It’s an odd question, but it’s one a costume designer might be faced with: How do you get dressed after a tragedy? Before researching a story’s time and place, Malgosia Turzanska first considers her emotional response to the material. “If that doesn’t jive, then you’re just putting clothes on people, and that’s not enough,” she says.
Her latest project is Lulu Wang’s “Expats,” starring and executive produced by Nicole Kidman. The Prime Video limited series explores how a child’s disappearance impacts a group of expatriates living in Hong Kong in 2014. Here, Turzanska discusses the three women at the heart of the story: Margaret (Kidman), Hilary (Sarayu Blue), and Mercy (Ji-young Yoo).
Margaret wears a beautiful green dress on Episode 1—first at a party, then in a noodle bar, then on a dark, deserted street. What conversations did you have about this look?
Nicole was very open and very collaborative. It was wonderful. She joined in our conversations and was really open to ideas. Margaret is at a stage of her life when she’s so desperate and sad, yet she decides to go forward with this party for her spouse, Clarke [Brian Tee]. So she’s trying to go against what she probably is feeling day to day, and this hopeful, defiant green that was so vibrant and beautiful seemed like the perfect thing. From conversations with Lulu and Anna Franquesa-Solano, our cinematographer, we knew we wanted to see a lot of her back.
Throughout the series, you see a lot of people’s necks, backs, and shoulders, so it was important that this dress was backless; so we found this gorgeous Monse dress and chopped the back off. It did have this knot on the front. In my initial emotional response, I felt a lot of twisted, knotted things, as if Margaret was constantly wringing her hands. Here, the dress was doing that for her so that she could be present for Clarke. Then, the shit hits the fan.
Someone asks Hilary at the party, “Did you come from work?”
The key line there was, “I didn’t know what the vibe was gonna be.” Hilary has a tendency to announce her presence with outfits. Here, she wanted to make sure she wasn’t overstepping and didn’t know if it would feel more funereal or more birthday-like; she opted for this jumpsuit that was a little bit neither here nor there.
Our fittings were one of my favorite moments of the whole show because Sarayu was willing to try absolutely anything. We went through a range of garments that were way out there and didn’t make it, but we tried them on. There were a lot of things we had to figure out how to even put on because it didn’t make sense when you were looking at the garment on a hanger, what goes where—what is up, what is down. This one was very simple: still in her color scheme, very understated, but with her gigantic, killer heels and jewelry. She does have this control aspect to her presentation. We called it “aggressive neutral.”
Hilary is wearing sweats when her mother visits on Episode 4, and she lies about the fact that she’s been asleep. Then they get stuck in the apartment building’s elevator. Was it fun to explore that combative relationship?
100%. I’m so glad you brought it up because it was sweats, and you don’t see her [wearing them] elsewhere except for when she’s in her mom’s house in L.A. You don’t see her wearing things that are comfortable, like everyone wears. You see her in cashmere, satin PJs—but [these are] kind of regular sweats—still within her color range. The funny thing about it was we knew she had five minutes to get dressed, and rather than putting on a suit quickly or a dress, she does, in defiance, go to this teenage look.
Sarayu Blue on “Expats” Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Prime Video
Circling back to Margaret, you see her before her son, Gus, disappears on Episode 2, wearing a floral dress. You don’t see her wearing anything like that after he goes missing. I’d love to talk about this before and after—how Margaret channels her grief and defiance through what she wears, and how she doesn’t want to be put in this box of being a housewife.
I love that trait about her character because it makes her so much more complex. When we see all the women at the yacht party, there are a lot of florals, pastels, and color, and she is one of them. Before all the bad things happen, she already is feeling [out of sorts]. There’s the line, ‘Oh, we might as well be in Connecticut,’ or something like that. Gradually, as we see her later, there are still some dresses, but there are more utilitarian shapes. There’s quite a bit of indigo-dyed denim going back to the practical side—because she was a landscape designer—and more worky, more earthy textures and tones.
In terms of grief, it was [all about] the twisty shapes. The way I was looking at it was as if an umbilical cord was still attached to her. There are a lot of ties and knots on her side, [as if] there’s this floating Gus attached to her at all times. This is a very on-the-nose descriptive, but I think it’s subtle enough in the actual costumes. I was looking at images of scars after heart surgery, since she has had her heart torn out, essentially, by this tragedy. So there’s a lot of things that are cut [down her chest].
In the conversation she has with Hilary and Mercy, there’s a faux-leather trim on her dress in the middle, and it’s a little healed, but it’s still very present. These three main things guided me shapewise, and it wasn’t doing the acting for [Kidman]. It wasn’t overly full of grief. But it was there, and I felt it was present.
When Hilary flies from Hong Kong to L.A., she looks so put together. Can you talk about her airport attire?
We know Hilary is traveling because her dad is very sick; she’s preparing to see him maybe for the last time. This is a moment when she is the most armored, because she is not only going to see her mom, but she also has a lot of unfinished business with her dad. I put her in white, almost as if she were going into mourning already; but it is essentially armor. Once we’re in L.A., the two times we see her in the hospital, she does wear a knit that looks almost like chain mail. There are bits of that armor because she’s preparing for battle, and we don’t know if she’s going to manage it. The key at the beginning of that travel sequence was armoring up, trying to calm down the emotion and not let anything out.
Mercy, in particular, feels like a real person. How did you build that character through costume?
That was mainly thanks to our all-female writing room: All the characters were so layered and deep. Mercy, specifically, is a patchwork of things because she’s from an immigrant family in the U.S., then an immigrant in Hong Kong, or an expat. So she’s grappling with questions of what is the difference and who is who. She’s always feeling out of place; she went to a phenomenal school, but she’s from a poor home. In Hong Kong, she’s surrounded by these incredibly rich “friends.” She has a few pieces that were maybe left in her bedroom by someone from a higher-price shelf, but she buys a lot of stuff from chain stores. Then maybe she cuts the sleeves off or crops a T-shirt a little shorter. There’s a lot of adjusting clothing to make it her own.
You mentioned the writing and how everything is fully formed. On Episode 5, we meet many people who have been on the periphery or whom we haven’t met before, and we learn about them quickly. Part of that is thanks to the costumes. You were also dealing with a lot of rain. What were the challenges of working on this episode, which is in the show’s world, but a different version of it?
Episode 5 is absolutely hands-down my favorite episode. It’s kind of the reason why most of us did the show because it’s twisting the subject matter and showing it in a different context and from a different angle. I’m so grateful it exists. It was thrilling to be a part of.
It was controlled rain, so mostly, it [was about] having multiples, especially if we’re starting dry and then ending up in the rain. But Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla) was wearing a top that we fell in love with; it was a thrift store top, and we couldn’t find a multiple. It was a tank top with tiny rhinestones on the neckline. We ended up cutting it in half and doing two fronts of the original one and then adding two fake backs that we hand-painted to match. We at least had two, and that was all we had for her. There was a lot of blow drying and ironing quickly in the background when we needed to switch the two.
Then after she arrives home, she takes off her outer layer, and that was the moment we had stitched the two fronts back together. That one was not how it should be done because there should have been multiples, but the top was just so good that we went with it. Other than that, it’s having multiples and then also using ultra wet, which is the fake wet thing, [so that] at least the actor is not chilly all the time. It just looks wetter than it is. But here, [it was] raining for real, so they were truly all wet.
What advice would you give to an actor who’s working with a costume designer for the first time?
I love it when an actor has thoughts about the character, because then it’s not all me, the director, and the writer; it’s the chemistry between all of us. If there is something specific that pertains to the shoes or the movement, or you think you should be a little hunched or whatever it is, do bring it up. But don’t lock yourself in before we start trying things on; be curious to see what things look like. Don’t think about how attractive you look, because it not about you. “Pretty” has nothing to do with what we do, unless that’s the character. Let’s explore who this person is together and not worry about the attractiveness level—at least not yet.
This story originally appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of Backstage Magazine.
Sketches courtesy Malgosia Turzanska