Propelled by a cast of incels, supermodels, looksmaxxing evangelists, and doom-scrolling teenagers, “The Beauty” reflects a cultural landscape Americans know well… except for one key difference. In Ryan Murphy’s hyperbolic world, physical perfection isn't just chased through GLP-1s and Botox injectables but contracted through a pharmaceutically-packaged STD. When FBI agents Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters) and Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) are assigned to the case, they embark on an international investigation exploring the drug’s lethal side effects. Such a premise could be styled with a naturalistic restraint that draws parallels to the modern day. Instead, costume designer Sarah Evelyn pushes the absurdity further through campy couture.

Working with a star-studded cast, including Bella Hadid, Jeremy Pope, Isabella Rossellini, Megan Trainor, Nicola Peltz, and Ashton Kutcher, Evelyn tailored each character’s wardrobe to the actor inhabiting it. The 11-episode series required her to style nearly every character trope on television—from FBI agents to the yacht-hopping one percent. Her approach to character dressing is most theatrical at its extremes: the Versace-wearing oligarch and basement-ridden incel. “When you look at billionaires, they don't actually dress that well,” Evelyn says, “So you're always mixing aspiration with the lexicon of TV and cinema when you're creating a billionaire for the screen.” 

The Incel

In the case of Jeremy (Jeremy Pope), a sexually-frustrated incel occupying his parents’ basement, Evelyn initially took to Reddit. Unimpressed by the sea of “random jeans” and “weird t-shirts” she encountered on real-world chat forums, Evelyn instead drew inspiration from the color scheme of the scene’s set design. As a result, Jeremy is introduced to the viewer in a dark velour tracksuit that bleeds into his basement’s fluorescent blue lighting. For Evelyn, the tracksuit wasn’t just a costume choice but a deliberate aesthetic statement. “The tracksuit was about creating color, shape, and texture,” she says, explaining that the goal was to style a person conventionally written off as ugly in something “beautiful.”

The Supermodel

When Evelyn learned that Bella Hadid was going to play Ruby, a supermodel experiencing the side effects of “The Beauty,” she knew the outfit should accentuate Hadid’s “teeny waist” with a corseted and high-waisted silhouette.

On a dank, swampy catwalk based on Balenciaga’s 2022 Mud fashion show, Ruby sports an ox blood red leather two-piece. The leather ensemble's distinct shade of red foreshadows her combustion into a pile of bloody carnage by the end of the scene, but it also takes inspiration from the warm colors seen in Bertolucci movies. “Part one of the references was ‘The Hunger,’ so like ‘40s for ‘80s,” Evelyn says, ‘[the look] started with a really big shoulder, teeny waist, and this ox blood color. And [then] we started doing illustrations, and then we learned who it was going to be and it sort of just developed itself.” 

The Billionaire 

For Bryon Frost (Ashton Kutcher)—the billionaire investor behind the titular drug—Evelyn embraced a collaborative costuming process, weaving the actor’s last-minute character inspirations directly into the wardrobe. “He'd roll into the fitting and be like, ‘so I had this idea, I called Ryan the other night, and I think maybe my character is totally into Burning Man,’” Evelyn recalls. A few days later, she flew in a kilt to location. The resulting scene styles Kutcher's character in a gaudy Dolce and Gabbana robe, layered over a Burner kilt and Versace swim trunks (a last-minute suggestion from Murphy who wanted him to end the scene in the hot tub).

“You have a lot of direction from the beginning, but being able to go with the organic development of filmmaking is really important and just makes the project better,” Evelyn says. “So the Burning Man thing was something that literally just came out of nowhere and next thing you know, we're making a teddy bear jacket , opens in new tabfor the billionaire to transform into Ashton.”

The more-is-more ethos behind Evelyn’s costuming choices reinforces the show’s overarching critique of modern beauty standards. Just as many of the 'Beauty' drug's victims are radicalized into taking it after less extreme cosmetic procedures fail to satisfy them, their outfits, once changed, become increasingly excessive. “All of our relationships to beauty are absolutely ridiculous,” Evelyn explains, “I think that the over-the-top-ness of the costumes kind of points to that… and yet it [still] looks good.” 

The Trophy Wife

The show’s costuming underscores how our cultural fixation on looks optimization is as absurd as it is seductive—a pursuit we can name as ridiculous even as we continue to succumb to it. Nicola Peltz’s couture Givenchy look in the season finale crystallizes this tension, striking a balance between ridicule and desire. The heavily jeweled bodice, as worn by Jenna Ortega at the 2025 Emmys, opens in new tab and estimated to weigh between 20lb and 30lb, both constrains and adorns Peltz’s physique. “That was a Ryan stroke of genius,” Evelyn says, explaining how the specific couture look was written into the script. “it was also very referential to ‘Death Becomes Her’ [an homage to Isabella Rosselini who plays Franny in the show], so I just felt like it was so smart and there was nothing else that could be done.”