It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call The Idol the most talked-about show on television at the moment. It seems everyone has an opinion on the HBO series’ graphic sex scenes, Abel Tesfaye’s rat tail, and Sam Levinson’s creative choices. The Idol was not made for the faint of heart, and a sordid feeling seeps into every scene and stylistic decision, from the intrusive camera angles to the teeny-tiny tops Lily-Rose Depp’s pop star character Jocelyn plucks from her closet for a day of lounging around the house. It all plays into the seedy, highly sexualized universe Tesfaye and Levinson have created, but according to the show’s costume designer, Natasha Newman-Thomas, it’s not all male gaze and under boob. Jocelyn’s wardrobe choices actually illustrate a strength in her character and a reclamation of her physicality.
“The costumes Jocelyn wears definitely tell a story of her power and how she’s harnessing her sexuality,” Newman-Thomas tells W over Zoom. In the first episode of the series, we learn Jocelyn has been the victim of revenge porn when a graphic selfie of the pop star leaks online. It’s not only Jocelyn’s indifference toward the incident (“I mean, I feel like it could be a lot worse,” she says with a shrug before heading to her in-house sauna), but also the way she presents herself that proves she has a firm grasp on herself as a sexual person. She bops around her house in barely there bralettes and impossibly low-rise jeans that invoke at least physical confidence. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” says Newman-Thomas, who worked with Depp to confirm her comfort level before dressing the character. “There’s an energy to Jocelyn that she is very comfortable in her body and showing that amount of skin, and that’s reflected in the wardrobe.”
Jocelyn spends a good amount of time in episode one wearing a silky red robe, both when shooting her album cover in the show’s first scene and when…
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