The Outfits on ‘Yellowjackets’ Are Sickeningly Stylish, All Thanks to Her
Yellowjackets is made up of fragments—secrets that viewers must piece together, one by one. It’s the kind of show you pick through with a fine-toothed comb, searching painstakingly for clues as to what happened in those woods, 25 years ago. Of course, the more you look, the more questions you’re likely to be left with. It makes for addictive, tantalizing television. But it’s also a show that dares to offer up a refreshing version of the female experience that is fierce and flawed and a little deranged all at once.
The first season of Yellowjackets set the aesthetic tone with costumes designed by Marie Schley. It was a grungy, earthy, and, sometimes, downright weird show to look at. What began as a palette of cult-favorite ’90s looks—we are thinking of that iconic blue-and-yellow Yellowjackets team jacket, for one—was soon mixed with feminine pagan influences; a Midsommar-esque antler crown, bedecked with lace and dried flowers and an eerie array of animal skull masks, became a prominent feature. The lesson here is: Do a female Lord of the Flies, and it becomes surprisingly fashionable.
In Season 2, the mystery continues to unravel—and the show’s striking aesthetics continue to play an important role in our obsessive hunt for the truth. This season, Stranger Things costume designer Amy Parris has taken over from Schley, left with the task to work on a more harrowing part of the story: wintertime. In the ’90s timeline, it’s below freezing, and the girls are making do with the clothes that are left over from the crash. This means they’ve adopted a bizarrely apocalyptic look, as they pile on layer after layer of spring clothes. This haggard dress leaves them feeling less civilized than ever. And yet, as Parris tells us, it somehow feels oddly like “high fashion.”