One change in Joel ’s costume design from " The Last of Us " time of year 1 to Season 2 is that he tuck his shirts in now " like a daddy would . "
To celebrateThe Last of UsSeason 2, BuzzFeed sat down with costume designer Ann Foley to chat about creating the costumes for this season, including the subtle change to Joel’s look from Season 1 to Season 2,Ellie’s “Take On Me” look,Dina’s iconic bracelet, dressing hordes of infected, and much more.
Here’s everything she revealed:
There are obviously monumental spoiler ahead forThe Last of UsSeason 2 !
1.First, since clothing is such an important piece of how actors get into character, Ann said she considers the cast her “closest collaborators in creating these characters.” Speaking about working withPedro Pascalspecifically, Ann added, “I love that Pedro has such great insight into who Joel is, and I relied on that wonderful knowledge from him to help him create the look for Joel in Season 2.”
2.One change in Joel’s costume design from Season 1 to Season 2 is that he tucks his shirts in now “like a dad would.” Ann explained, “When Pedro and I were doing his fittings, we talked about this subtle change, like maybe Joel’s tucking his shirts in to sort of be a dad, and he’s also a pillar of the community. So it’s trying to be a little more respectful and dressed up a little bit more.”
3.The only costume piece that carried over between Season 1 and Season 2 was Joel’s signature jacket because it became so important to his character. Ann said, “We needed the audience to connect with a piece of clothing, knowing what was going to be coming up in Episode 3. So I had a conversation with Pedro about it in the fitting.”
4.Speaking moment in Episode 3, when Ellie finds Joel’s jacket in his closet following his death, Ann said, “We needed to match that moment in the game as closely as possible. And even for people who didn’t play the game, they recognized that jacket. When Ellie went and grabbed it, it broke everyone. I mean, I worked on the show, and it broke me. That’s what serves the story. And at the end of the day, that’s what I do as a costume designer is I have to help tell the story of what’s happening.”
5.Episode 6, whichfeatures all the flashbacks between Joel and Ellie, was a perfect example of how costumes helped ageBella Ramseyup and down as Ellie. Ann explained, “At the beginning of that progression, you see Ellie in lighter colors and prints and baggier clothing, because we wanted to sort of show that 14-year-old silhouette in a way that helped physically.” As Ellie gets older, the clothing gets shorter and more form-fitting.
6.In terms of dressing present-day Ellie, her style intentionally mirrors Joel’s style in terms of the pieces of clothing she wears, but also the colors. Ann explained, “You’ll see Ellie in more plaid like Joel, but also in this bluer palette, to sort of show this emotional place that they’re both in that’s a little bit darker. I kept that color palette for Ellie throughout the season. Very sort of blue and muted.”
7.Ellie and Dina’s color palettes were also intentionally meant to be very different, but complement each other. Dina wears much brighter colors, which Ann describes as “more fun and effervescent and full of life,” and she wears patterns, which Ellie doesn’t.
8.Ellie’s signature black Converse were decorated by Bella. “I just gave Bella a pair of Converse and I said, ‘I want you to doodle like Ellie would doodle in her journal, and do with these what you will,'” Ann explained. “Bella took them, and a month later, I got them back.”
9.And, Ann never asked Bella what any of the doodles on Ellie’s Converse meant. She said, “I never even asked Bella what it meant, because I felt like it was between Bella and Ellie. Those are Ellie’s doodles, and that’s just one of the small details that help inform the actors as to who the character is, and maybe the audience doesn’t pick it up, but Bella knew was there.”
10.Dina teasing Ellie about her Converse was a running joke that lent itself to the practicality of getting Ellie out of those sneakers for boots, which helped Bella while they were on location, filming stunts, and more. Ann said, “Ellie’s a rebel, and she doesn’t care, and she’s going to do whatever she wants to, and she’s always going to go against the norm. So it actually works in a really cool way with her wearing them and Dina calling her out.”
11.Certain outfits fromThe Last of Us Part IIwere necessary to recreate as closely as possible. One of which is Ellie’s outfit whenshe sings “Take On Me” to Dina in Episode 4. Ann said, “I felt it was important. Craig and Neil [Druckmann, who created the games and co-created the series] felt it was important, and so did Bella.”
12.Meanwhile, the rust-colored shirt that Dina wears while in Seattle, notably in the “Take On Me” scene, is meant to be a nod to Dina’s backpack color from the video game. Ann specifically took the color and put it into the shirt because it stays “true to the essence of the character.”
13.Dina’s bracelet, which she gives to Ellie in the game and also in the Season 2 finale, was a collaboration between the costume and props departments. The bracelet was custom-made, based on references from the game, and then the costume team “broke it down, aged it, and made it look like it could have been a vintage piece,” because they wanted the feeling that it had maybe been in Dina’s family for a long time.
14.Another costume piece that is a replica from the game is Ellie’s striped shirt that she wears to the museum with Joel in Episode 6. Ann recalled, “I knew that T-shirt had to be that because that’s such an important part of the game. I wanted that down to every last detail to be exactly like it was in the game. The only thing that I changed was that I changed it from a tank top to a T-shirt because I felt the tank top was too adult, and I felt the T-shirt would make her look more like a kid.”
15.Dina’s jacket was not custom-made but rather a jacket fromAviator Nationthat Ann had on her mood board for Dina very early on when she started to think about costumes for Season 2. She said, “There is an air of effervescence and fun and just everything that Dina is, which is full of life, which is why I love that rainbow. Neil Druckmann was immediately drawn to it. He felt like this would be a very iconic Dina jacket, sort of like the jacket that Joel wore last season. When I put it on Isabela [Merced] in fitting, it just made sense.”
16.Ellie’s green jacket that she wears in Seattle involved numerous conversations between Ann, Craig Mazin, and Ksenia Sereda, who was the director of photography for Episode 3, because Ellie needed to stand out enough but also blend in with the forest and Seattle’s landscape. “We went and looked at all of these different shades of green,” Ann said.
17.Meanwhile, Joel, Ellie, Tommy, and Abby’s parkas for Episodes 1 and 2 were all custom-made by the costume department onThe Last of Us. Ann explained, “We needed so many, and there was no way that we were going to find vintage parkas with a ’90s kind of vibe, in multiples of six.” Joel and Ellie’s parkas intentionally have “very similar style lines,” with one being blue with a green tint, and the other being blue with a deep purple.
18.There was also a big conversation about changing the jackets that Joel, Ellie, and others wear in the Jackson winter scenes from lightweight jackets to parkas, considering the actors were going to actually be out in the snow and needed to stay warm, etc.
19.Ellie’s Seattle look is one of the most iconic from the game, so this costume was recreated for the show as closely as possible. The only differences in the show are that Ellie’s shirt is a chambray fabric instead of denim because it has a better “drape” on camera, and she wears a short-sleeved T-shirt instead of a tank top.
20.WhenJesse rescues Ellie and Dina in Seattle in Episode 5, his costume was intentionally created to mirror Joel’s because Ellie is meant to think in that moment that maybe Joel came to save her. So, Jesse is wearing a plaid shirt that’s tucked in, and his tape on his boots matches the tape on Joel’s boots in Season 1.
21.In Episode 2, in order to have Tommy stand out against the horde of infected infiltrating Jackson, he’s the only person wearing a red jacket. “I wanted the audience to be able to track Tommy in all the chaos. So none of the infected, nobody else really has red on them in a significant way. It’s just Tommy so that Maria can spot him from the rooftop and see him down there on the street, but so can the audience,” Ann said.
22.Every infected extra comes in for a costume fitting, and they are all given different looks in order to give these characters a little bit of backstory. “We had one guy in a Seattle Loggers sweatshirt and a Clicker wearing this really great rocker band T-shirt with a striped shirt over it. It looks like the grunge from the late ’90s. Maybe that’s who this guy was when he got bit,” Ann recalled.
23.For Episode 2, the costume department did “close to 600 fittings” between the infected, the stunt team, and the citizens of Jackson. The horde in Jackson was given a lot more color so they could stand out against the snow, as opposed to the horde in the subway in Jackson, who are in a different, wetter environment.
24.The costume department also worked closely with prosthetic designer Barrie Gower and his team. All of the cordyceps you see on the clothing were handmade by Barrie and his team. In fact, the color of the cordyceps even changes between Jackson and Seattle.
25.And finally, one of the best examples of the prosthetic and costume departments working so closely wasin Episode 5, when Ellie chases Nora into the basement of the hospital, and we see the cordyceps and spores room with the infected W.L.F. soldiers trapped. Ann explained, “My team worked so closely with Barrie Gower and Paul Spateri, who ran the department for Barrie, in incorporating and helping them to get the costumes built directly into the set.”
