Costuming A Mini World For ‘The Miniature Wife’

The Miniature Wife, a series on Peacock created by Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner from a short story written by Manuel Gonzalez, leans into the fashion doll archetype equally as much as it forges new storytelling ground.

The drama is centered around the genius (mad scientist?) Les Littlejohn (Matthew Macfadyen), and what happens when his decision to partner with an unethical billionaire, Hilton Smith (Ronny Chieng), results in the quasi-accidental shrinking of Les’s wife, the Pulitzer Prize winning author Lindy Littlejohn (Elizabeth Banks). As you’ve probably guessed, immediately after, chaos ensues.

I met with the costume designer for The Miniature Wife, Laura Montgomery, to learn about the costumes designed for the series and the thousands of ways that the success of this story depended on what the characters wore.

Pink Pajamas That Do A Lot Of Heavy Lifting

I began our conversation by asking about the bright pink pajamas that Lindy wears throughout the first couple of episodes. They are similar to something Barbie would wear, and throughout the series, this nod to the world’s favorite fashion doll is reinforced through hair and makeup as well as the costume design.

“We knew she would be in the pink pajamas for a big chunk of it,” Laura Montgomery said. “I don’t think I realized how much screen time it would get, but we knew she was going to be in pajamas a lot. I know Elizabeth really saw her as having a very high level of taste, having access to things. She lived in New York, I think everything in her closet would have been, if not designer, then premium and very well chosen, and that’s why it was the silk pajamas. Also, they have a lot of movement. It looks really nice on camera.

I asked about choosing the color, the pjs really are a Barbie type of pink, and I wanted to know if the choice was as purposeful as I imagined.

“When she’s miniaturized,” the costume designer explained, “I really wanted to lean into the doll aspect of the show. We played it a few different colors, but pink felt like a very natural choice because of Barbie pink. And then it was a lot of testing to find the right shade. We built the pajamas and there were probably no fewer than 10 pairs because she’s stunted in them and she’s harnessed in them. And just for laundry turnarounds, we needed a lot of multiples. And we couldn’t find the exact right color of pink for the silk so we ended up doing dye tests and camera tests to really get the color that would read as not too bright, not too washed out.”

Science In The Wes Anderson School

In The Miniature Wife, Les, as I mentioned earlier, is a scientist, and the scenes in his laboratory are seriously fun. This is not a show that wants to convince you it knows all about Serious Science™, instead it embraces absurdity in the best possible way. Everything is super stylized in this lab and the colors are crazy, deep emerald green and that mustard yellow with the maroon of the coats and under saturated blues; the Wes Anderson School of scientific invention. I needed to know all about these rather magical, if unexpected, color choices.

“Red was Les’s signature color,” Montgomery told me, “he’s got the red car. He has a red belt, which you don’t often see, red socks. He has little tomato cufflinks and the lab coats were something that, right from the beginning, we put a lot of thought into. He wears the lab coat but I was also envisioning there are all the Bobs in the lab, and all of the background actors too, in this space we’re going to see a lot of this lab coat. Of course it could have white lab coats, but then seeing what Max Orgell had designed for this incredible lab environment, I wanted something that would feel like it was part of the branding.”

The Bobs, in case you haven’t desperately binged the first season of this show the way that I did, are the worker bees in Les’s lab, terrified of confrontation and who seem to be desperate to appease their fearless leader. It’s a wonderful hierarchy, not in the sense of a productive power dynamic, but because it allows us to quickly understand who these people are and what motivates them to make the (sometimes) insane choices they make. They are human and they are flawed, perhaps no one more that the leader of this caper.

“Les has such a huge ego,” Montgomery explained. “There’s the joke in the script about his logo alone costing I think like two hundred thousand dollars. I think he would have something that felt like part of the branding, and then I wanted a color that would work well in the space. It turned out really well, with the yellow plexiglass and the walnut wood, and we tested quite a few colors because the maroon it did take quite a bit of convincing. I always knew it was the right color. Max knew it was the right color. Adrian Peng Correia, the DP, knew it was the right color. Greg Mottola, the director was totally on board, but it took some convincing of other, upper echelon types. I thought white would just be too boring and so we tested gray, we tested olive and different colors, a more burnt orange and then it just kind of kept coming back to maroon being the right color. And when I saw it on screen, I was so happy.”

A Scientist & A Mini Cat

I must mention Mr. McGoo, however briefly, because the miniaturized cat is incredible, I cannot understate how much the non-human character adds to The Miniature Wife.

“It’s such a scene stealer,” Montgomery said to me with a smile. “I felt sorry for anyone who had to act opposite the cat. At one point Elizabeth said, ‘Well nobody is looking at me, it’s all about the cat.’”

I won’t explain the hows and whys of the cat getting shrunk like Lindy, it’s absolutely worth seeing for yourself, but when it happens, it allows the audience to get to know one of the harshest characters, Vivienne (Zoe Lister-Jones), the head scientist for Hilton (the billionaire) who quickly takes over Les’s lab. Before she melts for Mr. MaGoo, Vivienne is an ice sculpture of scientific efficiency in Alex McQueen leaning double breasted suits. Her wardrobe is immaculate, and its an excellent example of all the ways the costumes add to the narrative.

“I definitely tried to avoid warm tones for Vivian,” Montgomery said, “to really portray her as repressed and analytical, very structured, very precise. And definitely she’s the foil to Lindy who is passionately volatile. I definitely leaned into the gray and black tones in the costumes and then the silver accessories and accessories that were kind of bold. We found some things that had sort of a scientific look to them. There were some pieces that had spheres that looked almost like a molecule or I thought she would be drawn to sculptural elements. It all came together so well, and Natalie Nelson did such a good job on Vivian’s hair, it was perfect the way her hair was always styled with the bangs, and it was a great showcase for the earrings.”

Desperately Seeking Lindy

Another fabulous supporting character is Richard, a scientist in The Miniature Wife who works in Les’s lab, one important enough to be called his own name. Unfortunately for everyone, the character included, Richard is infatuated by Lindy and shrinks himself down to join her. Again, yes, chaos ensues.

“Richard was really fun because he has that earnestness and innocence,” the costume designer told me, “we know that he is a romantic, he’s in the Bard’s Guard, the Shakespeare Club. I really wanted to lean into that kind of eccentric and very individual style where it ends up looking good, but he’s not someone who follows trends. He just kind of is drawn to corduroy, maybe because it is soft and comfortable, or he’s drawn to textures, because it reminds him of England or rainy weather. Or, he just has a natural sensibility for things that he’s drawn to. Then when it all comes together, it magically just looks good. But also, there was one coat that we found that was in my mood boards. And then we found kind of the perfect coat, which was a vintage 90s. Eddie Bauer parka. I really just wanted a coat that looked like a kid’s coat that just said, ‘I’m waiting for my mom to pick me up.’”

Near the end of the season, the endlessly suffering Richard, in a series of events you simply must see, ends up with nothing to wear but a McDonald’s wrapper salvaged from the trash. It’s inventive and silly, and in this world, it absolutely makes sense. I wanted to know how it was achieved, what the designer used to make this bit look and feel so much like reality.

“It was a difficult concept,” Montgomery said, “because we had to figure out what material would look like paper, but not be paper And then we hit upon Tyvek. We did multiple tests because, when you buy it in the roll it’s quite stiff. We tested to find out how many times we needed to wash it to give it that kind of crumply tissue paper feel. It was surprisingly easy to print on. The art department just scaled up the McDonald’s wrapper for us. I had some amazing modeling from the fitting because he put it on and we only had one to use, we didn’t have a lot to waste, we had to do strategic rips for the neck hole. We couldn’t go too far. So we started with a small neck hole in the fitting and then we kind of ripped it a little bit more. But amazingly, it kind of molded to his body in a great way. We were trying different things in case it needed a belt, so we had these mockups of the elastic from around a broccoli stalk or what could be like found in the garbage. But the Tyvek just molded to his body so he didn’t need it was basically just a poncho.”

Connecting Family With Wardrobe

In The Miniature Wife, Les and Lindy have a daughter, Lulu (Sofia Rosinsky), and as I was watching the show I felt like I kept seeing connections between mother and daughter in the costuming. Little nods, like garments that had maybe been swiped from Mama’s closet, references to who Lindy was when she was younger.

“I think in spite of both of them they are really more similar than they want to admit,” Montgomery told me. “And by the end of the story, I think they both start to realize it. With Lulu, I think she was always her father’s daughter, and she’s going into science and she’s expected to follow in his footsteps. The idea behind her costumes was funny, because her mom would have been living in New York in the 1990s, having her heyday then, and there were a lot of 1990s influences in Lulu’s wardrobe. I don’t know if it’s ever specified, but we imagine that she is going to school in New York, and so I figured her closet would be a mix of thrifted pieces and then some designer that were cast offs of her mom’s. Pieces that she maybe hasn’t worn for 15 years, a real mix, and then the Smiths t-shirt. She has a this great Smiths t-shirt, which was one that I had worn, it’s the ‘Meat is Murder’ graphic from the album cover. We managed to get clearance for it so we made that shirt.”

I liked that a lot, the character’s personal lives as throughlines, embedding the daughter with her mother’s imagined back story. Also- I wanted to know more about the designer’s personal connection with that band tee. It’s humanizing, and one of the things I loved about The Miniature Wife was how real and flawed and imperfect these characters all are.

“This is how it came about,” Montgomery said. “The showrunners were chatting and Sofia Rosinsky, who plays Lulu Littlejohn, she’s a really amazing person and really into music. She has very eclectic taste and she’s kind of an old soul, and she mentioned that her favorite band is The Smiths. And the showrunners were like, ‘you’ve 19 years old, you’ve heard of the Smiths?’ So, the request was for a Smiths t-shirt and I knew just the one. I found a photo of myself, from some 25 years ago, wearing that t-shirt.”

‘The Miniature Wife’ is now available to stream on Peacock.

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