The word vacation arrives in English via the Latin vacare: “to be empty.” You could say the same for the vacuous travelers of The White Lotus, HBO’s steamy hit drama series chronicling the upper-crust exploits of wealthy resortgoers in farflung locales.
There may be an emptiness to the interior lives of the rich pricks and demanding divas checking in and out of the show’s titular hotel — placed so far in Hawaii, Italy and Thailand — but on the outside, it’s a different story.
Enter costume designer Alex Bovaird. Since the show’s first splash in Maui, the Emmy-nominated fashionista has been the driving force behind the signature White Lotus look: flowy tropical prints, designer linens and high-end resortwear signaling the wealth and privilege of its intertwining characters as they stumble into a spiderweb of sexscapades, class politics and murder.
With a resumé boasting big-budget films and TV staples like Nope and True Detective, Bovaird’s eye for character-driven looks has helped define some of the decade’s most enduring pieces of pop culture. That’s why she’ll be honored with an award ceremony during a Fashion in Focus event at this year’s SeriesFest, the Front Range’s annual star-studded slate of premieres, panels and parties celebrating excellence in television.
Ahead of the April 3 event at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver — complete with a White Lotus-inspired runway show — Boulder Weekly caught up with the U.K.-born, Nashville-based Bovaird, 47, on a video call to talk about the craft of costume design and her favorite fits from the latest season.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Hi Alex. Thanks for chatting with me. Where am I catching you?
I’m doing overnights for a feature called Primetime being filmed in New Orleans. It’s almost finished, but we've got three weeks of nights right at the end, so they're just kind of killing us right when we're about to give up anyway [laughs].
Sounds grueling.
It is. People think my job’s really glamorous, and it's not actually. That's why I like talking to journalists, because this is the glamorous part of it, where everyone's like: “Wow, tell us some stories!”
What does your work look like on a day-to-day basis?
When you're the costume designer, you're responsible for every look in the show — every extra, every person with one line, and all the main characters. When I do overnights, it's because the costume designer has to be there if a new look is on camera.
I start by doing a big prep period where I break down the script and gather everything, and I make a database of what I need. Then we quickly start accumulating it and wait for the casting to come in, so we can match our ideas with who they've cast for that character. There's X number of weeks where we're just setting up a big warehouse, and then closer to the shoot, I have meetings with the director, the producers, the cinematographer and the production designer, and try to marry the aesthetics. As we get closer, we start doing the fittings.
On a show like The White Lotus, the fittings are very last-minute because they don't bring everyone to Thailand until right before they work. It all feels very slapdash, and you don't want it to look like that. So you just prepare, prepare, prepare. You want to nail it in the fittings. You only have a few hours. You want to be ready for anything.
What about when you’re on set?
Once it starts shooting, I do a bit of everything. We're still fitting people as they're coming through, still preparing for big scenes and set pieces. I have to be right by camera when there's something new going on for the first time, in case somebody is like, “Actually, we don't want this anymore,” or something's off lighting-wise. Then I have to go and run to the truck and get something else.
Congratulations on your upcoming awards ceremony at SeriesFest, by the way.
Thank you. I can’t wait to come to Denver. I thought it was gonna go down differently. I thought maybe I'd have a break and spend a week in Colorado with my husband. But as it turns out, I’m going to be working, so I'm going to jet in and jet out. But I’m still delighted to come.
You'll have to come back!
It looks like a relaxing place.
It's pretty chill. Not the most fashionable place in the world, though. We have to be ready to go hiking at a moment’s notice.
Wait. Are you wearing The Jesus Lizard t-shirt [from Nope]?
I was wondering if you were going to say anything.
That’s so funny. I'm wearing a Nope sweatshirt! This is almost like my house hoodie. It's like my dressing gown. Daniel [Kaluuya] wears this at the end of the movie, and we had a lot of them because there was a lot of stunts. Daniel wears this, and Keke [Palmer] wears The Jesus Lizard. I love that t-shirt.
Can you tell me more about the look of The White Lotus, specifically in Season 3?
I've sort of coined the phrase “loud luxury,” in contrast to the quiet luxury trend. We always do loud, bold, adventurous. People dress up a little bit for their vacation. In The White Lotus, we harken back a little bit to the ’60s and ’70s, when people dressed up for the plane. It’s a romantic vision of who we want to be on holiday: Dress up for dinner, dress up for the pool, take risks.
Did the locale itself present challenges?
It's extremely hot in Thailand, so we had to keep that in mind. There's a lot of flowy dresses and flowy caftans — linen shirts for the men and flowy linen pants. That was big for us, because the heat will destroy you. Working for 12 hours outside was definitely a challenge, and we had to use fabrics and fits to accommodate that.
Some of my favorite looks this season are on Walton Goggins.
Oh yeah, mine too. He looks so great.
What was the inspiration for dressing that character, and where did you source those sick Hawaiian shirts?
When you first meet [Rick and Chelsea] you’re like, “Who are these two?” It’s almost like they’re from another show. They don't really look like wealthy hotel guests. They look a bit more ragamuffin, like they have been on their travels for a while. The idea with Rick was that he hasn't been in America for ages, so he’s been shopping like a traveler. He's had his shirts for years.
There's a huge bazaar in Bangkok and other big cities in Asia. One has, like, nine floors full of American vintage clothing [laughs]. A lot of it's very cool: denim and band t-shirts, weird stuff that wasn't really appropriate for anybody but Rick. His big, floaty linen trousers are from one of these bazaars. Some of his shirts came from there. For one of them, I copied a ’50s Hawaiian shirt and found some vintage rayon that was like 80 years old, and made a shirt. And then some are from rental houses. They're pretty much all vintage. I think one of them is new.
Who were some of your favorite characters to dress this season?
Well, Walton is super great, just to finish off with him. He’s such a good clothes horse because he's like a model, you know? He's tall and skinny. He won't mind me saying that he sweat profusely, because it was so hot, which adds to the drapiness of his shirts — they just melt to him. He was really satisfying.
Aimee [Lou Wood], who plays his partner, was also really great. Of all the White Lotus characters so far, I saw myself the most in her: She's British, which I am, and she's also free spirited — sort of gentle, but also up for adventure. I felt like I knew who that woman was. I did a lot of traveling when I was younger. I went to Thailand when I was 19. I went to the Full Moon Party. She’s sort of a Bohemian dreamer meets British raver; someone who has their own idea. We cut off a lot of her dresses, so it was a lot of DIY fashion with her.
I also think the trio of women [Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan] are so good. I'm partial to them, just because there's more you can do. On Season 2, we had “the gays,” who were a lot of fun; you could make them more flamboyant and eclectic. Other than Rick, the men of Season 3 are pretty straight down the line, and costume design is about nailing the type. There’s just a tiny bit of stereotyping that we do [laughs]. With the women, it’s a little more, “This mode. That mode.” There are different flavors.
I love when the ladies go into club mode [on Episode 5].
Oh, thank you. I love the clubbing scenes too. There's hundreds of extras that really have extraordinary outfits too, but you never really see them all that much. I know the cast really appreciate it, because it helps them get into the vibe.
Have you always had the fashion bug?
Not really. I was more into music, movies and pop culture. I was always into scenes, diving into different worlds. I fell into this by mistake, randomly, around age 30. I was in New York, and someone asked me if I knew somebody who wanted to intern with a costume designer. It was for a film with Beyoncé and Adrian Brody called Cadillac Records. It goes from the ’30s to the ’70s, so it covers a lot of different eras.
I was still kind of cobbling together my living doing artistic things around production, but with no direction really. I applied and I got the job, and it really married all those specific things I loved: I like history, and I like storytelling, and I like a mission. It’s very practical, and you have to use your executive brain as well, to put it all together and make everybody happy and get everything you need.
What can readers expect from the runway show at SeriesFest?
We're aiming to capture the spirit of The White Lotus and put together some fun, inspiring looks that maybe are a little more on the edge, but probably appealing to more of the Colorado audience too. They may not be as outrageous as The White Lotus — if, as you say, things are a little tamer out there — but maybe Denver's version of The White Lotus.
I feel like everybody's getting into resort dressing now. Last year when I was shopping for the show, I noticed so many resort and camp shirts for men, and florals for the women. Also, the world is cooking, so maybe we're all gonna have to dress like we’re on holiday in a hot, steamy summer.
ON THE RUNWAY: SeriesFest – Fashion in Focus. 6 p.m. Thursday, April 3, The Studio Loft at Ellie Caulkins Opera House, 1385 Curtis St., Denver. $75+