For Apple TV+, Camille Benda Gave ‘Bad Sisters’ Excellent Wardrobes – Forbes

The five Garvey sisters (Eva, Grace, Ursula, Bibi and Becca) are orphans, though they are all adults. Though some are blonde and others brunette, it could have been easy to lose someone, to have a character blend too much into the background. But in the hands, and under the eyes, of costume designer Camille Benda, there is no need to worry about such things. No one will be forgotten. There will be clues and Easter Eggs because costumes are the most fun.

“One of the things that we figured out early for the show is that they’re all different people brought together as family,” Camille Benda told me. Benda is the costume designer for both seasons of the Apple TV+ show Bad Sisters, and we met earlier this month to talk about Season Two, which began airing on November 13, 2024 and the season finale debuting on December 25. “The sisters all have different roles in the family.” Benda explained. A lot of this got worked out in conversations between Benda and Dearbhla Walsh, the director for the first three episodes of Season One, and who returned for Season Two, where she has directed (so far) the first two episodes. “Dearbhla really wanted them to feel like powerful different individuals, but also connected,” Benda told me.

Bad Sisters was inspired by the Flemish series Clan, which aired for a single season on Belgian television channel VTM in fall of 2012. Created by Malin-Sarah Gozin, with episodes directed by Nathalie Basteyns and Kaat Beels, Clan was also about a set of sisters (only four of them) and the imbroglios they stumble through while trying to rescue one of their number from a tyrannical beast of a bad husband.

“Within the script there was a lot of sisterly banter and a lot of love, and a lot of sort of questioning of who they are as a family,” Benda told me. So in the planning stage, during the very first fittings, she sat with each actor to talk through how they felt the costuming could aid them in their performances. “Bibi,” Benda explained, “is a really good example of this, very clear cut.” Played by actress Sarah Green, Bibi wears an eyepatch following an ancient incident story told in Season One. The condensed version, which spoils nothing, is that Grace’s first husband JP is at fault for the loss of her eye.

“Sarah Green was exploring these ideas of Bibi being very controlled,” Benda told me. “Needing to have order in her life, her character really likes everything to be in its place. So we went for clean shapes, a very narrow color palette; blacks, blues, cream. We added splashes of lavender, little bits of color here and there, like a bright green. But the point really was to give Bibi this controlled palette, that reflected who she was as a character. Her wife Nora is completely different. Flowy, floral, relaxed, even within their couplehood and their marriage. They’re quite different people, and they dress quite differently.”

The world has changed too, all of it. Dublin is not the same in 2024 as it was when we first met the Garvey’s in 2022. “Obviously Grace’s style changes quite a lot,” Benda said. In the first season, Grace is under the thumb of a truly intolerable husband, John Paul Williams, aka, JP. “Our thinking was that she was originally dressing for her husband, choosing things that she knows he will approve of.” With JP out of the picture, it offered a chance for Grace to figure out who she was, what she liked and wanted. “We went very floral, very appropriate, maybe even a little old-fashioned. But Anne-Marie Duff is so gorgeous that anything you put her in she looks incredible.”

On top of the regular challenges present when designing a season’s worth of wardrobes, the sheer number of characters involved in this narrative meant additional planning and consideration. Benda made sure to add cues and clues to the wardrobes for each role. “With Becca, it was Doc Martens sandals in the first season. This year we had Doc Martens pony skin slides, they’re clog type things. It was really fun, because in both seasons, I bought the Doc Martens, and then the crew started buying them. Even Dearbhla, our director, bought a pair and the ‘Garvey style’ permeated a little bit.”

Sharon Horgan, who plays Eva, the eldest Garvey sister, is the series main writer, and her production company, Merman Television, produces the series. “Anytime Sharon is in clothes she looks fantastic, regardless of anything,” Benda told me. She is absolutely correct. The clothes don’t even have to match. They don’t have to go together. “I think it’s led by the fact that she has such incredible taste on her own,” Benda mused. “She puts things together in really surprising and wonderful combinations. I feel like with Sharon, we provided all these ingredients, and she put together the recipe.”

“With Ursula in Season one,” Benda explained, “we decided that she would always be in ‘Mom Mode’ and always trying to get out of that mode. We thought about her clothes as being bought from the grocery store, or wherever she was getting supplies for the family. Maybe she had an old pair of jeans that was really comfortable. But then, when she dressed up, she looked spectacular. I think that part of looking at their clothes is considering what place in their lives all the sisters are when we meet them in the second season.”

Costumes are tools to actors, and some performers connect deeply with their characters through the clothes they share. “When I was in fittings with Eve Hewson, Becca, she would look at things and think about what points are in a scene,” Benda told me. Hewson, if you do not already know, is the daughter of Irish musician Bono and activist Ali Hewson. “She is so polite,” Benda told me, “Eve is really respectful of everybody’s process, she still advocates for herself, but is extremely collaborative. Eve is an absolute pleasure to work with.” Becca, the youngest Garvey save Blanaid, is the most colorful dresser in the family. “She’s very clashy,” Benda explained, “she’s the most eclectic, she’s picking her clothes from all over the place. We did a lot of vintage shopping, a lot of thrift store shopping, even online stuff. We went to vintage dealers that we loved here in LA. Rose Bowl Flea Market. and Pickwick Vintage Show, my personal favorite.”

Ireland is damp, grey, and the country is almost a supporting actor in this series. So it makes sense that there’s a ton of knitwear because, as Benda explained, “it truly is an Irish tradition.” Aran Knitwear was one such brand, as was IrelandsEye Knitwear. “We also used Faye Dinsmore, a custom knitter in Ireland, my personal favorite out of Ireland for men’s sweaters. And Celtic & Co. and then Jumper 1234 from England. They’re based in London, and they make just the most delicious knits.” The whole production took this position that throughout Season One and Two: that it was crucial to use Irish designers and Irish talent. Early on in Season Two there is a wedding, a celebration the sisters deserve after two years of hell. So, in addition to the heavy use of Irish knitwear, Grace’s wedding dress is from HELEN CODY. “We use a lot of other Irish designers like Louise Kennedy or Taylor Yates,” Benda told me. “There were always plenty of designers that we could find in Dublin or Belfast to support, because it was really important also to shop where the sisters would have done their shopping and where they would have lived.”

A wedding is a massive amount of planning, even when it is being staged for cameras. A fictional wedding requires nearly as much emotional intelligence to plan as the real deal. “I think group unifying was one of the biggest design themes to figure out,” Benda said. “How can we make them all different? But then, how do we not have it look super jumbled? Yellow was a perfect color for Sharon to pick, because against the blue of the Irish sky and the green grass is so deep and rich that the yellow really popped.” When the crew first returned to Dublin to begin work on Season Two, Benda, Dearbhla and the producers went on a recce to the historic Leopardstown Racecourse. “We walked around. We saw the space, we saw the colors,” Benda explained. “That was incredibly informative. I was very inspired by the idea of the yellow for the wedding, and the purple for Leopardstown, because those are the colors that are already in the uniforms there and the buildings. A color theme for Season Two started to develop. You’ll see yellows and purples sort of dotted throughout the show.”

Shooting the actual wedding turned out to be a huge challenge, though not for reasons anyone could have possibly guessed. Storm Agnes slammed into Ireland in late September of 2023, right when the crew was filming. “Our production designer, Candida Otten, was incredible in creating this garden set for the wedding, with the tent, the flowers and the outside setting,” Benda told me. Then, Agnes arrived. “I think it came across Europe, battered Scotland, came across the water and hit the east side of Ireland, where we were shooting.” Benda remembers this clearly because the house where they were shooting faced east, and the storm hit them on the last day of shooting. “The weather in Ireland is pretty remarkable, it really is four seasons in one day.”

Besides the Garvey sisters and the Garda Síochána (or the Gardaí; the police), Grace’s friend and neighbor Roger Muldoon also returns for the second season. His sister Angelica, the magnificent Fiona Shaw, joins him, and complicates everything deliciously. “Well, the two of them, they’re just a dream, absolutely,” Benda said. “Michael Smiley will come to a fitting doing a little dance, maybe he’s got music on. His wife is a music journalist, he knows, like every song on the planet. He’s just the most wonderful collaborator. For Roger, we really felt like his clothes should be things he’s had for years and years. We bought some lovely 1960s suits for Season Two that he wears to the races and to Grace’s wedding.” To keep everything from looking disjointed for all the repeating roles, the costume department mixed pieces from first season wardrobes into what became wardrobes for the second season.

Fiona Shaw plays the maiden sister of Roger Muldoon, friend of Grace, general busybody, possessor of zero ability to read a room. And Fiona Shaw is constantly glorious in any role. The way Benda explained it, Angelica looks at the Garvey’s and sees a loving family she wishes she could be part of. “Their friendships, this jumble of warmth and camaraderie, it’s all stuff she doesn’t have,” Benda explained. “So she tries to create it by leading the grief groups and involving herself in the community. But in a way that obviously comes across as very controlling. But underneath, she’s one of the warmest sort of full-fledged characters, and Fiona brought so much to the role. From our first fitting it was just a delight, and I would leave every fitting with Fiona smiling and feeling like everything was sort of lighter and more joyous. Because that is the way Fiona approaches her work, she is open and joyous.”

The way Benda and Shaw saw it, the Church is a large part of Angelica’s backstory. For the character, Benda told me, “I think the church is a restriction, but a comfort. And we talked about the fact that she’s of a different generation than the Garveys. and we wanted her to feel more conservative. and she also didn’t want to feel like she was a pared down monastic woman. Angelica’s wardrobe, like almost everyone else’s, was a mix of vintage pieces and newer ones, like the coral colored puffer jacket from Uniqlo that the character wears. When Shaw first tried it in, Benda told me, “it was absolutely perfect. Then I spent the next couple months in Ireland, spotting other women of her similar age and look, wearing it across Dublin and across Ireland. I still have a couple pictures of women wearing this exact same puffer.” Shoes were important too, Benda explained, “she needed very sensible shoes. There was a pair of boots we found that Shaw loved, she wears them all the way through the season.”

Given the conservative nature of the character, she’s almost a light-hearted Miss Havisham. “We did a lot of things like dresses and skirts on the bike, it doesn’t really matter if she’s in a dress or skirt. It kind of lent almost a witchy feel to it like the bike was a broom, or something like that.” You’ll see it, the scenes are reminiscent of the Wicked Witch back in Kansas, when she’s just a mean old lady who wants to take a kid’s dog for sport.

Some of the most complex parts of Angelica’s wardrobe, like the cilice she wears, are almost entirely hidden on screen. Jewelers Slim Barrett made an amulet for Angelica as well as the cilice, which is a painful looking metal leg strap and chain we see almost in passing. “Slim and Jules Barrett actually came to the fitting and they’re just a delight,” Benda told me. “They’re both Irish and we found them during Season One. We did a lot of research and talked through what the piece meant, because it’s such a surprising and shocking revelation.” It’s an old-school Christian thinking, mortification of the flesh, Benda described it as “similar to the self flagellation thing a monk might do. It’s connected with this idea of, you know, bodily sin.”

The jewelers made a few prototypes and, “in the end,” Benda said, “it was a combination of store-bought and augmented, then Slim aged it and made it look more worn.” Two final versions of the cilice were made, Benda told me, “because it was an important prop, so in case we needed a backup. But one was made with the real spikes, and then Slim made one with little balls on the ends of the spikes so it wasn’t painful. The magic was that the spikes would happen when they needed to, but then otherwise it was very safe for Fiona to wear.”

For Camille Benda, providing actors with tools they can use is one of the most important responsibilities she is entrusted with. Though we never see them on screen once, throughout all of Season Two, Angelica always has a set of prayer beads on her person. “Fiona asked for a rosary,” Benda told me, “something that she could always have in her pocket. We never see the rosary, but it’s always in one of her costume pockets, there as a sort of talisman for protection.”

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