Bridgerton is back with its third season on Netflix – and that means more yearning, more gossip and, most importantly, more gowns. 

The Regency-era period drama, which follows the love lives of the Bridgerton family, was a lockdown sensation in its first season back in 2020. Not only were we swept off our feet by the steamy romance between Phoebe Dynevor’s Daphne and Regé-Jean Page’s Simon, we were also instantly enamoured with Ellen Mirojnick’s breathtaking costumes.

Unlike period dramas of the past that stuck rigidly to historical accuracy, Bridgerton forged new sartorial ground, creating a fantastical world in which modern fashion and fabrics blended seamlessly with historic silhouettes and styles. 

In the third season, the first half of which landed on Netflix this week, the costume design team continues to play with the show’s period setting in endlessly inventive, even outlandish methods. Women wear gowns with giant appliqué flowers growing from their shoulders. Men wear traditional trousers secretly made of denim. Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) wears an utterly fabulous towering wig with a motorised swan swimming within its braided tendrils.

This season follows a new love story – though the romance has been building for the past two seasons. This time, the focus is on Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), a determined wallflower, and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), the third Bridgerton son and long-time friend of Penelope.

Stylist spoke to this season’s costume designer John Glaser, associate costume designer Dougie Hawkes (who worked on the men’s costumes) and assistant costume designer George Sayer (who was more focused on the women) about the central couple’s sartorial glow-ups, modernising the Regency period and designing a show steeped in Easter eggs.

What was it like returning to the show after working on the costumes for the first season?

John Glaser, costume designer: Season two was more historically accurate – and that’s something that I don’t do. We’ve taken the show and made it more fanciful than it was becoming in season two. This means injecting a sense of fashion and its influences to bring a modern flair. Our goal is to help to tell the story and to help the actors become their characters. And because of the nature of the Bridgeton world, it works well if it has a slight fashion influence because the audience is younger.

Dougie Hawkes, assistant costume designer: We were finding our feet on season one. I think that’s why it has a magic that we lost a little bit in season two when we tried to get too accurate. But I think we’ve now regained that magic and added to it in season three.

What kind of modern fashion influences are you drawing into the period designs?

JG: We take it from everywhere – the 30s, the 60s, the 80s. We select things from periods that we like and we incorporate them. And we also take things that we don’t like from the actual Regency period and subtly take them away.

DH: For instance, based on the historical accuracy of the period where Bridgerton sits, the men would actually wear britches and stockings. Instead, we’ve pushed the period a little bit, pushing it around 10 years ahead, which allows us to use trousers rather than stockings and britches. It’s just more understandable to the modern eye. 

JG: It may look like the period, but Dougie has modernised the shapes. He’s changed the shapes to give a stronger, hero-like presence to the men. It’s really clean and strong and sexy.

And what about the women?

George Sayer, associate costume designer: We always kept true to the Empire waistline that was popular in the Regency period, but we softened the front on a lot of the characters. During that period, the dresses would have gathered around the front, but we shifted that around to the back. It meant that they had a better silhouette.

Penelope goes on quite a journey this season – personally and sartorially. Could you discuss her fashion glow-up?

JG: We were drawn to a 1950s Marilyn Monroe shape, which suits her body and suits the character. This is one place where we veer from the period so that we could help tell the story visually.

GS: There was a painterly look we were going for with her.

JG: She had been wearing those citrus colours because her mother was forcing those colours on her. If you look at what she was wearing before, her earlier yellow dresses made her look like a young girl. They weren’t very attractive. Now, she’s got the power and the independence to do what she wants. That first dress that she chose was green and black because it’s a complete opposite of whatever she had worn in the past. But for us, on a practical level, we then had to tone her colours down to neutralise and soften them, because she’s in practically every scene of every episode – it would be distracting to look at a strong colour palette on her.

GS: After that emerald green dress, we see her in a much softer colour immediately after. It was as though that first time she presented herself in a new way was too extreme – it kind of goes wrong for her. So afterwards, she’s really reining it in.

Colin goes on a similar journey – he has a very different look this season.

JG: We’re not supposed to be calling him this, but we called him the Marlboro Man this season. 

DH: What I wanted to show was that he’s an insatiable traveller. That’s his passion. He left at the end of season two and came back in season three after what we guessed was around six months of travelling. I wanted him to pick up things from around the world and bring that into his costume. You’ll see that in some of his waistcoats and in the cut of his clothes. Then there’s the fact that he’s actually got a belt, which is very wrong for the period, but it gives him a contemporary feel.

JG: This is where historians start saying How could you do that? We do things like adding a belt so it looks more comfortable. And he actually is wearing trousers made from denim. But most people would never know. We use a lot of modern fabrics. Because if we didn’t, it would look like a historical drama and that’s not what this show is.

Eloise has also matured this season.

GS: She’s growing into a woman – and a strong one.

JG: She’s matured. We’ve matured her clothes slightly. And you may notice there are some times when Cressida, Penelope and Eloise are all in the same colour world. That was to allow them to be on the same playing field. We didn’t want to give away any Easter eggs as to who was going where and what was going to happen. 

I’ve seen people comparing her looks to Audrey Hepburn?

GS: Audrey Hepburn was an influence in several of the costumes. Sometimes that also crossed over into Francesca. There’s an elegance about her, so we did look at Audrey Hepburn as a reference. But it wasn’t necessarily just for Eloise.

People are desperately looking for Easter eggs and clues in the costumes. Does that play into your work at all?

JG: I won’t say that we don’t think about it. But there are some things that happen naturally. It’s not always as deep as people think it is. If we thought about it that much, everything would have a hidden meaning. So we like to keep Easter eggs as subtle things. I’ll tell you what, we put in some really blatant Easter eggs that no one has mentioned. No one has said a word! But if there’s a piece of dust on someone’s sleeve, people are right on it!

Bridgerton season three (part one) is now streaming on Netflix.

Images: Netflix