Patricia Henderson On the Costuming the Dangerous, Innocent, and Grieving for ‘Under the Bridge’

I may not have known the girls who lived at Seven Oaks, but I know their clothes. Girls in my high school wore these exact silhouettes and styles when I was in seventh and eighth grade, so the costuming for Hulu’s Under the Bridge certainly took me back to a specific timeline. For the young people inhabiting this world, clothes are used as armor and for other emotional protections, and costume designer Patricia Henderson worked closely with the young cast to create closets full of personality and individuality.

Coming out of the 1980s, fashion in the following decade seemed to take an introspective turn. The ’80s saw audacious shapes and bright colors while the ’90s introduced flannel and grunge. For some, leaving those vivid colors would be a step down, but seeing them alive and sought-after again was so intense. Henderson reveals what she likes from this particular time.

“It was such a change from what we were living in the ’80s,” Henderson says. “It became more sultry and more somber with the jewel tones. It was the first time that I could wear jeans properly because they were low-rise jeans. Fashion completely changed. It was so simplistic than the decades before it. Grunge came out, too, so it gave us a whole new perspective on clothing.”

Josephine Bell projects a certain kind of image. Within ten minutes of meeting her, she will tell you that she longs to get out of her situation and become part of John Gotti’s devoted entourage. Her necklines tend to be lower than the other girls’ but her color are traditionally girly in purples and blushes. When she goes to the dance with Kelly and Dusty, she wears a thicker choker around her neck. There is softness in the colors but there is a hardness that comes out in her personality.

“Josephine definitely has a hard edge to her, and Chloe [Guidry] does not have that,” she says. “We worked really closely together on this character. She is a young woman who wanted what everybody else has, and she had a lot of costume changes. It was always fun to pull out the Baby Phat jacket like in the grocery story when she convinces Reena to steal the razor. That was one of the first pieces we found. It was about wanting to be a mob wife, and I know that’s very popular right now. Josephine tried really hard with what she was able to get on Vancouver Island–there aren’t a lot of places there.”

Unlike Josephine, Kelly has a support system in place, and a mother who will pay for new clothes. Any time you see Kelly and her mother together, you know the type of relationship that they have, and if Kelly needed a new sweater for school, they would take a trip to Old Navy together. You could easily see them at a shopping mall together on a busy weekend. For Kelly, clothes are always in reach for her.

“The perfect example of who Kelly truly is is after the girls get arrested and the other two girls push her in the youth center,” Henderson says. “She falls down and she laughs, but as soon as the guard comes over, she cries. Kelly’s mom would take her shopping to Old Navy or Bluenotes since that store was big at the time. Le Château was huge too. Kelly wouldn’t be the one paying, though, and she would have to play the part in front of her parents even though she acts touch with Josephine. I’ve always questioned why her parents didn’t have a lot of reach when she went out, and we know it’s because she played the good girl.

I pulled the color green for her a lot, because her name is Kelly. It helped her stand out to Josephine who wore a lot of jewel tones and pinks and charcoals. We stuck with a softer, innocent, and sweet palette. Kelly wasn’t wearing low-rise jeans, so we let her wear a lot of corduroy. The Calvin Klein jacket was put in the evidence report. We didn’t use that jacket in the incident under the bridge, but we used it in other moments. We recreated a lot of things that the real Kelly wore, and the same goes with Reena.”

Reena isn’t comfortable in her own skin, and she is the one character most desperate to fit in. She has a way of dressing while she is at home in front of her parents, but then there is another version of her when she leaves the house. Reena tells her mother, Suman, that other kids make fun of parts of her body, and, at dinner, she tells Suman, ‘Stop giving me Indian food–it’s making me fat.’ Reena is trying to hide parts of herself in her baggy and ill fitting clothes.

“Reena being a real person and diving into the research, I learned about a lot of racism, and I learned about her family’s religious background as being Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Henderson reveals. “She just wanted to look like the rest of the kids. For me, the piece for me was the Adidas, and we built that. It looked very much like the original one. She received it as a gift, and this became a security blanket. It helped her fit in. When you see the memorial outside of the school and you see her school photo, we built that sweater to be exactly like the one she wore.

The sweater that she is wearing when she tells her mom to stop giving her Indian food is something that Suman would’ve found at Sears since it was big on the island. It was something she felt comfortable wearing until she met the other girls. She noticed that they weren’t wearing acrylic material. When she is first invited to the party after meeting Josephine, we kind of did a Sister, Sister moment with some denim. We do a lot of flashbacks to moment before she meets the girls, and you can notice the shift. With Dusty, we played on them being outsiders together since the other girls make them feel that way.”

I notice that Archie Panjabi’s Suman wears a lot of blue, and it immediately signals a sorrowful feeling. It’s an example of how we can put clothes on our bodies to echo our moods even if we don’t realize it. Sometimes it is intentional.

“Archie and I worked on that together,” she says. “There are very intentional moments in her costuming with how Suman is feeling in particular scenes. At the dinner when Reena comes out of the bathroom with the burgundy hoodie on, Suman is at the head of the table. She is wearing a variegated sweater with a little bit of sparkle, and it’s all the colors of a peacock since she is a proud mom and she is proud of her household. We built off that sweater, and we would go out to find different pieces to tie into that. When she is being interviewed, she is wearing a scarf that has the same peacock colors, and it’s a moment when she is becoming strong. She has to be strong, and we wanted to show that. There are moments like with the long, grey sweater when she is receiving the mail and sees the letter when Manjit’s record is expunged and she puts it in her pocket. That was a security blanket for her.”

I gushed to Henderson about a few pieces that I wanted for myself, and I was delighted to hear that she has a story for almost everything. When we flash back in episode four, young Manjit is wearing a vibrant blue and orange shirt under his suit jacket. I would also snag Raj’s brown, leather coat for myself.

“We made that shirt,” Henderson says. “It was one of those moments where you only have so many days to prep. In episode four, we had ’50s ’70s, ’80s and ’90s in one episode, and when we found that the actor playing young Manjit is tall and slender. At one point, there was a scene with a scuffle in a part, but it never made it to air. There was stunt performer, and we needed these suits. I was sitting at home on a Saturday, and something made me get up and go into my friend’s vintage shop in Vancouver about ten minutes before closing. I walked into the back and she told me that the men’s ’70s suits were still in bins back there. I opened up the bins, and there were eight of them. All in the actor’s sizes. I bought them on the spot and brought them with me the following Monday, and I bought some fabric swatches and presented it. That’s how we got Manjit’s suit at Burcu’s Angels on Main Street in Vancouver. The costume angels were with me that day.

I am a big fan of the Pickwick vintage shows in Los Angeles, and I told the producers that I was going. Raj’s jacket was hanging there. That was a ’90s suede Banana Republic jacket that I found. We didn’t touch that jacket–it was distressed like that. What would I take? Riley Keough’s jacket. I found that at Pickwick. I don’t remember the brand on it, but when I was younger, I had about 26 jackets in different colors.”

Under the Bridge is streaming now on Hulu.