In “All’s Fair,” a legal drama wrapped in a kitschy, slightly outdated version of feminism, the classic power suit is framed as a relic of a smashed patriarchy.
The Hulu series, which was created by Ryan Murphy and began streaming on Tuesday, opens with two co-workers, Allura Grant (Kim Kardashian) and Liberty Ronson (Naomi Watts), commiserating over the sexism they face at the male-dominated law firm where they work.
“They were laughing in our faces,” Ronson says.
“They don’t care,” Grant replies. “They don’t take divorce law or women seriously.”
Their clothes in the scene do more heavy lifting than the dialogue. Both are dressed in stuffy pantsuits that are ill-fitting and constricting. There are no accessories. Their hair is drab.
When the timeline jumps ahead 10 years, Ronson and Grant are now running their own family law firm. With that comes a dramatic sartorial tone shift. The corporate uniform has suddenly become, well, just about anything: a red snakeskin coat, a feather-trimmed jumpsuit, big and bold jewelry, big and blingy belts, elbow-length gloves, fedoras and turbans. In one scene, Grant is dressed in a suit, with a vest, a shirt, a tie and a collar bar. When she turns around, a thong peeps out from her skirt. Ridiculous, sure. But also freeing.
After all, thanks to the failed presidential campaigns of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris, both of whom dressed in the classic power suit, the outfit may no longer be viewed as the armor of success. Paula Bradley, the costume designer on “All’s Fair,” said that suits seem to signal “a woman who wants to be in a man’s world but who doesn’t have a place to be in the man’s world.”
The classic suit is also a response to the male gaze, she said, specifically “to hide from it and to pretend it didn’t exist.” It was always about conformity to a male norm or constriction in a male space.
The current legal industry still clings to a buttoned-up office dress code, and legal dramas, like the aptly named “Suits” or “Law & Order,” have long leaned into dressing their female characters to blend in. In a departure from that, “All’s Fair” is trying to turn the suit into hyperfeminine, hypersexy, hyperstylized armor, Ms. Bradley said. “It’s saying ‘we belong here and if we’re going to wear a suit, we’re going to wear it our way,’” she said.
Over the last few years, even fashion houses have experimented with what a post-pandemic corporate uniform could look like, offering answers — like enormous shoulders and soft lounge suits — that are nearly as varied as the wardrobe in “All’s Fair.”
Ms. Bradley said that Mr. Murphy knew from the start how all of the characters in the show should look, down to their individual color palettes, which would remain consistent. No two women are ever in the same color in a scene, and their colors never clash. To align with Mr. Murphy’s specificity, the wardrobe team also relied on Ms. Kardashian’s loungewear brand, Skims, to create customized pajamas to match each character’s palette for a single scene that takes place on a private jet.
Ms. Watts’s character, for example, is almost always dressed in blush pinks, pastel blues and beiges, while the older, wiser character Dina Standish, played by Glenn Close, wears more classic blacks, grays and creams.
By contrast Emerald Greene, played by Niecy Nash, lives in high-octane jewel tones. It was Ms. Nash’s request to be dressed in clothing by Black designers, like LaQuan Smith, Charles Harbison and Sergio Hudson, and to heavily accessorize.
“A power suit for me came with hoops and a turban,” Ms. Nash said in an interview at the launch party for the show in New York City. “It’s anything that makes an individual feel powerful.”
For the show, Ms. Kardashian used her own stylist, Soki Mak, to help curate the style of a character who looks, as Ms. Mak described it, like “a fantasy version of Kim.”
To that end, Ms. Mak leaned on archival looks, some dating back to the 1960s, from fashion houses like Dior, Donna Karan and Jean Paul Gaultier, which opened their archives to the show. As Ms. Mak put it, what better way to scream power than to access the rarest of clothes?
In a move that could scandalize many in the fashion world, some of the outfits — like a John Galliano for Christian Dior dress that Ms. Kardashian’s character wears in a scene set inside an auction house — required restructuring and are now owned by the actress. The Dior dress was fitted for Ms. Kardashian and its back was completely reconstructed “like a bit of origami,” Ms. Mak said.
The thong, which had peeked out from a skirt in one scene, was also Ms. Mak’s idea. She used a vintage Jean Paul Gaultier number that managed to upend the boundaries of a corporate look on a show in which there seemingly weren’t many.
“I could tell everyone was like, ‘What is happening here?’” Ms. Mak said of the reaction on set during filming. “But that is our version of a power suit.”
It was a choice that was, perhaps, less a meditation on the corporate uniform and more a nod to the fact that to Ms. Kardashian, who has built an empire by selling thongs and other lingerie, exposure is power.
Alisha Haridasani Gupta is a Times reporter covering women’s health and health inequities.
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