The AppleTV series, Imperfect Women, created by Annie Weisman and based on the novel by Araminta Hall, is about three women who have been the dearest of friends since meeting in college decades earlier. As adults they make a point of staying in each other’s lives until one of them, Nancy Hennessey (Kate Mara), turns up dead after her birthday dinner, leaving Eleanor (Kerry Washington) and Mary (Elisabeth Moss) to figure out what happened.

The costumes designed for any series are part of the storytelling, but this series does it exceptionally well, thanks to the excellent work of costume designer Tiffany Hasbourne. We see these women, and their personal histories, in every garment. Every character has a detailed backstory and it's not just comprehensive, the work is elegant.

When I met with the designer to learn more about her work on the series, I started by asking about Eleanor, who gets some truly fabulous outfits, and since Kerry Washington could wear the proverbial potato sack and look like a queen, every gorgeous garment is shown off in its best possible light. Eleanor comes from money, though it takes a minute for that to become clear. What we know immediately, from her layered necklaces, is that she’s a woman who collects tokens from her life, artifacts, and wears them like talismans.

Making Custom Gorgeous Gowns

“With Eleanor,” Tiffany Hasbourne explained, “it was a little bit of everything. It was shopping, reaching out to designers, doing collaborations with them, making sure we tapped into a lot of L.A. designers, high-end designers. Chanel gave us pieces for Eleanor's character. We made her ballet dress at the end of Episode One.”

The dress she’s talking about is a cascade of purple halfway between violet and plum, more silver than the character wears in other episodes. The dress has one shoulder which accentuates Eleanor’s opera length gloves, also a deep warm purple, but with black cuffs where they terminate at the bicep. Not a single detail in this look was ignored, from the crystal encrusted Aquazzura sandals to the handbag dripping with more sparkle. The sort of purse which has to be held just so both to make the desired effect and to protect one’s obvious investment.

“We saw an original dress that was so beautiful and inspiring,” Hasbourne told me. “I wanted a moment that resembled the sadness in her. And so the fabric looks a lot like liquid and we custom-made her gloves with crystals that almost look like tears on them. And we searched all over for the crystal matching bag.”

“The beautiful thing about Kerry was trust that I really appreciated from the start,” the designer said. “She already has the ability to function with fashion in her real life, so she's not afraid of a train on a dress. I thought about how to make everything be dramatic; her hair looks slick and wet back. How she would get in the car herself and place, how she got out of the car, and when she steps out the car, how she presents the heel. A lot of that was thought out for the details like the heel, and the whole shoe was actually jeweled. Kind of in those purple toned teardrop gems, the same kind of stone to keep the theme of sadness.”

“It’s even down to her chain,” Hasbourne continued, “her Buddha and the ‘C’ that she wears for her father's name, Charles. Having the black star that could have been a gift from her father. All of it was thought out; the sassiness of her hoops, because there are certain particular moments for her character when she would have to go in and be a little sassy. I think Eleanor needed that, in terms of surviving the little underhanded statements that people would say to her. Or that she would get from her friends.”

“Her first look, when we first introduced her, she had on a Vivienne Westwood skirt that we paired with an Aritzia bodysuit. And that turned into a T-shirt with a blazer, so that later on she could throw on her companion's boyfriend-fit jean. When she went to dinner for Mary's birthday, we paired it with Fendi heels. Because just for the LA of it all, you leave your house when you live downtown. And when your friend lives in Pasadena, and you're going to dinner in Hollywood, you have to, with a busy day, get to change your clothes. So, Eleanor's wardrobe was chosen so that she can move functionally throughout her day. She would slip from a sneaker to a heel or a jacket over something else. It was all interchangeable. It was very much thought out in terms of her poof-sleeved denim jacket with the tailored arms. It was made by a designer called Fashion Junkie. It's a cool website that I found that I thought that the designer had really good pieces that we paired later on with a Bottega white boot. It was a lot of mixing high-end with low-end.”

Turning Actors Into Siblings With Costumes

Eleanor’s brother, Donovan (Leslie Odom Jr.), is a lot, I said to the designer, its the same situation with him. He has very few boundaries along with a great deal of interest in his sister’s personal life. The specter of their mother follows the siblings through the story, and we do get to meet her eventually. But the character couldn’t go home in sweats, she got her hair done first, and every conversation with Donovan feels double-sided, like it's the 2026 American generational wealth version of the second degree of subtlety.

“That brother is harsh, right?” Hasbourne laughed. “Leslie’s wardrobe was so thought out. Because there's this certain way he says, ‘you know, mom and I give you the money to fund your business.’ It's like, what does that represent in power? When you show up to save your sister from what you know is a potential scandal, what does that actually look like? How do we make him curious, at the end of the first episode when we don’t know who he is, who is this well-dressed gentleman in the back of this car? Thinking about all of that still very much helped tell the story.”

There’s a suit Donovan wears that I had to ask the designer about, a magnificent gold double-breasted affair, worn shirtless and with nothing but a fine gold chain work at the neck. He reminded me of an Ancient Greek statue.

“I custom made that,” Hasbourne told me. “Again, it's about the moment, that element of her brother showing up late, flattering her friend, saying, ‘you know, I'm newly divorced. It didn't work out, but you look lovely as usual.’ There was something disarming that I wanted, which was what made me pick that color. But then also the fabrication, the sleekness of almost a double-breasted jacket. The simple chain that he wears underneath, it could probably represent a chain that his father gave him as well. We even picked his rings.”

The party Donovan is late to is one for an award his sister is being given. It’s a tense scene and three episodes in we’re still questioning these siblings' relationship, do they even like each other? The way brother and sister would look standing next to each other at such an event might sound like a small thing, but when telling a story that is a mystery around a murder, audiences are primed to look for clues. We are watching and looking for information about the characters that comes from behavior not words. The tension in this moment establishes back story, we learn more about who she is and the world that she comes from than we could with untold hours of time watching Eleanor with Mary and Nancy.

Nodding To A Character’s History

One of the things that I really admired about Hasbourne’s work on this series is the way, before we know for a fact that Nancy had a ballet past, her clothing is subtly ballet coded. She’s never wearing a tutu, but there were little hints. This interested me because I could see how easy it could be to overdo something like this. If Nancy wore only pale pink and tights it wouldn’t hold our attention. But there were enough hints that it felt realistic when we did find that out and this felt like a balancing act I wanted to know more about.

“Nancy is very much every day riding this line, ‘this is who I am now’,” Hasbourne told me. “She’s running from her past. I chose soft pastel colors for her, not just to emulate the ballet, but also to hide the darkness in her life. So when you see her at Davide's party, stretched out in this black lace dress, you're like,’ who is this person?’ When Eleanor and Mary see it, they are shocked. They don't even know this version of her. And even in the flashback scene, of the first New Year's party, when it first starts, she's in an orange dress, archiveTommy Hilfiger, something bright. Not of where she lands, to show the growth, where she came from when she was trying to start this life versus where she ended.”

With the various extremes which make these women distinct from each other, we get to see a range of beautiful clothes specific to the people who wear them, whole ranges of emotional experience.

“I thought Nancy would have a stylist send clothes to her house,” Hasbourne explained, “and then she would meticulously pick through racks. She's someone who can draw, she was a dancer. She's a mother now, but even her influence in what Cora looks like, versus how Robert lives his life, it’s all her trying to adapt into that world. How to get respect from Kit, who's always talking down to her and calling her a visitor in her own home. And from the very first dress we see her in, it was so important that she didn't die in pants.That dress was custom made, with the gold applique cream jacket that kind of mimicked her, it helped us to show her as closed off. I was custom made down to the buttons. I looked at so many buttons. My Assistant Costume Designer kept bringing buttons, you know, gold brushed and gold plated and shiny gold. All of it, down to the buttons, were details that only an artist like Nancy would notice. Or, only Nancy would use to distract herself from the confusion of her life.”

Generations in Costume

After watching the end of the series I knew I’d have to ask the costume designer about Eleanor’s mother, Mrs. Bouchet (Sheryl Lee Ralph), widow of Charles. We’re primed to expect one person when we meet the matriarch, but like most other things that happen in this show, everything goes differently than we expect.

“There was such a shift of ‘we're going to see Eleanor's mom’,” Hasboure said. “And her being from the East Coast, and them being of West Indian descent, that is something that Kerry and I very much bonded over. Both of us being from New York, both having West Indian descent in our families. And also the sternness of your mother talking to you very abruptly, but coming from a place of honesty and love. It was, ‘let me slow this down so I can explain it to you properly.’ There was always this absence to me, when I read the script of her brother showing up because basically the mother is too busy to deal with this mess.”

“Eleanor comes from such a wealthy home that she flies home on a jet to see her mother. The fact that the mother is on a business call when she gets there, that to me was a moment to show you so much about Eleanor's dad, the fishing rod on the wall, the chains, her car. We knew nothing about her mother. And so to me, this was the perfect opportunity for us to get a peek in what Eleanor has gotten from her mother. The style, the silhouette of that suit when she first comes in, her talking on the phone with this ring on that is astonishing and this necklace that is worth what most people make in a year. I remember Cheryl Lee Ralph pushing for those things and being like, I feel like I need bigger jewelry, something big.”

Hasbourne went to XIV Karats in Beverly Hills, a brand she’s worked with in the past, to source the pieces for the show.

“I need this jewelry right now,” is how the designer described to me. “We're shooting in a house in Beverly Hills. And them, because of our relationship, saying, ‘take it, see what works and bring it back.’ I have a video, it's so funny, of the day that we got the jewelry back and cheering my costumer, Andy. I'm like, now take it back to XIV Karats so we're not holding $80,000 worth of jewelry.

“Also when she goes to cook, us having the early release of Ralph Lauren's Oak Bluff collection and what that stood for. Oak Bluff is Ralph Lauren's Martha's Vineyard collection. They're from Boston. Martha's Vineyard is right there. It's a nod. Her Prada sneaker. Even when she's dressed down, it's still very much elegant. The chain tangling, catching. “I remember one of the writers was like, I don't get it, like, who cooks and brings the food out in Ralph Lauren, but also Kerry showing up after running in a Chanel headband. That whole thing. And that was also something that it's like, I go on a workout. Again, it has to be functional, right? So there's days I would go to Pilates and come to set. I'd have a cute Chanel scarf so my hair isn't messed up, or a Balenciaga scarf. Using all those real-life scenarios for people who have to go places and who her neighbors, she hasn't been home in a while. If her neighbors see her running, you know, how would she want to be presented? All of that was very much thought out.”

Costumes Help Tell Stories

We see thought and planning in this show and it makes the series fascinating, all the information hidden in the clothes.

Costume design can be a silent system of communication, it has to be when there is information that can’t be given to the audience with words, when doing so would kill the movie magic. Good stories told on film understand that if the audience feels like the people making the show thought they were dumb, or were talking down to them, they’d lose interest. Costume fills information gaps when words simply will not do and provides us with information we need.

“These are three women who are friends,” costume designer Tiffany Hasbourne said. “It took me two weeks to basically figure out how to make these women completely different, but also make them interchangeable in each other's worlds. Mary, who is possibly the mother who's popping pills, that's overwhelmed, that's cleaning up a mess, that has laundry, that has a husband, that she's been hiding his secrets from her friends. How does she fit in going to Eleanor's house? Or how does Nancy feel coming to dinner with Robert and sitting there with Howard while watching their daughter do karaoke? It's very important that it took me two weeks to think of how to constantly keep the same suspense that I was reading in the scripts in that world and help the audience, let it evolve with them.”

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