AMC's original series INTO THE BADLANDS is hard to put in a box. It's a mash-up of multiple genres built on a foundation of top-notch martial arts fight choreography. As Alfred Gough (one of the series' creators) puts it, “It's your average ordinary martial arts dystopia fantasy drama,” but he says so ironically, knowing full well that his creation defies simple categorization. “I joke that in the AMC universe, we're like after THE WALKING DEAD. After the zombies are all gone, humanity comes back, because obviously nobody nuked the place because it's still beautiful. We didn't want to do the MAD MAX. We wanted it, again which is more like Samurai films and Chinese historical epics, there's a lot of color in the world. Sort of brutal, yet beautiful. And we did that very deliberately.” And just like any martial arts dystopia fantasy drama, the cast rocks some fine threads. INTO THE BADLANDS has its own distinct costume designs, a cosplayer's dream, with daring fashion statements for a dystopian world.

For Giovanni Lipari, Costume Designer for INTO THE BADLANDS Season Two, the show was an unprecedented challenge. Giovanni has been working in cinematic wardrobe and art departments since the mid-nineties. He assisted on notable costume series like THE BORGIAS (2011–2013) and PENNY DREADFUL (2014–2016) and was the Costume Shop Supervisor for another dystopia fantasy drama (with a smattering of martial arts), DIVERGENT (2014). INTO THE BADLANDS Season One had two different costume designers, Christine Bieselin Clark and Nadine Haders. Giovanni spoke at length about the challenges of costume designing for INTO THE BADLANDS Season Two.

“The first thing was freaking out,” confessed Giovanni with dramatic flamboyance. “Miles (Millar, the other creator of INTO THE BADLANDS) had a very strong idea. Because it could be the biggest nightmare, doing something that you don't know what it is. What period? It's up in the air. A bit of this, a bit of that. And then there's no unity, you know? If you steal from the past for the future, you don't know what you're doing. So basically we had this really strong idea based on what happened. What happened had to be continued last year. It had to be continued this year. Obviously a new location so I wanted to refresh and readdress the whole thing. The only lucky thing is that whatever the concept he passed along, it was easy for me to understand. So I think it was lucky in that we had a mutual feel of patterns, textures and colors. And then he said the colors, the bright colors, are very important, which are usually the opposite in any movie. In other things you try to fade down, cool down colors. We peeled off all the patina trying to brighten up all the colors and the actors. So the concept kept on changing.”

Fashion in INTO THE BADLANDS has strong Asian influences along with ties to Steampunk, perhaps more closely to the sub-genre of Shanghai Steampunk. “There's a lot of samurai,” says Giovanni. “It's been the thing – the Asian style. Not as it's being used in Asia but taken into contemporary work. It's been very much a concept, an influence, we had… [Steampunk] is the first thing. Then as I said, it's been very helpful, but later on we all found, each department, our way to call it 'Steampunk.' Miles gave us things to think about and we start working, and then you bring this back and saying, 'Oh, you're going too far, too far.' This is the job he does, to keep everybody connected to something. But Steampunk and the Asian style are absolutely the things that we had to work long on, to squeeze it into the Badlands... The concept of the show doesn't exist because it keeps moving, moving, continuously.”

Beyond the colorful look, INTO THE BADLANDS presents an additional challenge for Giovanni. The costumes must be functional and practical for all of the fight scenes. That's not the typical catwalk concern for designers. “But then, there is the fight,” he says with a sigh. “The fight is the main unit. It's not the second. Usually the stunts are the second. The fight is the main unit so a lot goes with that, with the movement. The movement is necessary. It's almost like for dance, you know? Designing for a ballet….Malfunctions you say? Well some trousers split all the way. It is the first thing that happens with trousers. As soon as you raise your leg… Yeah, but that was actually well taken. It wasn't addressed like 'Oh, what happened?' They actually might have known that was going to happen sooner or later. It was taken like, 'Mmm-hmm.'”

The Widow Blacks and the Tilda Blues

The Widow, played by Emily Beecham, is the rebellious Baroness of the Badlands. She allegedly killed her husband to usurp his fiefdom and now leads a band of young female warriors called the Butterflies. She adopted a blue butterfly as her baronial crest, symbolic of her transformation from insignificance to power and beauty. “So the Widow, it's black, so you can't really play with colors. You can play with textures. Everything has texture and reads the light. Also silks, satins, metallic, anything with textures.”

While most of the other characters have more sensible footwear, Emily Beecham says the biggest challenge of her character are her signature boots. “Still, the stiletto heels. It’s still a challenge.” Nevertheless, the Widow wields those boots with the same lethality as her swords and daggers. Several of the Widow's coup de grâce techniques are delivered with a deadly flair by those stiletto heels.

Tilda, played by Ally Ioannides, is a deadly teenage assassin in the service of the Widow. Giovanni explains Tilda's brilliant blue attire that sets her apart from the rest of the Butterflies, and his discussions with the show's creators. “So I said, 'Do you want to see the fight with her in black because she's been a regent?' All the Butterflies are blue and she's in black. She is in a Butterfly shape and a middle color. Black with blue. So I said, 'How do you want to see the finale?' That was my question for him. Obviously you went for the shape that moves because when they move, that's it. And so he thought about it and said, 'This one.' So there was a bright blue and I said, 'That one?' and he bravely said 'Yes.' Because who's going to say 'Yes' to that? That's scary.

“And so there's the support we have. If you feel to be brave, he goes for it. This has been absolutely the most cool thing that happens for me, to just go with the scene fitting. And so he said, 'This one,' because it could have been black with some blue showing inside. But as we said, we always have something hanging somewhere because within the movement, there's the shawl, and then with the slow motion, that was the other concept in the beginning. So fabric, shape.

“It's been very very challenging to deal with the people who does the real movement. They really have specifics. Everybody has stunt people but these are real fighters. They know what they are doing. And they complain the least of everybody. They have their own thing. And they keep their weight. Surprisingly easy – I was going towards, 'No, I don't like this, I don't like that.' They tell you one thing, that's all. And if you do that, you walk away. It went so fast that we rarely went back to correct something. Very challenging and very beautiful. I don't even know how all these happened.”

Sunny – From Red Leather to Bareback

Season One of INTO THE BADLANDS was filmed in New Orleans. Season Two moved production to Ireland. Sunny, played by Daniel Wu, is the lead character, a Clipper with the most kills in the Badlands. Clippers are enforcers, the deadly assassins who keep the Barons in power. As the deadliest Clipper, Sunny wore a stylish red leather trench coat in Season One, not the best choice for New Orleans. “One thing that makes a big difference is the weather,” says Daniel Wu when comparing New Orleans to Ireland. “The weather last season was unbearable – like 42 degrees [Celsius] or 100 degrees [Fahrenheit], 90% humidity. Here you have the opposite – cold but much more tolerable when you're wearing a trench coat and fighting. It was leather, and I had to go through like four or five in a day because I'd sweat through the leather. We had to keep switching them out and switching them out. The sweat would come through the leather. It's porous, right? It was very very tough. It was really tough last season.”

Daniel spoke with Giovanni about Sunny's leather trench coat. “He told me that a long time. He said it was awful. He didn't say the leather was awful. Obviously, the sweating, it is awful into the leather. So we didn't use leather. Although we could have because in Ireland it's not that hot. So the first costume was connection with the past, dark folds, sleeveless, and then he goes into a stage where he's always moving around.”

However, Sunny's trench wasn't an issue for Season Two. At the end of Season One, Sunny was captured and sold into slavery, losing his trench. “You had to get him undressed from what he had,” says Lipari. “Basically he loses his regent position as military. He loses his strength. He was a miner. A miner had to be what everyone else had to be. But after that, I decided to give him a sleeveless coat. Because the sleeves and the shoulders makes sharp. Instead, if you take the sleeves off, a sleeveless coat, and the rounded shoulders, it make like 'loose,' you know, more loose. So there you might get something – less military, less in charge. Once again, you try. And the colors are poorer. Everything is fading, fading, because he actually has to move around the Badlands. He has to find his way around. So in terms of light, less sharp and more rounded, that was another guess. But it kept on changing.

“And he has very simple requests. He doesn't even want to look good – because he does look good – that's the secret. He doesn't care. Give him a PJ, some easy, like gym clothes and put some decoration around and he's very happy. He's very confident in the way he looks. He doesn't need to look any better than that. Fair enough. But it's very unusual in the cast.”

Ironically, the Clipper costumes went the opposite direction of the weather. “The Clippers never had coats in Louisiana,” continued Giovanni. “Now it's freezing cold and they're sleeveless. So I've been asked to do something and I'm doing right now. Bear in mind that a couple of these coats might be establishing for the next season. So anything you do actually goes into a pot, it can be big thing.” Without giving away any spoilers, Sunny will return to his signature red attire somewhere in Season Two. “He will go back to his color and his shape...” divulges Giovanni. “We remade – it's a new version of the beautiful thing he was using last year. Very beautiful. We used ridged, more like a biker, but only red.”

 

The Dream of Badlands Style

For Giovanni and the team of costume and art designers, INTO THE BADLANDS is a dream project. Giovanni feels blessed to work on it. “This gives you a chance to show everything you can do. So either you do well or you fall badly on your face. This is absolutely the project that doesn't exist. This is the thing. You actually go through the period. It gives variation. So we did one of the Jade [played by Sarah Bolger], one of these ladies, we made it like the sixties. Why? We don't know. It was the color, it was suggesting that shape. So this is absolutely for a designer, the job you want to do.”

While we might not be able to "clip" our adversaries with the panache of the Widow, Tilda or Sunny, we get to follow along with them in their journey INTO THE BADLANDS; and thanks to the artistry of Giovanni and his team, we get to watch them face their challenges, all along being too busy looking good. Orla Brady, who plays Lydia, puts it, “You get to live fantasy lives that you would never dream of living.”