From Classic Issey Miyake To Rachel Comey, Beef’s Trend Is As Dramatic As The Present
Lee Sung Jin’s Beef, dropping on Netflix April 6, kicks off with a high-speed automotive chase via the residential streets of LA’s San Fernando Valley after a close to fender bender within the car parking zone of Forsters, a fictional Costco-like retailer. Driving his beat-up pickup truck, down-on-his-luck contractor Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) initially assumes his highway rage nemesis is a person. However, because the digicam quickly reveals, as a substitute of Dominic Toretto, a petite girl sits behind the wheel of a white Mercedes SUV.
Later, secure in her storage, self-made entrepreneur Amy Lau (Ali Wong) steadily regains her composure. Her ensemble – an ivory cable-knit bucket hat (with the brim playfully flipped up), a quilted oatmeal jacket by Tonlé, and a tonal Eileen Fisher cashmere sweater – feels as gentle and calming as Amy’s Insta-popular plant model, Kōyō Haus. It additionally feels deliberately antithetical to her code crimson outburst from earlier. “She may be very curated in that ‘Instagram-y’ method,” says costume designer Helen Huang. This concept of contradictions – that beneath our pristinely curated appearances is a simmering properly of complexity, fury, and disgrace – is a recurrent theme all through the 10-episode collection.
“Amy has a dressing up that she places on every single day and that’s the picture that she initiatives,” says Huang, who beforehand dressed Emma Roberts in Holidate, received an Emmy as a part of costume designer Lou Eyrich’s staff on American Horror Story, and imagined a dystopian future in Station Eleven.
For Amy’s Calabasas mom-fluencer persona, Huang appeared to Korean American designer and proprietor of Los Angeles-based Mohawk Common Retailer, Bo Carney, for inspiration. Huang additionally referenced the glossy and comforting vibe of Kōyō Haus, which an overwhelmed Amy desires to promote to Forsters to lastly spend time together with her Insta-perfect household. “We tried to make use of a number of natural materials; issues which might be cozier. We tried to decorate her from the angle of an inventive particular person,” says Huang.
Amy’s calming Coastal Grandma tones are a sartorial entrance for the darkish feelings and impulses she retains hidden from her household and world at giant. All through the collection, Danny and Amy proceed to pour their angst over societal and familial expectations, insecurities, resentments, and disappointments into more and more abhorrent habits as they search revenge upon one another. The 2 first meet face-to-face (neither truly noticed one another through the highway rage chase) after Danny cons his method into Amy’s picture-perfect home and interrupts Amy partaking in an intimate second.
“[Wong] truly needed a skirt for the masturbation sequence,” explains Huang, about Amy’s languid set from Baserange. “We needed to be extraordinarily impartial for that scene, as a result of that scene is tremendous, tremendous intense.” The pure linen texture completely aligns with the mild, earthy facade Amy constructs to masks her true disposition and intentions.
Later, getting ready to seal the Forsters deal, Amy heads to Las Vegas for the retail juggernaut’s annual assembly. Going via an existential disaster, Amy offers herself a method transformation and debuts a extreme bleached blonde bob and her model of a “energy swimsuit”: a sleeveless, deconstructed, black pinstriped Proenza Schouler gown with a fringe hem. “Amy clothes arty, so she would undoubtedly hold her sense of self in that method, however [then] transition right into a extra severe coloration, in her thoughts,” says Huang, who developed Amy into darker colours as she makes progressively questionable selections.
Within the misleading calm earlier than the ultimate storm, Amy returns to her pure hair coloration and reassuring neutrals, like a white cutout gown by Rachel Comey. “At that second, she felt like she had her life extra collectively, so to shift again to the white felt extra pure,” says Huang. The 2 adversaries have a quick second of connection. However that’s shortly annihilated after the gown actually reveals Amy’s reprehensible motion that can result in emotional and bodily carnage to these closest to the duo.
Her plush hues and architectural silhouettes additionally diverge from El Segundo-based residence dweller Danny’s all-thrifted utilitarian T-shirts and zip-up jackets in grays and blues. “That was necessary to me, to distinction the totally different Asian communities, and the place they reside,” says Huang, who grew up in Los Angeles. For first-generation Korean American Danny, she referenced her step-brothers who hail from the economic, LAX-adjacent metropolis. “Regardless that his garments are usually not as costly — or as curated as Amy’s — he nonetheless has a picture of what he desires to current to the world,” says Huang. “Nobody on this present escapes that.”
Amy’s husband and stay-at-home dad George (Joseph Lee), the son of a revered Isamu Noguchi-esque Japanese American artist, conducts faculty pickups like he walked out of a Cluél Homme editorial. “I needed to indicate that not solely is he [Amy’s] counterpart on this curated world, but in addition that Asian males are extraordinarily trendy and might pull off something,” says Huang, who dressed George in Japanese labels like Kapital, Batoner, and WTAPS, in addition to cool European manufacturers like Nanushka, Pimples, and Officine Générale.
However it’s George’s mom, Fumi (Patti Yasutake) who has the last word aptitude for conceptual trend. Huang and creator Lee envisioned her to be “actually trendy” and Commes des Garçons-referential, whereas additionally taking inspiration from Opening Ceremony founder Humberto Leon. Fumi’s black-and-white polka dot Junya Watanabe gown, early-‘80s Issey Miyake, and classic Yohji Yamamoto and CDG distinction together with her daughter-in-law’s trendy minimalism — and spotlight the totally different strategies each sturdy girls use to exert management over their sophisticated lives and trauma. “You create the reality you wish to inhabit,” says Fumi, in divergent red-and-white patterns, to Amy, clad in her signature solids.
“I actually needed to indicate [a woman of Fumi’s generation] with a perspective,” says Huang. “Not dressing simply to indicate off their our bodies, however to indicate off an identification.”
Additionally in Amy’s orbit, gossip-y actual housewife Naomi (Ashley Park) clothes to ship her personal message, whereas gunning for a spot on the “Folks to Watch” record for Calabasas Fashion journal — which already profiled Amy. Huang took inspiration from Asian American influencer multihyphenates, like Aimee Music and Chriselle Lim, whereas additionally avoiding sartorial similarity to Park’s Emily in Paris character, Mindy, who’s additionally a wealthy socialite. In a single scene, ensconced in her large walk-in closet and feeling rejected by Amy, Naomi dejectedly fashions a shaggy brown coat over a blue, floral, puff-sleeve Reformation gown and contemplates two designer baggage, one in every of which provides Valentino Rockstud vibes.
“She’s just like the influencer that does the ‘fundamental’ look after which has a bag with the emblem,” says Huang, who additionally dressed Naomi in influencer-popular labels, like Alo Yoga and Self Portrait. “She’s not artistic like Amy or Fumi. She’s not a really daring dresser in any method.” Naomi “curates” her search for the ‘gram and her social standing, whereas wielding her logomania purses and equipment as clout.
“It was this concept of everybody [on this show] being very aware of the best way that they current themselves to the world,” says Huang.
The outcomes are proof of the ability of trend as a mirrored image of identification.
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