Inside Ginny & Georgia’s Best Season 3 Looks (Exclusive)

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead for season 3 of Ginny & Georgia season 3.

In season 3 of Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia, both Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and Georgia (Brianne Howey) — not to mention the rest of their family and friends — are really going through it.

Georgia is standing trial for murder, which fractures her family and throws a huge wrench in her brand-new marriage to Paul (Scott Porter). Her close relationship with Ginny and Austin (Diesel La Torraca) becomes stilted when they both have to go live with their dads amid the trial.

Ginny, at the center of it all, experiences a whirlwind of emotions, more than most teenagers ever will. The show’s creator Sarah Lampert tells PEOPLE that as a character, Ginny has had to “deal with so much.”

“Toni’s portrayal of her is so raw and deeply nuanced that Ginny feels so human and real,” Lampert says. “She exists as a person. And that’s a testament to Toni’s performance. We feel for her and with her. And this season what’s so beautiful about her is that Ginny’s trying so hard. She so desperately wants her world to be stabilized. ‘m excited about this slightly more bad-ass version of Ginny, but I’m sad for her too. Ginny’s super power is her vulnerability, but she’s had to harden this season to protect her loved ones.”

Throughout the whole season, for Gentry and Howey especially, their stories are not told with just words and actions, but through their wardrobes as well. At the helm of the costume department this season was Shelley Mansell. She carried the clothing stories from the first two seasons into the third season, and ahead, she and Lampert tell PEOPLE the details behind some of the most important pieces from this season, which is currently streaming on Netflix.

The season basically begins with Georgia on house arrest, and her wardrobe reflects this moment in time. Tell me about taking this into consideration with her clothes and also taking her mindset into consideration.

Shelley Mansell: We first see her in the jail, and we’re introduced to her in that dark gray costume. And then once she gets home, she’s trying to be positive about the trial. She’s trying to have a sense of normalcy with her life and with the kids. Her clothing was very simple, relaxed. We did a lot of things with softer sweaters and T-shirts and jeans. We were very conscious of footwear at home. She wasn’t wearing heels.

There were times when she would dress up for the lawyer or for social services, but there became a point where things were really going south with the trial. Right away, we kicked into those blues, grays, dark colors, greens, and just really dug into that. What would Georgia wear in her most depressed state? We just really went for that loose silhouette, baggier silhouette. We wanted everything to hang off her body so that it would really allow her — especially when she’d be slumped on the couch during any of those moments — for her clothing to become something she could play with, hide behind, use for comfort. All of those things were taken into consideration. It’s almost like it was a form of comfort and protection as well.

When Georgia goes to court, though, she’s so bold and powerful. Let’s talk about what she’s wearing when she steps inside the courtroom. She always made a statement in confidence. She even wore her wedding look!

SM: That definitely made a statement. Paul was going to bring her something to wear, something conservative, and Georgia’s always one step ahead. She’s always thinking about how her move is going to affect her environment. It was such a statement to wear that dress in there. It right away gave her that sense to the audience and to the judge of sympathy, like this newly married bride, this housewife, this family woman. Here she was accused of murder. How could that be?

Then the next court look we’d see her in was for jury selection, the black and white dress with the red hairband. It had a sense of conservatism but also of style.

Everything was very calculated. Her whole intention with the jury selection was to appear conservative, but she had her element of Georgia. So she had an appeal for everybody in that jury. Then when she first shows up at the first day of trial, she’s wearing that pink suit.

That suit was a Generation Love suit, and we tailored the heck out of it just to really give it that cinched waist. And it also has this really strong shoulder, and just that long line of a bold statement of color. We also gave her that beautiful simple black hair ribbon. With all of these looks, there was definitely a collaboration with hair department and with makeup just to complete and finesse these looks. So there was a perfect example of an outfit coming together with collaboration. Even her shoes — the shoes that she was wearing were perfectly matched to that pink.

SL: Georgia is a character that knows the power of putting on a show. She has learned to be a chameleon, and we see that all the way back in the pilot episode where she transforms from Texas Georgia to Wellsbury Georgia. And then we see her pivot again as she becomes Mayors Office Georgia. She is a character who is always putting on layers, putting on masks, taking in her situation, noticing everything around her and then using that information to her benefit. She’s fiercely intelligent in knowing what a situation calls for, and part of that ability is a trauma response. But for Georgia, with court, she knows that leaning into the submissive and demure character that her lawyer keeps pushing her to play isn’t what’s going to win over Wellsbury. Fashion is her friend here. She needs to look like one of the town. Strategically, someone who is “of Wellsbury” shouldn’t be sent to prison. It’s all about strategy and optics. She’s a master class in manipulation. And Brianne does such a fantastic job of playing all those notes of Georgia so we really see what she’s thinking and what her strategy is behind the flawless smile and designer outfits. It’s giving Courtroom Barbie. It’s giving Anna Delvey. It’s giving Jackie O in the blood-stained pink Chanel suit. Georgia’s very life and freedom is on the line, she’s going to fight with every tool in her toolbox, and fashion and beauty have always been tools for her. 

Charlie Walley our producer and Shelley Mansell our brilliant costume designer this season worked really closely with our hair and makeup teams as well to pull together her looks. We had a Georgia Court Room look book that we were constantly updating and crafting and styling looks for. Paige DeSorbo was a fashion inspiration. As well as Courtney Vucekovich, who’s an influencer I follow.  

Ginny’s wardrobe also does a great job of basically showing what she’s going through, whether it’s the silhouette of her clothing or telling graphic tee. Her T-shirt collection is incredible.

SM: I just find [the graphic tees] visually interesting. They’re so much more interesting than just a plain T-shirt. They’re also a form of self-expression. Depending on storylines, sometimes the graphics were really touching or a nod to what was going on. And that’s what kids like to wear. Urban Outfitters was one of our perfect stores that we bought a lot of stuff from for her closet, and we mixed and matched with things as well. But yeah, the graphics were great.

For her wardrobe otherwise, we wanted to give her armor, because everyone at school knew her mom had been arrested. At the beginning of the season, she shows up and she’s got that black hoodie on with the white tank, and she’s got that really cool skirt, and we added some hardware onto it to punk it up, rock and roll it up a little bit. She’s got her Docs, and she had her hero green army jacket that she had from the previous season. We kept her palette, as the episodes progressed, in that black and white world. We hit it with a bit of color, whether it be a hint of red or burgundy.

And as we moved along, we softened it a little bit with simple blues and brought in a little bit of color, but we kept her palette pretty much in that black, white, army green, blues, burgundies, darker greens in that place. As she started dating, that’s where you’d start to see some of that color and some of her silhouette. Summer had also hit by that point too, so things got a little lighter in color, a little bit brighter. Silhouettes got shaken up a little bit. She also goes through an emotional journey midseason, and we kick right into those darker, baggier looks. Once that portion of her storyline is taken care of, then you see her move back into more fitted silhouettes, more color and a happier place.

We have to talk about Ginny’s dress for Tulips and Tuxes. She looked so pretty! Simone picked such a good dress for her.

SM: It’s Reformation. It was decided [early on that] it was going to be a red dress. We knew that that was going to be it. So we tried on several dresses. It was hard because there was about three or four dresses that it was like, oh my God, they all look so good, but this ended up being the winner. What I like about the look too is we grounded it with the white Dr. Martens. It just brought it down to high school. It also very much kept with [Ginny’s] character because throughout the season from beginning to end, there’s a variation of chunky Dr. Martens that are always her thing, along with the platform Converse.

She also plays a character in the courtroom as well, and I especially like her last outfit; it’s the boldest.

SM: At the end, the last court look is a departure for her. It’s an Alice & Olivia dress that’s black and white check, a houndstooth vibe. We kept seeing that as the series went on, but her earlier court looks were more muted. That dress was a statement, I think, for that final day in court to see where things were going to go.