Outside of their quintessentially Russian, two-syllable names, the leading men in “Ponies,” have little in common. Where rising KGB officer Andrei (Artjom Gilz) is dressed to the nines in elegant, domineering suits, CIA informant Sasha (Petro Ninovskyi) bears a lived-in bohemian, Westernized aesthetic. Going into the project, costume designer Anastasia Magoutas “knew that Andre and Sasha had to be foils to each other,” emulating different aesthetics aligned with their respective dogmas. “They are not styleless people, you can feel the ideologies differing between them,” Magoutas says. In tailored white suits and poised turtlenecks, Andre represents power and ambition within the USSR, whereas Sasha wears sherpa and cotton, representative of someone “just trying to survive” in the regime.  

“My points of reference for both of them were different musicians,” Magoutas says. She based Andrei’s cool and collected KGB looks on photos she had seen of David Bowie traveling the Soviet Union in the 1970s. “He carries this sex appeal, but this menace at the same time. It's not a friendly boy next door kind of sex appeal; it feels a little dangerous,” Magoutas says of the inspiration. It was important that Andrei was multi-dimensional, inspiring sexual excitement alongside fear. “We had to understand why Bea does what she does,” Magoutas says, referring to the relationship between Andrei and Emilia Clarke’s character.

For Sasha, Magoutas opted for a different David B on the moodboard—David Byrne of The Talking Heads. “[Sasha’s style] was this very kind of simple, but to me American way of dress that was separate from the Soviet thing of a little too much pattern, a little too much color.” The designer opted for “effortlessly cool” silhouettes that emulated Western touchstones like American Levi’s without eliciting too much attention. 

Russian street photography served as another useful real-world resource for Magoutas, who did not want to portray Cold War Russia as sterile and devoid of character and vitality. “It was a city full of life, and so I just made sure to make each background character a real person. I would tell my background team, give every single person you dress a story. Who are they? Do they have a friend who gets to take the train to Switzerland once a month and do they bring them back fancy things, or are they still wearing the dress that they bought 10 years ago because they can't afford another one?” Magoutas says.

As undercover CIA operatives, Bea and Twila (Hayley Lu Richardson), weaponize their femininity as part of their disguise, albeit in much different ways. Adorned in cowboy boots and Penny Lane coats, Twila is easy to underestimate on account of her playful and characteristically unserious style, consisting of graphic t-shirts with slogans like “Stop staring at my shirt. It is holding up my boobs.” 

“Ponies” pulled many of its more memorable ‘70s pieces—including Ray’s (Nicholas Podany) concert jumpsuit and Twila’s green fur coat—from vintage costume warehouses across Los Angeles. The abundance of true vintage required on the fly repairs, “much to the chagrin of my set costumers,” Magoutas shares. “There was a night where one of Haley's platforms kept falling apart. But it was important to me to get real stuff because there's just certain fabrics that aren't made anymore.”

For Twila, Magoutas was always aiming for what she described as “the right wrong,” basing the character’s eclectic fashion sense on rock musicians like Cherie Currie and Suzie Quatro. “Sometimes the first version of [an outfit] would just be too good or too mature or too matchy or whatever. And so we would actively try to throw a wrench in that outfit and be like, what can we put in to ruin it?” Conversely, Bea’s aesthetic is calculated beyond measure, resulting in a seductress archetype that required sexy, feminine silhouettes such as a plunging brown halter jumpsuit. 

Of the core four leads, Bea is the only character who didn't have a rockstar on the moodboard… at least directly. Bianca Jagger was a big inspiration for Bea’s finale look, where she sports matching white trousers and jacket with a sparkly asymmetrical top, with Jane Birkin and Faye Dunaway serving as additional points of reference. “[Jane Birkin] achieves that kind of effortless, cool, loose, confident sexiness without even having to wear something revealing,” Magoutas says. As Bea spends more time with Twila, her style becomes less Ralph Lauren-esque and increasingly more daring and modern. Meanwhile, Twila’s silhouettes become “a little sharper” and more refined as a result of her friendship with Bea. “Instead of a seven-color palette, it's five or six. So it was like a subtle sort of refinement of silhouettes and colors, but never losing the DNA of who she was, just growing it up a little bit.”