesy — not like ‘dadcore’ but like literal dad.
That’s hilarious.
But we never want to go too far. After the first episode, I was like, let’s not do the sunglasses Croakies and the boat shoes, let’s take one element away. We’re not Zoolander. We want to be satire, not comedy.
Honestly, Saxon really grew on me. By the seventh episode, he almost seems sweet.
He has a journey, so his fits get slightly cuter; that was on purpose. We were like, Wow, you actually look kind of handsome.
What about Belinda? I loved her pink caftan with the green leaves and fish.
Belinda loves a good flow. She’s never been a guest at the White Lotus, so she wants to look like one as much as she can. She doesn’t want to look like poor Belinda. She wants to be Cinderella.
