Any time I think about the two couples at the center of Netflix’s second season of Beef, I think about how not just “the other half lives” but also “how the other half shops.” It might be fair to think about how society views Josh and Lindsay versus Austin and Ashley since they are at such different moments in their lives as individuals as well as respective pairs. So much came into play for the sophomore season of this streaming juggernaut, and leading the charge of this investigative wardrobe reporting is costume designer Olga Mill.
Asking a costume designer how they incorporate the theme of income inequality might not seem like an obvious jumping off point, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Would Lindsay consider everything Ashley is wearing as utterly beneath her? Do Austin and Ashley care less about where they buy their clothes because they are so focused on designating money towards life’s more essential items? Mill wanted to consider everything.
“For me, I love clothes and figuring out how to manipulate the audience into make assumptions about the characters based on that,” she admits. “The thematic throughlines are some of the juiciest things we can talk about with this show–what is the script trying to say. I find my conversations, especially with Sunny [Lee Sung Jin], really want to align with everybody’s point of view and what we are saying about class and relationships. It feels more philosophical to start that way rather than combing through a closet of clothes, but for a show like this, I wanted to go really deep. After doing that work, I find it’s easier to go out and find the right clothing, because there’s a deeper foundation.”
Depending on where you come from or even your history with “how you shop,” it can greatly determine how much time you think about the clothes in your closet.
“In general, clothing is interesting on any project, because it ties in so much of our values of money,” Mill says. “How we want to present ourselves, what our priorities are, and how comfortable we are moving through social spaces, especially on this show. It’s actively exploring all of that. Costumes are always kind of speaking to that line of thinking.”
Every single outfit Carey Mulligan’s Lindsay wears is worth talking about. As an interior designer, one has to wonder how much she is projecting to the world about her own personal taste, but I adore that she wears so many patterns and so many puffy-shouldered sleeves. When she meets Youn Yuh-jung’ Chairwoman Park, she wears a handsome white and blue pantsuit with a slender lapel and almost scalloped edges. Lindsay has never met a wide pant that she didn’t love, but in her alone time, she scrolls social media and scours the web for old stories about herself. Mill and I could’ve spoken about Lindsay for the entire interview.
“This is the fifth project that Grace Yun and I have worked on together so we talked about it a lot, and we talked a lot with Carey too,” she says. “I think Lindsay’s biggest fear in life is being called basic, you know? At the same time, she’s very able to blend into the country club world, so that’s where the puffy sleeve, pastoral, Montecito Marie Antoinette in her shepherd’s garden vibe via DÔEN comes from. But she always wants to very much be like, ‘Don’t get it twisted…my taste is better.’ Lindsay is totally someone who wants to be defined by her “good taste, but it’s also stifling her. Grace and I really wanted her to be very overwhelmed by patterns. Grace brought in this photographer, Tina Barney, that had some images of really patterned pieces of furniture with people in really patterned clothing in the same room. We loved how those two were speaking to each other in a way that was slightly grotesque but fascinating at the same time. Ashley and Austin feel very lived in, because things would be thrifted. With Josh and Lindsay, thought, there’s this feeling of the tag just being ripped off.”
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Charles Melton brings such a gravitational force of openness to his portrayal of Austin. The first time his character meets Lindsay at her home, his outfit piqued my interest. He is wearing a button-up shirt with a small, detailed floral pattern, but his shorts are high on the thigh and his socks are pulled up high in his sandals. Since Austin is very physical in his job, it’s clear that he would wear more relaxing duds, and I can’t imagine how many pairs of shorts are packed in his dresser drawers. Mill points to a charming adaptability as her north star for this naive trainer.
“There is a fluidity to his costuming, because of all of the things that he is going to do in a day,” Mill says. “There’s a looseness to him being able to throw on a sweatshirt before he works out and then he can go to the gym and then he can stop by his friend’s barbeque. And then go to the beach. I wanted him to feel like his day can be a jumble of things rather than be strict in terms of, ‘I’m going to work today.’ He can stay in the same pieces throughout the day. For that first scene between him and Carey, I think I found that shirt at a thrift store in Los Angeles. I love working with shoppers, because the conversations with them in the morning is where you’ll find the character. I was having dinner with my husband and some folks that he works with, and one of the younger guys was wearing this kind of button-up shirt that felt very Austin to me. That’s how I connected the dots in it. I don’t want to say there is a casualness to him, but there’s something about him that can go from place to place.”
Cailey Spaeney’s Ashely realizes that she wants a lot very early on in the season, but she just needs to find the means to attain all of it. As a daughter, she feels neglected by her father and his new family, and she might be grasping at the people in her life for a little guidance. Is her style totally similar to her partner’s? When she gets a promotion at the club, how pressured is she to find new clothes to make sure she fits in? By the end of the season, does she even realize that she is visually absorbing from Lindsay?
“We talked about how Ashley as being somebody who’s not very grounded, so when she’s really obsessing over Eunice, she starts dressing like her a little bit,” she says. “Maybe she will wear a silkier top or try to look more professional. As he gets closer to Lindsay, thought, she very much gets a matching travel outfit with a nice jewelry set. By the time they’re in Korea, she’s wearing that paisley, puffy-sleeve dress which is very Lindsay. Originally, we thought we were being too on-the-nose, but we took a swing and I am so glad that we did. Ashley is going to have the Zara/ASOS version of the Montecito woman.
As we were sort of figuring her out–and this is going to sound like a zoomed-out, philosophical thought–I thought about how every generation and every person goes through this cycle of when you’re young, you think you’re so unique. You think you are unlike anybody else. At the same time, you think that the generation above you doesn’t know shit, and you don’t think you care about the same things. There’s something very sad about that–even when it comes to clothes. You think the generation before you wears things that are so dorky and gross, but trends are cyclical. That meat grinder has initially this depressing elements where you’re thinking, ‘Oh, I am like everybody else…and maybe my generation is falling into the same traps that the ones before me came in. Those experiences then get interwoven with what people experienced hundreds of years ago and will continue to. By the end of the season, Ashley and Austin are wearing very much what echoes Josh and Lindsay.”
There are so many things from this season that I want to take for myself. Most notably, Josh wears a grey cat sweater that will make every cat dad jealous. At the end of the season, I want to nab Ashley’s yellow-and-white striped pajamas, but my favorite item is a yellow button-up shirt that Austin wears when he eats with Eunice and Ashley. Something about it feels comforting.
“I would take Lindsay’s green pajamas,” Mill says, after a moment. “It has this wide leg set around the house, and it feels like the opposite of athleisure–post-bath/martini energy.”
Beef is streaming now on Netflix.
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