‘Firefly Lane’ Costume Designer Explains How Kate ‘Can Just Be Herself’ at the End
The first week of prep for “Firefly Lane,” costume designer Allissa Swanson and her assistant took a road trip to as many thrift stores as possible, stopping at four small towns to visit anywhere from three to eight shops a day.
Swanson explained the difference in the best friends’ fashion as having to do with taste and time. Their friendship spans almost four decades — the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and early aughts.
“Kate was always a little less colorful than Tully. Not that she didn’t wear color, but she would go more towards the pastels or the softer colors, and Tully was always much more vibrant,” Swanson told TheWrap. “That was in each decade, but the ‘70s, there were more greens and oranges and browns in that decade. The later ‘80s, Kate was still more pastel than Tully was, but now it was more the blues and the pinks, and because it was such hot colors in the late ‘80s. We got really going that direction and Kate sort of still stayed with the aquas and the pinks.”
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Each women had her own accessories, particularly in the ‘80s, which lead Swanson and her team to rebead many a necklace and re-post many an earring — which was easiest with those on shepherd’s hooks — because many of the actresses had metal allergies. Clothes and accessories were also traded back and forth at moments in the show. Tully had a pulse on the fashion of each decade, while Kate took a while to catch up to everyone else.
“It had to do more with the style of clothes they wore, not just the colors that they wore with Kate always being a little bit more conservative than Tully, Tully always sort of being fashion-forward, and she would wear that fashion first, and Kate would be a couple of years behind Tully. They’re roommates throughout all of the ‘80s, and so because of that, as with any friends, there’s some rub off, they rub off on each other. I could see them in a store together and Kate seeing something and Tully being like ‘No you have to get that’ and it almost being more in Tully’s color or Tully’s style, but she helps her friend move through the ‘80s in a fashionable way, even though Kate is more interested in her friendship as opposed to what’s going on exteriorly. She’s not so interested in being out there and everybody noticing her so much as she is really having a nice life.”
Several weddings occur just in Part 2 of Season 2 alone, but Swanson and her team found most of the dresses — from the news station fashion show options to Kate’s wedding dresses — thrifting. Both of Sarah Chalke’s wedding dresses for Kate fit like a glove. Swanson and her assistants made the matching bridesmaids dresses for Kate’s wedding in the ‘80s, and she ordered Marah’s wedding pantsuit online, having to make many alterations. The dress Kate wears in her horse-back riding daydream had the material of five dresses, and they fashioned a similar dress for her stunt double as well.
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“We overdyed them all to bring them into that beautiful sort of beige peachy color that was starting to go the direction of her color scheme. Then we hacked them all up, and we put them together so it was extra long so it would flow over the back of the horse, just like in a fairy tale. And then we added a whole crinoline to it,” Swanson said. “We were going for that whole fantasy. It was to show that she was free in her mind and she was free of the pain. And she was living the ultimate romantic fantasy because we know how romantic Kate has been this whole time.”
Even the choices toward the end of the series held specific meaning, especially when it came to Kate’s cancer.
“As a person who is looking back on her life and also dealing with current physical pain of what she’s going through, everything got very, very soft. She is wearing soft fabrics, there’s a lot of cashmere, a lot of sweatpants, the kind of thing that would be comfortable for you to wear, that’s not constricting to the body, that you want to just wrap up in number one,” Swanson said. “Number two, she spends her last few months really looking to the past. I think [she] comes to terms with the fact that this whole time, she was under the impression she was following Tully, but really, it’s Kate story. It’s always been Kate’s story, but she didn’t realize that while she was in it. She realizes that she doesn’t need to be bold, or wear a costume or try to keep up with Tully. She can just be herself and she softens into that realization.”
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