Lyn Paolo and Laura Frecon, part of the Emmy-nominated costume design team of Queen Charlotte join Awards Daily to discuss the Bridgerton prequel’s royally divine fashion.
The highest compliment I can pay Lyn Paolo and Laura Frecon is that I believe their work in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is a textbook representation of everything costume design can achieve when done extremely well.
Queen Charlotte weaves back and forth between two time periods, the regency-era, older Queen Charlotte [Golda Rosheuvel] we’ve come to know from Bridgerton and young Charlotte [India Amarteifio], a fresh-faced teenager arriving in Georgian-era England, her marriage to King George III [Corey Mylchreest] having already been arranged.
The sheer volume of pieces needed to outfit our sprawling cast is truly impressive—gowns, suits, shoes, bags, stockings, all of this has been pored over in painstaking detail. It’s all so lush and colorful. But, what I truly appreciate is how each character is so wonderfully mirrored in their clothing. Older Queen Charlotte’s sarcastic cynicism, young Queen Charlotte’s naivete and disappointment, young King George’s forced stoicism—it’s all reflected in the costumes—whether it be through the chosen material, color, or interwoven in the fabric as a treat for eagle-eyed fans. Queen Charlotte is a love story told through costumes. And a love letter to the costumes themselves.
Awards Daily: How did you establish costuming for a character like Charlotte, given that we have previously seen her in the Bridgerton world? The series moves between older Charlotte [Golda Rosheuvel] and younger Charlotte [India Amarteifio]; how did you establish something that looks fresh and young while honoring the Queen Charlotte we know and love?
Lyn Paolo: There are several techniques that we used. Certainly, young Charlotte’s palette is very different than older Charlotte’s. Young Charlotte’s costumes, apart from the initial scene in the carriage, are less ornate. They’re more youthful. We use silk taffetas on young Charlotte so that her clothing moves, and they’re not as heavy as the costumes you see on Golda. The only time you see a crossover between them is for the coronation because there’s that beat where Golda’s walking down that corridor and looking back and looking at all the portraits. We did many more portraits than you see in the shot, but Golda wears the same red necklace that young Charlotte wore for the coronation. Golda wears that for the family portrait, so there’s that one little Easter egg there for the audience to say, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s wearing the necklace again,’ to tie together the coronation moment and the royal family portrait moment.
So, we tried to have a lightness to young Charlotte’s costumes. Then later, as her marriage isn’t what she expected it to be. Golda’s character runs the country for George, essentially. George is absent, so she becomes the sovereign. She’s heavily encrusted with the weight of the enormous work that must be done as a country’s figurehead.
Laura Frecon: I’ll speak to the underpinnings. Our young Charlotte, we built her corset with elastic paneling so that she could move. She didn’t wear a full cage. She wore layered tulle petticoats so that when you saw her walking, it was like more that she was floating, so she could climb the wall when she needed to and have all that movement. Whereas Golda’s corset we made in a very traditional manner, it was heavily boned and structured. Everything was laced and had huge amounts of boning and wiring, and was very full. So that when she walked and moved, it was much more stoic and structured and held together.
AD: The costumes are so ornate, there’s so much detailing— the jewelry, the embroidery, tell me about all the work that went into these gowns.
LP: There were so many stages. One gown would go to one dressmaker while others were in different stages of construction. First, we’d have to either have the fabric loomed, which we did on many occasions, or specially ordered, and some of the fabrics were reproductions of fabric from the period, and some were modern. Young Charlotte’s fabric was modern. All the underpinnings took, on average, between four to five weeks, depending on the gown and the time it took. We had to find the fabric, the trim, the organza, and the underlayers; every single skirt was lined underneath with organza.
Before everything was sewn together, the stomach piece and the front of the skirt were sent to our embroiderer, who had to go in and create those beautiful patterns and shapes, the interwoven initials of George and Charlotte, whatever tiny detail we were hoping the audience would see, then after that, it went to the dressmaker. The embellishes and every tiny little bit of trim that you see at the front or on the bottom of the dress, everything was handmade. Many of the costumes had gold threads handwoven into the gowns. It was such a long process for each gown.
LF: Right, there’d be multiple fittings. We’d then find jewels to match the beading sewn in the dress. Our milliner and jewelry maker would make these, the amazing headpieces you saw in the wigs.
And those would go to our wig designers, [fellow Emmy nominees] Nic Collins and Giorgio Galliero. They would weave it into their wigs. Every single piece was a process, even the little reticules; they were hand beaded and handmade. We had a company in France that made a bunch of them for us.
LP: And the shoes, don’t forget, we dyed all the shoes to match the dresses, and then each shoe had these tiny little jeweled accessories stitched into the shoe. Some stockings had hand-stitching on the side to match the color of the gown. There were so many layers, and I had to shout out to Laura because she was the one who kept everything running smoothly.
LF: [Laughs].
LP: You did.
LF: Oh, thank you. I think it was a team effort.
AD: Lynn, you mentioned this a bit, but I’d love to dig in further. At the beginning of the show, Charlotte’s clothing is much softer. As she becomes hardened by life, her costuming becomes bigger and more exaggerated.
LP: Right. Laura and I talked a lot with Tom Verica, our director, and of course with [showrunner] Shonda [Rhimes]. I have to say, Shonda was an amazing partner because we would pitch these character arc ideas or wedding gown ideas, the “basic” wedding gown versus the couture wedding gown, and they just lifted us and supported us and heard us as creative people and said, ‘Yeah, do it.’ They were amazing.
With Queen Charlotte, there are so many arcs and mini-arcs and moments. We started with Golda; we know what Golda looks like. We know where the Bridgerton Queen Charlotte ends up. And we know that she stays dressed in a Georgian costume in the Regency period, which makes her stand out from everyone else. You would think, ‘Oh, she liked the fashion of her youth. So, she kept it.’ But, I think in our heads, it’s more that Golda’s character embodies, as I said, the royal family.
Golda is the queen that we see in the coronation portrait. She hasn’t changed. So, we needed to take India’s Charlotte from this very young woman who gets taken away from her family. And then, slowly, you have this arc. As you rightly pointed out, her costumes became more and more elaborate as time went on. That one beat after she gives birth to King George IV, where she’s in that lovely soft green dress. It’s a little more, ‘Oh, I’m the queen, and I’m relaxed with my family.’ But then, after, they have to go back to Buck House. Her costumes once again start getting more and more elaborate. And I think by the end, when we have the scene under the bed, we want this crossover of all four characters.
And again, there are so many tiny moments, easter eggs for the fans. Older George, under that bed, is wearing the robe that younger George wore. And in the scene where George and Charlotte decide they will be together and there will be no more odd days or even days. That is also the robe that Charlotte pulls over her in the bed. So, we made multiples of that robe so George could wear it. If you look, older George’s robe is in tatters when he’s writing on the wall. So, there are tons of echoes for each character, not just for young Charlotte.
LF: You can also see Charlotte’s color palette change a little bit as her mood gets darker. There’s a scene after she witnesses George’s distress and realizes this is an illness. And what’s the matter? What’s happening? She goes to confront Augusta [Michelle Fairley]. And Lynn and I consciously put her in a very, very deep purple, which is uncharacteristic of her color palette in the earlier episodes, so that the audience could feel this heavy, deep anger and upset coming from her. You’ll see that in the darker moments of the show.
AD: I love how Bridgerton plays with fashion. Did you always stick to period-accurate costuming, or did you allow for certain variations?
LF: Well, when the original opportunity came for us to do Queen Charlotte, we pitched to Shonda a more fashion-forward, like Met Ball feel for the show. And we did copious amounts of research. So, we did take from history, but we also wanted to take very high fashion elements and put them together. So although we did all the research, we went to so many museums. We read so many books. There’s this really odd but really good book that highlights the story of young Charlotte called The Strangest Family. Lynn and I read that cover to cover, and we went to Museums all over Spain and Rome. We went to the museums! But then, really, we wanted to bring that high fashion, Met Ball element to the costumes so that a modern eye would love and embrace them. And potentially, you could see somebody wearing them at a ball or something like that.
LP: I do want to say that we were a little more faithful to the period, certainly in the Regency elements. And this is something Tom Verica was very clear on and agreed with us on, was that the Regency sections of our story, unlike Bridgerton, which is always springtime with wisterias in full bloom, our story was in the middle of winter. And it was in the middle of a very sad time because the young princess had died in childbirth. We used more traditional wools, fur linings, and heavier fabrics for our Regency sections. Especially the big funeral that you see with the queen and Brimsley [Hugh Sachs] was much more on point period-wise because we wanted to make a distinct difference between the spring and summertime of Bridgerton and this story. Something important to stress to the audience is that there are two distinct, very different periods in our story—Georgian versus Regency, which was, in its own way, challenging to jump from period to period. So there’s not just one period in our story.
AD: Every supporting character is impeccably dressed. I really loved seeing Lady Danbury [Arsema Thomas] in her younger years and how her journey mirrors Queen Charlotte’s as she’s coming into her own and realizing her power.
LF: Well, first of all, Arsema is just an amazing actress, and she wears the clothes so beautifully, and she was so willing to just go for it with us. I’m sure you’ve caught that Lord Danbury loved the color gold, so in the earlier episodes, you see her wearing a lot of gold very much. And that wasn’t because she loved those colors. It was because she did it for her husband. And then, as she comes more into her own, she’s like, ‘Well, my favorite color is purple.’ So we started bringing in the magentas and the purples and having her find herself through her colors. And eventually, as everybody who loves Bridgerton knows, Lady Danbury [Adjoa Andoh] is later known for her purples, magentas, and deep burgundies.
LP: Shonda even puts it in the script, doesn’t she? In that scene, at night after her husband’s death, Lady Danbury says, ‘I don’t even know what I like to drink. I don’t know what colors to wear.’ This was a conscious discussion with Shonda because, like Golda, we know where Lady Danbury ends up, don’t we? We know that her color palette in Bridgerton is marooned in those tones. It’s not Bridgerton blue. So we did that same arc that we did with Charlotte, and we do with Golda; we started with the golds and then slowly ended up towards the pinks and the magentas and the purples, except for the ball at the very end when she’s considering marrying the queen’s brother. We brought her back to the gold, and then, of course, she said no. So that’s another area we played with. I will say, for me, my favorite costumes of hers are the morning walking costumes.
LF: I loved those.
LP: You don’t really see the detail, but I mean, every single time she went walking, it was a hundred percent different costume, different hat, different gloves, different shoes. I wish they’d do a display of them because they’re so pretty with all the beading and the sparkle. They’re really gorgeous.
AD: You mentioned Easter eggs for the fans. Can you tell me more about your favorite subtle additions to the costumes?
LP: Oh my gosh, there are so many. The ‘basic’ wedding gown had English Tudor roses along the bottom because the real Queen Elizabeth’s coronation gown had a lot of that. So we did a lot of British iconography. Then for the coronation, we had their initials interwoven into her gown and on his suit too.
LF: The whole Suns and Stars and Moons ball, every single character, every background artist, everybody had something of a star, a moon, a sparkle, something to do with astronomy on their clothing. It was George and Charlotte’s ball, so we wanted to reflect his love of astronomy, and they’re coming together under the heavens, and the fact that he calls her his Venus. So that ball represents them and their love, but you’ll see it in the headpieces for each person and character. You’ll see it on the stomachers. There’s some element of the heavens in every single person’s costume.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is streaming now on Netflix.