Netflix's 'The Perfect Couple' tells the story of a murder on the beach in Nantucket. Starring Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson, Dakota Fanning, and Meghann Fahy and directed by Susanne Bier. Variety's 'Behind the Seams' breaks down looks from the most popular film and TV shows.
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00:00My name is Signe Seilund. I'm the costume designer on The Perfect Couple.
00:04I'm going to take you through some of the looks of the show.
00:14The show takes place in a very rich, waspy part of America, Nantucket.
00:21So, Greer is a writer. She married into a family with old money.
00:27She's kind of adapting into this world.
00:29I wanted her to be dreamy and timeless.
00:32We love you. We love you.
00:35Most of the time, she wears light colours and blue.
00:39So, it's all the colours of the sea. It's all the colours of being close to the beach.
00:45Silky, white, cream.
00:48Colours and fabrics that are pretty hard to keep pristine.
00:51But if you are that sort of woman, you can do it.
00:55You have people to wash for you. You have people to iron for you.
00:58You have people to take care of everything for you.
01:04So, the scene in the garden where Greer and Tag are being interviewed by a journalist...
01:10We have Greer in a white suit.
01:13It's a Lafayette 148 and a silky blouse underneath.
01:18It's kind of the professional Greer.
01:20Also, the day we were shooting, the sun was so bright and we had to do it outside in the sun.
01:25She's wearing sunglasses that happen to be some that I bought for myself...
01:31on a travel to Rome with my daughter.
01:33Young girls, they want to go vintage shopping. Thank God. It's great.
01:36You never know. It could be a really expensive pair of sunglasses...
01:41or it could be a vintage pair of sunglasses that didn't have any branding...
01:46but they just worked for the scene.
01:48If you want to show wealth, I think you should do it in a quite understated way.
01:54So, I never really want to use a lot of big logos or branding.
01:59I really want to keep it very, very simple.
02:03And Tag is wearing, always, those blue and cream colours.
02:09He even wears sort of primsouls shoes.
02:12He doesn't even wear a very fancy, expensive shoe.
02:15It's his house. He's old money. He does whatever he wants.
02:20It's quite cool, actually, that he doesn't really care...
02:23which, I think, makes him quite sexy.
02:29At the book launch, she wears that Fuchsia dress...
02:32that kind of sits quite tight and gives her strength.
02:36So, I choose Roland Mouret, which has kind of a really interesting shoulder thing going on.
02:42When she was leaving the house, I gave her a little stronger colours...
02:46and that's the only time in the show that she wears something that is not...
02:51either blue, cream or very sheer.
02:53So, it's a very strong colour. It's her show. It's her scene.
02:57She needs to feel very strong that day.
03:03When she was home, I wanted her to be more relaxed and soft.
03:08There's a scene in the kitchen with Amelia. It's a breakfast scene.
03:11That's actually a Ralph Lauren blouse she's wearing there.
03:14And she's wearing a pair of pants from Cezanne.
03:17And they're quite like an old-fashioned sailor pants with buttons here.
03:22So, it's kind of that maritime, that nautical look that I wanted to get into the show.
03:27So, she's also wearing that sort of things all the time.
03:35Dakota Fanning plays the character called Abby.
03:38We built her basically a pregnant body that she could wear under all her dresses.
03:44I wanted her to look kind of slightly...
03:48like she's very floral all the time.
03:51Sort of a bohemian, floral, a little bit annoying.
03:56A little bit too many ruffles and too many...
04:00She's quite feminine, but almost in a little bit of an aggressive, annoying way.
04:07And to create that character together with Dakota was just so much fun.
04:12I'm Abby. So happy we could rearrange our plans for the fourth to be here.
04:17She sort of really wants Greer to like her.
04:20And she might even want to be Greer at some point.
04:24Not that she has the same outfit as Greer.
04:27Abby really wants to be accepted in this family.
04:35The character that Megan Fahy plays is called Merit.
04:39It's a real friendship between her and Amelia.
04:42They're best friends from childhood, unlike the world that we are in...
04:46where a lot of relationships are kind of controlled.
04:51She is a blogger. She has a lot of followers on her Instagram.
04:56We are not quite sure what her Instagram is about.
05:00But obviously a lot of people are looking at her style.
05:04The first time we see Merit, when she arrives to the house...
05:08she steps out of a taxi wearing a purple tracksuit almost...
05:13and a very cropped top.
05:15She's so free and so relaxed.
05:18I don't think that Greer is very happy about that.
05:22At the rehearsal dinner, she's wearing a dress that is almost like seaweed.
05:26It's a misogynist dress. That was quite tricky to find.
05:30I needed to find a dress that could work in the water.
05:34There's a point where she goes into the water.
05:36You couldn't just take your dress off. Then you would be sort of naked.
05:41But I needed to find something that would look beautiful when it got into the water.
05:47So that was a quite tricky thing to find.
05:49One day I was in the Missoni shop in New York...
05:53and suddenly there was this dress, which was almost not a dress.
05:57It was just like seaweed. I call it the seaweed dress.
06:03So I bought one. I took it home, put it in the bathtub...
06:08to see how it would react when it came into water.
06:11So I was kind of testing what the fabric would do in my own bathtub.
06:16Further on, she wears dresses that are quite revealing.
06:21There's a flashback to an engagement party...
06:23where she wears a black Kaltgeier dress with cutouts.
06:27It's quite sexy and I think she can pull it off, but not many can.
06:32There's another time she wears a yellow, also a Kaltgeier dress...
06:36which is just like, again, she pulls it off. It's just great on her.
06:45Emilia, who is sort of the outcast of this family...
06:51she comes from the real world. She has a normal relationship to her parents.
06:56She doesn't care about clothes. She's very natural.
07:00She's wearing jeans and T-shirts...
07:03which also can be quite intimidating in a family who is so uptight.
07:08Emilia, didn't I give you a family robe to wear?
07:12Yeah, you did.
07:13There's a scene where Emilia wears a little PJ set, like shorts and a little shirt.
07:19She has a very relaxed relationship to her body.
07:23She wakes up in the night and goes down the stairs and she meets Greer on the way.
07:28Obviously, I needed to find a colour and a fabric that would lit up at night...
07:33because it was a night shoot.
07:34And also, I wanted it, again, to be...
07:38that she was wearing almost too little clothes when she meets Greer.
07:42It's like meeting your mother-in-law in the middle of the night...
07:45in a house where you've only been a few times.
07:49It adds to the whole suspense of the show.
07:54Shit.
07:56You scared me.
07:58I heard someone walking around. Are you all right?
08:00At the rehearsal dinner, she wears a red tulle dress.
08:04That's a Dolce & Gabbana dress.
08:06I had quite a bit of a hard time figuring out exactly how that dress should look.
08:12I wanted Emilia to wear a dress that she picked up herself.
08:19It could have been a vintage dress.
08:21It almost has a sort of a classic...
08:24that Marion Monroe could have worn.
08:27I found it in New York. I went into the Dolce & Gabbana...
08:30and there was a glass cupboard where it was hanging inside the cupboard.
08:36And it was just lit up as if it was just on display.
08:41Like it was in a museum.
08:44I was just looking at that dress constantly...
08:46and looking at all the other beautiful things in Dolce & Gabbana.
08:50And then I went out and afterwards my friend said to me...
08:54why can't we just buy it?
08:56And then we went back and said, hey, is it for sale?
08:59And obviously it was for sale. They just put it in there.
09:02And then I was like, okay, this is the dress. This is absolutely the dress.
09:06No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No more alcohol.
09:09Benji, no.
09:10You have some. You have some.
09:12Yum, yum, yum.
09:13Emilia stays as she is. She does not change a lot.
09:18I know that in the very end of the show she wears a Carolina Herrera dress.
09:23It's a blue floral print, but it's still something that she would pick up.
09:28She wears it actually to Greer's book party.
09:31Maybe, I don't know where she got it from, but it looks nice.