Lord of the Flies, a recent Netflix miniseries, four episodes, each about an hour long, is a faithful adaptation to the novel, a book that was written about 80 years ago but still feels modern and relevant. It is a story about community and what it means to be a leader, how fast things can degrade following the sort of events which begin a cascade.
The costumes for the miniseries were designed by Maja Meschede and Marianne Agertoft, and I met with Meschede over zoom to learn about how a classic piece of literature had been reimagined for an audience in the streaming era.
The story is beautiful and sad and exciting and incredible, the child actors are incredible and the costumes magnificent. And this is a story with meaning, it stays with you after the credits roll in the final episode. It is terrifying how plausible the plot seems. Maja described it best, I’ll let her set it up:
“The kids first try to hold on to their social structures,” Meschede said, “being human and being kind to each other, but then it all falls apart, especially when we look at Jack and his camp. Those kids become more instinctive, physical and untamed, and they, of course, are the ones who start all the fighting. And it’s beautiful, because of the way it’s been filmed, right? Sometimes it’s all burning orange and red, very much like a nightmare. It’s more than realism. It’s hauntingly beautiful and like a fairy tale; we see all these creatures crawling around, centipedes, spiders, hermit crabs. It’s all material for a nightmare, isn’t it?”
Tiny, Gorgeous Period Detail
I went into our conversation suspecting that the production had made all the uniforms we see the boys wearing in the beginning of this four episode miniseries, and that turned out to be correct. I asked the designer if she would help me explain why that was.
“We started off at Cosprop and Angels,” Meschede explained, “these amazing costume houses in London, and they have incredible collections of historic clothing, especially the knitwear. But because we needed tons of doubles, we had to copy the historic stuff and make everything. It’s all bespoke, up to the buttons that are from the late 1940s and zippers and such. Because we were in the rainforest and there was a lot of breakdown to be done, we had like one hero and I think up to seven or eight doubles of everything.”
We are introduced to the school uniform when we meet the namesake of Episode One, Piggy, poor piggy. I would feel very safe assuming that just about every American kid read Lord of the Flies in middle school, and when we see him for the first time we meet him knowing what his fate will be. He’s the odd man out from the moment the camera focuses on him.
“When we first see Piggy,” Meschede said, “he looks so out of place, doesn’t he? He wears tons of these layers, which is like nothing you’d wear in a hot rainforest, but we wanted him to feel really out of place, you know, like a lost boy.”
I told the costume designer that I’d noticed the shoes, that there are a few shots which catch them in focus. This mattered because it meant that I could see the little details that tell a person who knows what they are looking at about the era, about the owner’s socioeconomic status or class.
“Mark Wolf, the DOP, and Marc Munden, the director, both really went for it,” Meschede said. “You see lots of shoes, odd shoes, you know how kids lose their shoes, and I love that as well. And I was really into the details. Every single buckle was chosen, and every boy had historical shoes from the 1930s or 40s, to just make it feel right. The materials, how they were worked on, all of that is really different from shoes now, even leather shoes looked very different, the eyelets and everything.”
There is a great documentary about the making of this series, and it shows a cast and crew working together, listening to each other, supportive and always willing to try things. It’s not all rainbows and sunshine, the way they filmed the pig head is fascinating if completely disgusting, and I could see how one of the challenges would be to keep everyone’s complete school uniform together, not get pieces or parts lost or traded or forgotten in a sea of boys between 6 and 13 years old. I felt like she must have made hundreds of pairs of short pants.
“It was hundreds I’m sure,” Meschede told me. “We had 47 children, and then each had a hero costume, plus up to eight shirts, eight shorts. We made hundreds of shorts, and sometimes the doubles we had made, we had to still make new ones, because everything in the rainforest shrinks. The wool itself does strange things, it all looks puffy, and if you put something in the tumble dry it is crazy. It was a fine line between being truly authentic and just making it work, because the environment, as beautiful and magical it is, it’s also ruthless,so, yeah, we had hundreds of shorts, and socks, especially.”
Those Choir Uniforms
Still in the first episode, we meet the school’s choir for the first time. Most of the other boys have gathered on the beach when the choir makes their entrance in long heavy cloaks and caps which feel religious. Later in the story we see this same group rehearsing at school, back in time, and we learn that there are tightly pleated collars and ruffs to make it all the more formal. That pomp and circumstance, the normalcy it implies, lends this group some of its gravitas, and I wanted to know all about the work that had gone into creating this island subgroup.
“We researched really thoroughly,” the costume designer explained, “and found lots of beautiful images of choir boys at independent schools, singing in a cathedral like St Paul’s, or in Canterbury. Those caps, they’re actually called Canterbury caps, and we found an original one, on eBay somewhere, and then we copied it. They’re all made from wool, as they would have been made. We searched tons of images for the collars, and we made lots of samples. It’s really hard to make them sit really well, so that they’re not too rigid and don’t look too theatrical, but that still has enough body to look good and stand up. What I love about that scene is that it’s so surreal, you’re on this island, it’s hot, the sun is kind of glistening, and you see these boys in layers and layers of wool. And they all look really rigid, it’s like a unity, it’s like structure.”
The kid actors had parents and tutors with them, and were restricted to how many hours they could be on set or even working, and the crew found ways to maximize what they were able to accomplish in reduced timetables. But still, actually getting to the island where this was filmed, with the cast in full costume, felt very different from the way it had in earlier planning stages.
“We were quite nervous about dressing the boys in shirt, wool blazer, black, and a cap,” Meschede said to me, “but first of all, the boys were amazing, and never complained. As soon as we stopped filming, we all ran to the boys, parents, chaperones, costume department, everyone, and to take all the hot layers off, to give them cool packs, and fans. It was actually quite fun, we laughed a lot. There is one scene, very surreal, and very dreamy, a little shot where the blazer is lying in the sand. We wanted to incorporate the school logo of this school called Bishop Wordsworth, this is where William Golding was once a teacher. We were all wondering if this independent school where he was teaching inspired him to write the book, Lord of the Flies.”
The costume designer had a friend, a biologist, who attended Bishop Wordsworth, and when she told him about the project he made a suggestion.
“He said, ‘why don’t you use their logo?’” Meschede said, “and I’m like, what a brilliant idea. Then Joe Wilson and Mark Munden really loved it, and we contacted the school, and they were excited, and said, yes, please use it. It’s little details that make it special.”
I had to ask if there were any other connections to the author’s school, was the choir dressed their way?
“It’s really hard also to find good photographs of choir boys,” Meschede explained. “We looked up Canterbury choirs, the Quiet Sun Pools, and we couldn’t find any images of the choir at Bishop Wordsworth. But, the images we did find were all the same. You know, slightly wider, slightly smaller, so we went along with what they could be. But it’s quite, historically correct, and they’re beautiful, the way they frame the face.”
Dress Up, Lost Boy Style
Though the idea of being castaways is romantic at first, the reality of their new lives adds stress after stressor to the shoulders of those who assume leadership. Between their hunts and goofing off and pranks, eventually someone finds a suitcase. It is woman’s suitcase, and it is filled with stuff no self-respecting school-boy-turned-heathen would be interested in, except nothing is as it was on this island. I read that the boys, who quickly turn the bag’s ruffled contents into fierce tribal garb for their rituals, had actually participated in the making of these costumes, and I asked the designer if she would tell me that story.
“That was all planned,” Meschede told me, “and it was done in a really beautiful way. The boys were invited to come to the costume department, Mark and Marianne had chosen beautiful elements these boys could play with, or they could use to make something to express themselves, their character, their journey, their evolution. Each boy came in for fitting, and picked some pieces; for one boy it was a necklace, another fell in love with a red hat with feathers, and another boy really wanted to wear this very impractical petticoat. All these elements were suddenly more than just pieces of women’s clothing from a suitcase, they became something else, they really expressed their inner being, how they were feeling, and they turned them very dark. They added all this face paint, body paint, and when you see their hunting dances in the thunderstorm, that is one of my favorite scenes, it’s so hauntingly beautiful, and these clothes are not anymore what they were.”
The rituals the boys create are disturbing, and I don’t know how that could have been the same without these textiles. The way the children bind them to their bodies is itself a ritual, and when they are painted they become different people, others who are capable of ‘more’ and who never ask if ‘more’ is good or bad.
“They become so much more,” Meschede said with a smile, “they get absorbed almost. And then a skirt is suddenly not a skirt anymore, it is a cape, or it’s like a dress to dance in, something to wear to be wild, and fierce and fearless, threatening. And it’s beautiful but it’s very animalistic, they’re not these young, innocent boys anymore, they’re almost like beasts in the dark. It distorts their faces and their bodies.”
Those scenes on the beach, sequences that illustrate frenzy, violence which erupts and recedes, waves lapping always in the background. It makes for a haven and a hell, and for these boys the differences between the two are not always clear. It is hard enough being young and supervised, I thought to myself while watching the last episode. Then I wondered if other eventualities were even possible. It is incredible, the logistical concerns for costumes that all of that creates. I asked the costume designer how this production had been for her organizationally, how it was possible to manage so many complications and moving parts, and to be suffocating in the humidity the whole time. I kept coming back to the idea of wool that was never quite dry.
“When it’s a series with different episodes,” Meschede told me, “and they don’t get shot chronologically, it’s really a master class in perfecting and managing it all. Luckily we were a big team, and we had this amazing team from Malaysia. Basically everything is numbered with photographs. I spoke with Marc every morning, to double check that everything’s right, make sure we had everything. Because it was really challenging if you forgot something because it took over an hour to get to the location. We were mainly based on the island called Langkawi, and every morning it was roughly a 30-minute boat ride to the location, with like pink dolphins swimming beside and sea eagles above us. It was amazing, stunning, but you had to double check, make lists, count the bags to make sure that everything was there.”
I asked about the collaboration for this scene, between Meschede and Agertoft and the hair and makeup departments. Even if the child actors had a say in the makeup and hair that went with their jungle creations, there was a distinct artisanship to each painted face that spoke of people working well together behind the camera. The boys are objectively filthy by the time this happens, but the facepaint and body paint have purpose, they add to the armor of the costumes. Smears of organics and mud that manage to impress when they might have only been disgusting.
Plus, someone had to track all these things for continuity, then there is dancing and fire and stunts, how did this all happen, and come out so beautifully on film?
“We worked really closely together with Jacqueline Fowler, our makeup designer,” Maja Meschede explained. “She chose all the different colors very carefully, and she chose only what you actually could find and then copied it. Like white chalk, if you mix it with water, you have white paint, and then dark red, it is amazing what you can find. If you grind some leaves, you get a kind of dark green paste. She used those for their faces and bodies and we copied what she did onto the costumes so it looked like the boys had done their whole bodies, forgetting the clothes. The makeup department made the beautiful masks, we had fittings together and big meetings, and again, the boys had a voice in all of it. They were making suggestions, how they would have liked to have their faces painted, and what mask inspires them, and they are amazing kids.”