There aren’t many women in Netflix’s new murder mystery, The Perfect Couple, with whom I’d trade lives. Greer Garrison Winbury (Nicole Kidman) has a jaw-dropping mansion on the coast of Nantucket and a booming business selling mystery novels—sure, color me intrigued—but she also has to deal with such a sexually perverse husband (Liev Schreiber) that she requires her household guests to sign NDAs. Amelia Sacks (Eve Hewson) works with zoo animals all day (I’m listening!), but she’s stuck in a loveless engagement with a man who repeatedly asks if she’s “doing okay” hours after her best friend drowns. (No, Benji, she is not okay! Why are you?) And Merritt Monaco (Meghann Fahy)—well, she’s the one who drowns. Abby Winbury (Dakota Fanning) gets to decorate a fancy Manhattan apartment and style her hair with Sally Hershberger, but she’s also a brat, and her husband is even worse. Then there’s Isabel Nallet (Isabelle Adjani), who sleeps with Abby’s awful husband, and Chloe Carter (Mia Isaac), who has to serve them all blackberry mojitos. I could go on.
But though I don’t envy their predicaments, there is something I wouldn’t mind trying on for size: their clothes. There’s hardly a blouse or a button-down on this show that I wouldn’t slip into and sigh. The Perfect Couple takes what some might call the central tenets of “coastal grandmother couture”—effortlessly styled; deceptively expensive; made of cotton, linen, cashmere, and silk; dyed in pastels, creams, and nature-inspired hues—and adds a signature flair for each individual character. Some of them, like Greer, blend seamlessly into the island look. Others, like Amelia and Merritt, come across as too try-hard or trendy. Costume designer Signe Sejlund does a marvelous job capturing the silhouettes of both the insiders and outsiders in what she calls “a very rich, WASP-y part of America.”
As a formerly landlocked Midwesterner, I could scarcely hope to look at home in a true Nantucket wardrobe. (I only just learned about “Nantucket red.”) But if Ralph Lauren came knocking with one of Greer’s spotless little cardigans? My closet has more than enough space. Ahead, let’s take a closer look at how the women of The Perfect Couple dress—and why we’d want to dress like them.
Greer Garrison Winbury
Costume designer Signe Sejlund, who also worked with Kidman on HBO’s The Undoing, wanted to dress Greer as if she never needed to worry about cleanliness. Thus: immaculate dry-clean-only fabrics in colors practically begging for stains. As Sejlund told WWD, “The more cream colors she could wear, the more complicated it is to stay clean. And that’s a way to show how you don’t have to care about whether you get spots on your clothes or whatever.”
As she also told Variety, Sejlund wanted Greer to “be dreamy and timeless.” Her wardrobe consists almost entirely of sea-colored blouses, trousers, and dresses—with the exception of a dusty red one-shoulder gown that she wears during the implosion of her career. She’s fond of monogrammed silk bathrobes, which she extends to all of her houseguests, and she’s never once depicted in denim or fleece. When she requires comfort, she reaches for a a knit cardigan, never a sweatshirt. When she’s writing, she throws on reading glasses, but the blouses remain. That level of refinement is beyond most temperaments—and bank accounts—but what’s wonderful about Greer’s wardrobe is that it’s capable of a dress-down. Toss one of those blouses together with jeans, or the trousers with a plain white T-shirt, and suddenly you’re no longer dressing like an uptight Nantucket matriarch, but a striving young professional on the subway. Versatility!
Amelia Sacks
According to Sejlund, Amelia “doesn’t care about clothes. She’s very, very natural.” Perhaps that’s why she wears so much merchandise from her workplace, the Central Park Zoo, in addition to her jeans, tank dresses, and striped boxer shorts. Even her more elegant looks don’t quite adhere to Nantucket protocol: Her orange-red halter gown at the rehearsal dinner clashes with Nantucket red; her turquoise dress is too plunging; and her wedding gown has no embellishments. She looks most comfortable in a zip-up hoodie.
Perhaps I wouldn’t recommend wearing your employer’s logo as a fashion staple, but there’s an ease to Amelia’s wardrobe that I think inspires emulating. She reaches for dresses that are loose and flowing; her denim is straight-legged and a classic wash. She understands that hoodies aren’t meant to be paired exclusively with gym clothes. And, perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t try too hard to adhere to someone else’s style code. When Greer’s jaw drops as Amelia waltzes outside in those little boxer shorts? I couldn’t help but cackle.
Merritt Monaco
As the resident Instagram influencer amongst The Perfect Couple’s wedding guests, Merritt gives herself permission—and has the clout—to dress with little inhibition. Almost nothing she wears in her (relatively brief) moments on-screen could be called “traditional,” thus they’re probably not a common sight amongst Nantucket’s old-money crowd.
Merritt’s fond of innovative, colorful designer brands like Missoni and Cult Gaia, and her dresses double as beach cover-ups. Her jewelry is oversized and eye-catching. Even her boucle jacket is in a sunshine-y yellow, not an off-white or cream. As Abby mentions in one episode, Merritt spritzes herself with Byredo Blanche perfume, which the brand itself describes as smelling of “bodies slipping beneath fresh sheets; laundry baskets filled to the brim; a punch of detergent.” She is attention-drawing but not unsophisticated, which is in and of itself excellent style advice. Perhaps most importantly, she isn’t too self-important about her clothes. They’re fun, but so is she.
Abby Winbury
Of all the characters in The Perfect Couple, Abby Winbury is trying the hardest to dress like someone else. As Sejlund told Variety, “She’s very feminine but almost in a little bit of an aggressive, annoying way…She sort of really wants Greer to like her, and she might even want to be Greer at some point.” Thus, Greer’s daughter-in-law gravitates toward Greer’s fine fabrics and florals, but with a harsher edge: Abby’s color palette is all bright yellows and mauve-ish pinks, her clothes festooned with girlish ruffles, polka dots, and pleats—details Greer herself wears only rarely.
Abby wields the Nantucket look like a weapon; Greer wears it like a shield. Abby is desperate to give birth to a baby girl; Greer has only boys. Abby freaks out when the Winbury brothers nearly smear cake on her “vintage” dress; Greer’s rarely even in the vicinity of mess. The differences between these characters—and their clothes—are clear.
Yet there’s a sense of yearning about Abby’s wardrobe that I nevertheless found relatable. She’s trying to transform herself, and really, isn’t that what so much of fashion is about? A small metamorphosis? Finding a skin that feels right? As someone chronically allergic to polka dots, I don’t foresee myself wearing many of Abby’s signature looks. But there’s an aspirational quality to her styling that I think is more tempting to consider. Without going too far from what feels like me, I want to push myself to try the looks I might never have previously considered. I could start with something daffodil-yellow, right? The polka dots can wait.
Chloe Carter, Isabel Nallet, and More
Easily overlooked amongst the more major characters in The Perfect Couple, Chloe Carter, Isabel Nallet, and several other women in the series sport outfits deserving of more than the few frames they receive. Isabel, the melodramatic French guest-of-honor, adorns herself in romantic jewel tones with long sleeves and feathered hems. Chloe—one of the youngest members of the cast—opts for a suede jacket and butter-colored hoodie when she’s not in her pressed-white server digs (paired with a polka-dot necktie, naturally). Greer’s PR team members and jeweler all get their own trademark styles: collared shirts, printed wrap gowns, moto jackets, denim dresses, and simple but chunky jewelry.
Their clothes, unlike Greer’s or Abby’s or even Merritt’s, feel lived-in and loved—much more like something guests sans trust funds might wear to an unintentional murder-mystery party. And if you are going to show up to an unintentional murder-mystery party, you might as well look and feel good doing it.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a staff culture writer at ELLE, where she primarily covers film, television and books. She was previously an associate editor at ELLE.