To source items for the costumes in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, costume designers Lyn Elizabeth Paolo and Laura Frecon visited museums, silk mills and jewelry houses. They went to Spain, Italy, England and the US. They even custom-made hundreds of 1760s-accurate underpinnings in order to outfit the cast in the new series, which follows the early romance of Queen Charlotte and King George, played in their younger years by India Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest and in their Bridgerton era by Golda Rosheuvel and James Fleet.
While Queen Charlotte and King George are real-life historical figures, the series is fictional. But nearly every aspect of the costume design was rooted in actual history, from the Georgian dress silhouettes to the exact replica crowns fabricated by Italian jeweler Pikkio.
As a result, Paolo and Frecon, along with assistant costume designer Jovana Gospavic and costume supervisor Alex Locke, were nominated for an Emmy in the Outstanding Period Costumes for a Series category. (To complete the look, Nic Collins and Giorgio Galliero were nominated for Outstanding Period and/or Character Hairstyling as well. Check out the rest of Netflix’s nominations here.)
Below, Paolo and Frecon take Tudum on an in-depth journey through the gorgeous costumes of Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.
While the gowns and jewels are what catch your eye on-screen, the quest to transport the Queen Charlotte actors back to the 18th century began with hundreds of custom-made undergarments. The underpinnings for the principal cast were made by skilled English corset-makers — “especially for the corsets that you see on camera where Charlotte or Lady Danbury is being laced up,” Paolo says.
The rest were crafted in Los Angeles and shipped to London. “We ended up making most of the corsets for the background and the tutus and the bum rolls in Torrance, of all places, and had everything shipped over because the amount of volume that we needed to make — there was no way we were going to get it done in England.” Paolo and Frecon made hundreds of corsets, they calculate, in order to give every extra in every crowd scene a period-appropriate silhouette.
Over the corsets were fabrics sourced from New York and all over Europe, including silks from Sudbury, Suffolk, the UK’s historic center of silk weaving; brocades and damasks from France; and plenty of inventory from the London fabric store Joel & Son, which works with the current royal family. The actual amount of fabric Paolo and Frecon used for the series is impossible to tally, Frecon tells Tudum.
“For instance, one of young Charlotte’s gowns, just the taffeta that we used for the over-robe was between 13 and 20 meters per gown,” she says. “That doesn’t include all the lace and organza and everything else.”
After Paolo and Frecon brushed up on their Georgian history, they dug into more modern fashion archives for inspiration, which Frecon described to Netflix as “high fashion meets period style, with a twist.”
Specifically, that meant ’50s Christian Dior and Roger Vivier — the house that made Christian Dior’s shoes and also made young Charlotte’s shoes in the show. The designer Charles James, one of Paolo’s personal favorites, was another ’50s-era inspiration.
As Paolo told Netflix, “Dior was a huge inspiration for us, especially because I think a lot of the Dior New Look actually came from this period, that shape and that silhouette. We were echoing the 1760s and the late 1940s, 1950s, and that Dior New Look is reflected in many of the costumes on the show.”
In keeping with the show’s modern take on aristocratic aesthetics, the designers would kid each other about the show launching a revival of the ’80s New Romantic look, with foppish lads gallivanting about in fancy embroidered waistcoats — “or maybe Harry Styles will wear one of the jackets,” Paolo jokes.
To give you a sense of how important jewelry was to Queen Charlotte, the code name for the production was Jewels. “That was our secret name. And so the Jewels of it all, and the layering jewels on every bodice and in everyone’s hair, became all-consuming,” Paolo says.
In addition to the custom Pikkio pieces, Paolo and Frecon sourced jewelry from the companies Larkspur & Hawk (which created several significant pieces for young Charlotte) and Autore (which created Princess Augusta’s pearl designs), as well as rental-and-sales house Joseff of Hollywood. While some pieces evoke historic royalty — including a replica of Marie Antoinette’s three-strand diamond bracelet, seen briefly on the young Queen Charlotte’s wrist — others evoke Hollywood royalty, including pieces used in the 1938 film Marie Antoinette, starring Norma Shearer.
The most elaborate piece in the series was Queen Charlotte’s wedding tiara. Frecon told Netflix the headpiece was inspired by “historic images of other royals, including Queen Elizabeth II, and this beautiful tiara en tremblant from an Elie Saab runway show. Our incredible milliner, Jen Lewis, and in-house jeweler, Stephen Rogers, teamed up and meticulously, by hand, put together that wedding tiara. We ordered pieces in, we used existing pieces, we shopped pieces, but that was all completely handmade. And many fittings later, we made sure it worked well.”
While Paolo and Frecon looked to their extensive research for ideas, they also had another source of inspiration: Shonda Rhimes herself. Often, the creator would write costume details directly into the script — like Charlotte’s speech about her whalebone corset.
“She wrote that and I howled laughing, reading it,” Paolo tells Tudum. “I was like, ‘OK, Shonda, bring it on.’ The only difference was she had written rubies, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to do red because we’re saving that for Golda’s character, for [the Regency] Queen Charlotte.’ And so we wrote back and said, ‘Would you mind a few sapphires?’ and she said, ‘Of course not.’ ”
The older version of the character wears lots of regal reds and golds, while young Charlotte starts the series with greens and pinks and blues. “Towards the end of Queen Charlotte, her greens get softer, and her oranges turn to peaches, and so the two versions become joined in a way,” Paolo told Netflix.
In contrast, one major aspect of Queen Charlotte’s style refuses to evolve: Even in the Regency scenes, she continues to wear a Georgian-era dress silhouette. “Why did she not change? For us, it was about her love story,” Frecon told Netflix. “This is the style she wore when she met her husband, when he still recognized her. So there was a great sadness surrounding that piece of her costumes.”
Lady Danbury, as played by Arsema Thomas in her younger years and Adjoa Andoh in the Bridgerton era, also shows her character evolution through her color story. “It’s an origin story,” Paolo tells Tudum. “So we know where we need to end up, don’t we?” The designers worked closely with Rhimes to chart the character’s path, with some of their observations about her palette making their way into the script.
“Agatha Danbury, in the beginning, is very much overruled by her husband, Lord Danbury, and tries so hard to please him. And he loves gold,” Frecon told Netflix.
The men of Queen Charlotte also wore their share of ornate, regal costumes. Paolo tells Tudum, “The thing to notice with George is that the only time that his costumes are heavily embroidered and regal are when he has to do something in public — the wedding, the coronation, the balls. But when he’s just himself, everything is simpler. That layer of embroidery was a weight on him, and it represents that weight of the crown.”
And while the women of the cast wore their traditional underpinnings, the men kept it authentic in historically accurate heeled shoes. “Probably most of them have never worn heeled shoes like that and learned to walk in them. And the stockings — we used real stockings,” Frecon says. “It was really great to watch them transform, even see the effect of the cravats and the socks that we used. They all had lace or ruffles. It was great to watch them transform once they put all that on.”
