From Classic Issey Miyake To Rachel Comey, Beef’s Vogue Is As Dramatic As The Present

Lee Sung Jin’s Beef, dropping on Netflix April 6, kicks off with a high-speed automobile chase by 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 digital camera quickly reveals, as a substitute of Dominic Toretto, a petite lady sits behind the wheel of a white Mercedes SUV. 

Later, protected 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 delicate and calming as Amy’s Insta-popular plant model, Kōyō Haus. It additionally feels deliberately antithetical to her code purple 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 sequence.

“Amy has a fancy dress that she places on day by day and that’s the picture that she initiatives,” says Huang, who beforehand dressed Emma Roberts in Holidate, gained an Emmy as a part of costume designer Lou Eyrich’s crew on American Horror Story, and imagined a dystopian future in Station Eleven. 

For Amy’s Calabasas mom-fluencer persona, Huang seemed to Korean American designer and proprietor of Los Angeles-based Mohawk Basic 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 numerous natural materials; issues which are cozier. We tried to decorate her from the angle of a creative individual,” 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 sequence, 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 really noticed one another throughout the highway rage chase) after Danny cons his method into Amy’s picture-perfect home and interrupts Amy partaking in an intimate second.

“[Wong] really 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 light, 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 by an existential disaster, Amy provides herself a mode 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 attire arty, so she would positively hold her sense of self in that method, however [then] transition right into a extra severe colour, 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 colour 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 short second of connection. However that’s shortly annihilated after the gown actually reveals Amy’s reprehensible motion that may 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 essential to me, to distinction the completely different Asian communities, and the place they dwell,” says Huang, who grew up in Los Angeles. For first-generation Korean American Danny, she referenced her step-brothers who hail from the commercial, LAX-adjacent metropolis. “Though his garments usually are 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 may 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 final word aptitude for conceptual style. 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 completely different strategies each robust ladies use to exert management over their sophisticated lives and trauma. “You create the reality you need 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 id.” 

Additionally in Amy’s orbit, gossip-y actual housewife Naomi (Ashley Park) attire to ship her personal message, whereas gunning for a spot on the “Individuals to Watch” checklist for Calabasas Model journal — which already profiled Amy. Huang took inspiration from Asian American influencer multihyphenates, like Aimee Track 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 all 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 inventive 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 acutely aware of the best way that they current themselves to the world,” says Huang. 

The outcomes are proof of the ability of style as a mirrored image of id.

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