Photo-illustration: Vulture; Photos: Liam Daniel/Netflix, Laurence Cendrowicz/Netflix
Penelope Featherington is done feeling like a second-class citizen. We meet her as agitated and separated from her best friend as ever at the start of The Bridgerton ChroniclesThe third season of. Even if its proto-Sun The gossip pages continue to thrive under the anonymous moniker Lady Whistledown, Penelope is apparently still at home, unhappy and dreaming of a world where she no longer has to answer to her mother’s authority. She knows what that means, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow: It’s time to take this debutante thing seriously and get married.
Thus begins the metamorphosis of the character’s style, which begins with a visit to his milliner confidant in the first episode. Penelope hopes to find a sensible man who “allows my privacy for obvious reasons” – and she never wants to see a lemon color again. Costume designer John Glasner and hair and makeup artist Erika Okvist worked together to create a “look DNA” for this new Penelope, which, after some design testing and research, resulted in changing the shape of actress Nicola Coughlan with better fitted corsets. It was a simple but extremely effective choice. “They softened the bust line. We see his body,” Glasner says. “She’s not a child anymore. She’s a woman, so we wanted her to look like a woman. Penelope’s corsets are draped in refined shades of green, which become her new signature color as she ditches the warm neons of the beloved Featherington palette. Her makeup is also improved. “We enhanced the sultry cat eyes and pouty lips,” says Okvist. “It was a big change, but it was natural for her.
Penelope’s physical transformation symbolizes a much more dramatic change occurring within her. “She’s now empowered: A person always feels empowered when they feel comfortable in what they’re wearing and it’s a part of them,” Glasner says. “After a while, she realizes that she is quite an elegant woman,” Okvist adds. “She doesn’t want to lie about who she is, she just needs to own this style. She becomes a more mature and self-confident Penelope.
Photo: LIAM DANIEL/NETFLIX
After her mother declares that Penelope will always be there to take care of her, the youngest Featherington realizes that the only way for her to escape her mother’s smothering is to find a husband. (“It is time,“, she addresses the milliner.) “She has to leave this house,” says Okvist. “At that time, the way to do that was to get married and have your own house. Therefore, her brilliance, so to speak, is her badge of war in trying to find a husband.
Using some of the money she saved from her Lady Whistledown column, Penelope suggests exploring a style “like the one they wear in Paris,” a subconscious a nod to the international travel Colin Bridgerton boasts about earlier in the episode. Glaser took the opportunity to elevate Penelope to the heights of fashion: “We moved away from the historical empire silhouette of 1813 and pushed it towards 1820.” He deployed a two-piece corset to give Penelope a hourglass shape, which changed his posture “like Marilyn Monroe from the 1950s,” he says. “A waist and a looser skirt suit her body shape well. Instead of fighting against his body, we improved what was there. Okvist also considered Penelope’s transformation a “Hollywood starlet” moment: “We went for a mermaid. Think of Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth; When we look at them, we know they look great, but we don’t remember exactly why they look great,” she says. “We just remember that they were style icons. Now Penelope wears the clothes and the clothes don’t wear her. We have tried to hide these assets in the past.
Photo: Netflix/LAURENCE CENDROWICZ/NETFLIX
Penelope’s experimentation offered Glaser the opportunity to introduce a new color palette in a spectacular unveiling at Lady Danbury’s ball. “The first dress she wears is dark green with black gloves. It’s a color his mother would never allow him to wear,” he explains. (As expected, her mother calls the dress “melancholy.”) The green was chosen because of The Bridgerton Chroniclesthe color restrictions established for each of the main families; it’s still a Featherington color, just a different variation of it. The copper in the fabric recalls the family’s penchant for orange, while the black gloves represent the complete opposite of anything Penelope has ever worn. (Burgundy was a no-no — it’s for Danbury only.) “We thought in this case the color should still reflect the fact that she’s a Featherington,” Glaser says. “If we put it in blue, the fanatics of the series would have said: Oh my god, it’s Bridgerton blue, that means she’s going… Colors are Easter eggs and can sometimes tell a story, and we don’t want to give anything away about how we use color.
Instead, the costume reflects Penelope’s state of mind. “The base of this dress is mesh, so we thought: It’s like she’s weaving a web.” This element of seduction is reflected in Okvist’s cat eyeshadow for Penelope. “What’s going to trap all these eligible young men?” What will make them watch it? There is a lump, for example, when Penelope has precious stones in the corner of her eyes,” explains Okvist. “Maybe they’ll catch the eye of the person dancing with her, and then he’ll look down and see her kissable lips, and then maybe he’ll want to marry her. She weaves this web.
Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
Despite the head-turning entrance, Penelope’s new look requires an adjustment period for the former wallflower, who still struggles with flirting as well as the world’s opinions. (Her sparkly shoes are only seen by viewers when Cressida Cowper, jealous of the attention to Penelope, cruelly steps on her dress, ripping the train.) “Think of it this way: You’ve been stuck in the same clothes all your life. and now you have money,” says Glaser. “When you look at people on the red carpet who don’t dress up all the time, they usually go a little further than someone who dresses up frequently because it’s not as natural for them. This is Penelope’s first attempt at something new, so it was a little wrong and not quite right. It was too far out of his comfort zone.
Glaser and Okvist toned down the cooler undertones of Penelope’s later looks, including an embroidered light blue floral number worn during the Great Balloon Disaster. “We also reduced its colors so that the audience doesn’t get tired of looking at them,” says Glaser. “It would no longer be a joke, like in the first season with the citrus colors.” This The palette gives Penelope the ability to go incognito as Lady Whistledown while also complementing a feature much harder to change in the 19th century: the color of her hair. Against the softer shades of her clothing, Penelope’s auburn hair is not as visible. “The color you place next to another color will be reflected in it,” notes Okvist. “When she wears a blue and green dress, the opposite colors of red, it calms down the very bright red of the wig. Her skin now feels like velvet butter. His cheekbones rise towards God. There’s nothing left reflecting off a horribly bright yellow dress.
Ultimately, Penelope’s new look is meant to highlight her natural features, without ever distracting her. “Instead of adding elements to his costume, we took elements away,” Glaser explains. “These looks are much more sophisticated and let her true personality shine through.” The clothes, truly, made the woman – Penelope just needed time to figure out who this woman was.