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White Lotus is the new black How fashion fell in love with prestige TV
The Observer
|April 06, 2025
As the must-watch comedy-drama draws to its season finale, Lauren Cochrane charts the ever-closer ties between brands and costume departments
The third season of The White Lotus finishes tomorrow, marking the end of group chats and column inches devoted to the Thai hotel and its super-rich guests.
While some of this chatter has been dedicated to theories of who kills who in the finale, or the alleged fallout between creator Mike White and composer Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, a lot is focused on something else the fashion.
Some of this season's most popular items include the Tombolo crocodile-printed shirt worn by Lochlan, the younger Ratliff brother, the Zimmermann printed halterneck dress worn by his sister, Piper, and the Hunza G green bikini worn by Chloe, the French-Canadian ex-model living on the island. All of these have sold out online.
Designers know very well that the TV show which boasted a new high of 4.8 million viewers in the US for its seventh episode can work as a platform to market their clothing. Simon Porte Jacquemus contacted costume designer Alex Bovaird on Instagram with a request to collaborate before the latest series began filming a reversal of the typical process, where a costume designer will contact a brand to borrow clothes.
The result is two custom looks for Chloe, including a pink swimsuit and cover-up with brimmed hat for her to welcome guests on her partner's superyacht in episode four. Bovaird says this is the first time that a designer as renowned as Jacquemus has contacted her. "White Lotus fills this specific niche of being quite cool," says Bovaird. "People want to be involved with it."
Bovaird has been the costume designer since the series began. She requests items to borrow from brands but also finds them in "a mix of flea markets, showrooms, charity shops, [and] we make some stuff. The unitard that Nadya [the partner of Aleksi] wears in the latest episode came from a market in Essex. There are bags from Hermès - and other things that cost £5.99, like that unitard."
This story is from the April 06, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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