CMU School of Drama


Thursday, March 13, 2025

How Tombolo Dressed ‘The White Lotus’ Characters for Season Three

wwd.com/pop-culture: Tombolo and HBO’s “The White Lotus” reunited for the third season of the Emmy Award-winning series, crafting new costumes and pieces for the cast. While the New York City brand’s pieces have been featured previously in the first two seasons of “The White Lotus,” the third season offered an opportunity for the brand to design custom creations for the show’s characters.

1 comment:

Jack Nuciforo said...

White Lotus does such a fantastic job of critiquing habits of critiquing the relationship between tourism and neocolonialism in a way that feels fun, fresh, interesting, and manages to satirize the habits of the ultra-rich in a way that never gets old. Costume designer Alex Bovaird ties this into the clothing of the show exceptionally well—using traditional western silhouettes and colors mixed with understated patterns and motifs of this season’s White Lotus Hotel location (Thailand) is a subtle but powerful way to show how these tourists are often tone-deaf, or at least ignorant, of their host country’s customs. I loved the part about how Bovaird overdyed certain fabrics to match the show’s warm color grading. There’s a unique set of challenges that come with costuming for film and television that I would never even think to address on my own. The way a camera picks up certain colors, sheens, and textures from fabrics that the naked eye would never notice can completely change how it is seen and Bovaird was smart for taking that into account ahead of time.