A whodunit thriller is hardly the kind of TV series one expects memorable costuming from. But in Apple TV’s Lady in the Lake, directed by Alma Har’el, an immersive wardrobe designed by Shiona Turini felt integral to the tale of two women unfolding onscreen. It’s hard to imagine a world in which the story exists without it.
Based on the novel by Laura Lippman, the period drama trails characters Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman), a Jewish housewife and aspiring journalist who leaves her husband at the start of the series, and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram), a Black mother of two juggling jobs as a barkeep and department-store model. Their lives cross when Maddie spots Cleo modeling a dress in a store window and purchases it off her body. It’s an exchange that sets the tone for the relationship between the two characters early on.
“[Maddie] is not seeing Cleo at all,” Turini tells Vogue. “She is not seeing her as a human being. She literally is just looking at her as an object and a store mannequin, and that theme we continued through her dressing.”
Taking on the project on the heels of costuming Issa Rae’s Insecure, Turini says she’d just written “costume designing a ’60s period piece” as a goal in her journal on New Year’s Eve when Har’el approached her about Lady in the Lake by way of an Instagram DM. Relocating to Maryland to film, Turini spent more than eight months breaking down 1960s style and the birth of futurism through the lens of Maddie and Cleo. (She later put her research to use for a second time to outfit Beyoncé’s also very futuristic Renaissance tour, in what Turini calls a “full circle” moment.)
For Lady in the Lake, a show loosely inspired by the real 1969 deaths of Esther Lebowitz and Shirley Parker, the costumer and stylist took an approach much more rooted in realism. “In the show, all those styles—especially in Maddie’s world—were new to women, and their idea of futuristic fashion was very specific,” she says.
For Turini and Har’el, it wasn’t enough to call it a day at shift dresses and raised hemlines nor to solely source every era-relevant magazine for costume reference (though for Turini the annual Ebony Fashion Fair certainly was a starting point). “I wanted to know what someone in Baltimore would be wearing,” Turini says. “They could be reading a fashion magazine, but ultimately it’s a little bit more rooted in reality.” For a more accurate picture of what Maddie and Cleo would have looked like, Turini went out into the community, looking at images of old nightclubs, asking questions about Baltimore’s betting system (a key plotline), and finding out what people wore to horse races.
Turini also found inspiration from being surrounded by people on set with ties to the city: Ingram was raised in Baltimore, while Portman’s family immigrated to the area in the 1800s. “My crew was primarily from Baltimore, which I loved,” Turini said. “And because they were born and raised Baltimoreans—and for the most part, my entire department was Black—they would bring in photos of their grandfather or their uncle, and that also found a place on our mood boards a lot.”
A shared interest with Har’el beyond fashion and film piqued Turini’s interest in joining the project. “The interesting thing about Alma is her background in music,” Turini says. “I love music videos. [They’re] why I wanted to work in styling, and because her background was in music videos, I knew [the show] would have some element that spoke to me in that way, and it did.”
Music especially played a role in outfitting Cleo, who had aspirations as a performer. “I love Cleo’s costume when she’s in the Christmas parade,” Turini says. “It just felt so [reminiscent of] the Supremes. I always have Diana Ross on every single board on every single job.” A Supremes-era Diana Ross also inspired the jewel-collar dress Cleo wears to work at Pharaoh’s (based on a real city nightclub); Turini enlisted local seamstresses to create the piece.
Prior to filming, the costume designer wove music into her initial presentation for Har’el, shaping each page around a different lyric from Nina Simone’s “Baltimore.” The singer would come up again, according to Turini, as inspiration for the other women who worked at Pharaoh’s alongside Cleo.
For much of the show, viewers are left to wonder how Cleo and Maddie’s paths will cross again following their initial meeting at the department store. Though it’s hard to anticipate the plot’s twists and turns, Turini’s costuming has a lot to say about who Cleo and Maddie are—both individually and in contrast to one another. One starting point, she says, was color. “I work a lot in color, which I feel like people saw in Insecure, but [Alma is] super specific with color palette,” Turini says. “We had a color chart of [their] clothing and wanted their color choices to almost be color-wheel opposites of each other.” For example, Turini made a point of keeping Maddie’s character mostly in solids while giving Cleo the freedom to explore prints.
In Maddie’s wardrobe choices, Turini says she imagined the character often indulging in shopping and perusing magazines to pacify feelings of unfulfillment in her life and marriage or to keep up her appearance for benefits or events. That is, of course, until her strict and sterile—albeit stylish—wardrobe “unravels at the seams” when she moves out on her own.
Turini’s approach to Cleo, of course, was different. “Cleo’s [wardrobe] felt more authentic, relaxed, and cool and influenced by music and what was happening at that time,” she says. Yet she and Har’el wanted Cleo’s costumes to feel vintage or like something she may have already had. For this reason, the character’s outfits live somewhere between the ’50s and ’60s eras, with the blue coat Cleo wears throughout the series being one of the ’50s garments the character may have thrifted or had and kept into the next decade. “[Alma] wanted it to feel like it had history and was going to be a part of her story,” Turini says. “She just wouldn’t have new things like Maddie’s character would have, so she might buy things secondhand. She’s making a lot of her clothes but is still incredibly stylish, as Black women were at that time.”
But of course, it feels natural that Turini—with her background in editorial and fashion PR—would sprinkle designer cameos throughout the show. A notable moment comes in the form of a flashback, which sees a younger Maddie trade pencil-skirt suits for a gold sequined jumpsuit created in collaboration with Valentino’s then creative director, Pierpaolo Piccioli, and inspired by the 1952 film Million Dollar Mermaid. “The lead actress was a big movie star, and Maddie’s character dresses up as her for a costume party, which was amazing,” Turini says.