The woman behind the Melissa hat speaks! Costume designer Marie Schley reveals that Hilary Swank’s hat was in the Yellowjackets script.
Samantha Hanratty wasn’t the only one who found it surreal to be reshooting the pilot in Yellowjackets “Full Circle” Season 3 finale. Returning after a season hiatus, costume designer Marie Schley also was excited about the sweet (no) return.
“It was really exciting to flesh out all the things we’d established or come up with in the pilot,” Schley says.
However, before the Yellowjackets team reached that devastating finale, Schley says they wanted to start off Season 3 with a bang, completely different from the winter of Season 2.
“It’s interesting: We always back our way into the show a little bit where we were, you know, because the pilot established the end of this three-season cycle.”
In Season 3 Episode 1, showrunners, Bart Nickerson, Ashley Lyle, and Jonathan Lisco wanted to set the tone for “witchy season” with capes reminiscent of the Antler Queen’s, made from rabbit skins, and hoods inspired by the vinyl of the airplane seats.
“It was a little tricky because we have to make sure they look like vinyl and not like bad imitation leather. But I worked with our production designer, Margot Ready, and we made sure some of the seats from the airplane were on the set. You could see the inside of the vinyl. We definitely try to keep it based in reality, but there’s a lot of fun fantasy to push the envelope a little bit.”
A Tale of Two Hats
Never has a hat been so controversial on a television show, but Adult Melissa (Hilary Swank) showing up in Episode 6 with a baseball cap caused a minor meltdown on social media. Why was Melissa still wearing that hat?
“It was actually written into the script, so it’s supposed to be the tie-in between two actors of different generations playing the same character. We made Adult Melissa’s hat have her kid’s softball team’s logo, just to tie it into the suburban life she’s leading now and her family life. There are people who feel comfortable always wearing certain things. And, you know, it’s just something that we established in the pilot; it’s always been a challenge to create a link between the adult and the young, and so we did it in a very simple way, which is to link pieces of clothing, like the leather motorcycle jacket for Natalie. There are a lot of things like that.”
And while that hat got social media into a frenzy, another hat stirred some real fear into fans: the reimagined baseball cap Shauna wears during the hunt in the finale, featuring two eyes on top and the brim turned down at the neck.
“That was one of the new masks we created for this season. First of all, it’s Coach’s [Ben] hat she’s taken over. So it has sort of, you know, a sinister element where they’ve killed this person and eaten him. In my original mood board for the pilot, there was one image of a catcher’s mask that reminded me of a baseball cap. A lot of those masks they use for the ceremony in the wilderness are made from found objects like sleeves of sweaters, or hoods of sweatshirts and pantyhose. We call that one ‘crotch face.'”
Showing How Feral the Girls are Through Clothing
Of course, this season we meet frog scientists who stumble upon the group of girls shortly after the death of Coach Ben (Steven Krueger). Schley says not only did she have to consider the fashion, including Patagonia, but also how dirty the girls’ clothes would look compared to the scientists.
“It was a great opportunity for me to bring in clean clothes to really show the juxtaposition of the raggedness of the girls versus the clothes the scientists bring and become new assets to the community. I think at some point, Misty takes Hannah’s boots, which helped us because our actor, her Keds were hurting her feet so badly. But I mean, you’re not going to leave the captive with a good pair of hiking boots, right?”
That sounds like something Shauna would say! Speaking of the Antler Queen, Schley says one of the challenges of Sophie Nélisse’s finale outfit reveal was figuring out how to dress her on camera.
“We had to figure out how to put the hair on as part of the ceremony, and we tied it to little bones that they could put into holes. Again, a lot of that stuff is found objects. The veil of the Antler Queen is a ’90s crocheted dress. And then there’s almost a nun’s wimple underneath that, which had been designed to obscure the face in the pilot. But it’s made from a sweater with the neck hole around her eyes. I’ve recreated that ’90s dress and put it on Lottie for all of her cave rituals and stuff.”
For the original pilot, the masks were made because no one knew who was going to be at the feast. Now, Schley says the masks are both ritualistic while also having functional properties.
“All these characters are constantly hiding their true identities, even in the adult timeline. The masks ended up being a major theme.”
Yellowjackets Season 3 is streaming on Paramount+.
