Bustling With 'Bridgerton': Cressida Cowper's Armor for the Discerning Regency Young Lady

Welcome to the final issue of Bustling With Bridgerton, a series celebrating and delving into the costumes designed for four of Bridgerton’s most interesting characters: Queen Charlotte, Eloise Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington, and Cressida Cowper. Between the releases of the season’s two halves, costume designer John Glaser, along with associate costume designer Dougie Hawkes and assistant costume designer Henry Wilkinson, sat down with Telly Visions to chat about the visual inspirations, character and story arcs that they drew on for each character’s looks as her position in the ton and their experiences with the mysterious Lady Whistledown ebb and flow. This week, we’re discussing Cressida Cowper’s (Jessica Madsen) increasingly voluminous and visually loud ensembles.

Previously, On Bridgerton

In the first and second seasons of Bridgerton, Cressida Cowper has been a classic Mean Girl: conventionally pretty, wealthy, and snobby. Her overt and covert nastiness towards the likes of Penelope and Eloise was generally overlooked, if Mammas even noticed it, because she’s conventionally pretty and wealthy, factors reflected in her wardrobe. Her gowns were in vogue but otherwise unremarkable – no bold colors or shade combinations, no truly out-there embellishments, just standard high-end looks for a high-end young lady on the marriage mart.

For Seasons 1 and 2, Cressida’s silhouette was in the column or empire style that was au courant in the Regency era. It’s a style that suits her well as she cuts a willowy figure at the season’s balls and other social events of the ton, and the most significant variation was whether her neckline would be a scoop or a softly squared-off affair. Her palette in this period was also about what you’d expect, running strongly to pale Easter egg shades of celadon, baby pink, a whisper-light shade of peach, and the occasional light blue. 

Only two gowns from the first two seasons stand out among Cressida’s early looks as progenitors to her maximalist aesthetic in Season 3. The first, from Episode 103, uses peach satin for its main fabric, with whitework embroidery and beaded embellishments in shades of lavender, pink, green, and yellow on the bodice. From the waist down, the palette shifts to tone-on-tone embellishments applied vertically to a matching net overlay. All of these trimmings are more often seen used horizontally and in moderation. Here, they’ve been applied with a generous, even lavish hand, creating more texture and catching the light. 

The second gown is palest apple green satin, with a net overlay strewn with sequined flowers in iridescent shades of coral, pink, lavender, cream, and green. A gold-tone parure set with large faceted red-orange oval cabochons and ivory opera-length gloves complete the look. Both of these gowns are attention-grabbing, but even at their most impressive, they merely hint at the direction of Cressida’s costumes in Season 3.

In Bridgerton’s third season, viewers have gotten to know a more complicated Cressida Cowper. As the season opens, she and Eloise Bridgerton are now friends, an unexpected development only slightly overshadowed by a bolder wardrobe than we’ve seen previously. Throughout eight episodes, Cressida navigates dramatic ups and downs during her third season on the marriage mart. In this respect, her experiences are not unlike those that unfold for Eloise and Penelope; all three young women are more mature and are increasingly purposeful in their gown choices. 

This season’s changes for Cressida can best be summed up as more: More fabric, more embellishments, more fabric textures, more everything. 

Costume designer Henry Wilkinson described Cressida’s embrace of maximalism as a type of armor: “the longer she’s on the marriage mart looking for a husband, the more avant-garde her clothes become”, noting that their boldness reflects “a kind of desperate, over-the-top” state of mind. This makes perfect sense when considering the pressures that her dreadful parents place on her. Had Penelope and Colin parted ways forever, she would still probably have had a means to make a living. For her part, Eloise can and does shine it on for at least another year as an eligible but as yet unbetrothed young lady of social standing. Meanwhile, Cressida’s father is no longer quite as wealthy as he was in previous seasons, and he is — not to put too fine a point on it — an abusive tyrant. Cressida must make a good match and fast. 

As someone who’s always used her looks and perceived wealth to make an impression and get along in the ton, it makes sense that Cressida would decide to quite literally go big or go home. Her massive bell sleeves, purely decorative shoulder rosettes, ostrich feather fans, sheer gloves all announce her eligibility and suggest an enviable dowry. 

It’s worth noting that these elements are all still working within the parameters of Regency silhouettes — scoop necks, empire waists and correspondingly cropped jackets, flowy but straight skirts — are all present, rendered almost unrecognizably spectacular by fabric choices including flurries of taffeta, brocades so lavish and stiff they seem like they could double as furniture, even a cotton candy pink jacket in a fabric best described as an early 19th century Muppet (to be clear, this is a compliment). Wilkinson explains that turning up the volume on Cressida’s looks this season is in line with the influence of Regency style through the decades because “Regency has inspired many periods of fashion history, from the 1960s to Galliano in the 1990s. We were sprinkling that through all the characters, but Cressida, in particular” was the main beneficiary of that throughline. 

When asked about a particular standout costume this season, John Glaser immediately reflected on the coats Cressida and Lady Cowper wear in the penultimate episode for their audience with Queen Charlotte. This is the moment where Cressida attempts to convince the Queen that she is, as claimed, Lady Whistledown, so “she’s trying to empower herself, but protect herself at the same time. We made her as big as possible so that she would help fill the room and not look weak next to the Queen when she enters.” 

This was a moment to “hit all the points to the extreme,” resulting in a hot pink jacket festooned with large black flowers, taking the design brief “as far as we could possibly go with the volume of clothing and patterns.” In addition, the team chose “graphics and the fabric [that] were darker than she normally wears,” highlighting the significance of the moment. 

When last we saw Cressida Cowper, her attempt to lay claim to Lady Whistledown’s mantle had fizzled as quickly as it started. Left notorious, with scarcely any dowry to speak of, and out of options, she was unceremoniously shipped out to the Welsh countryside with her appalling paternal aunt Joanne. It’s not a pretty picture. So what’s next for this unlikable yet sympathetic character and her incredible gowns?

Acknowledging that all we have to go in is speculation, it’s hard to imagine all those fabrics and textures being useful in a rural setting with no chance of a high society ball. At the same time, what’s to stop Cressida from enjoying an arc where a disgraced woman of formerly high rank escapes to a small town and brings a bit of sparkle and pizzazz into everyone’s lives? Perhaps she’ll create a second act for herself as a cheeky pillar of society, hone her writing skills, and return to London once her awful father has died as a wiser, gentler iteration of her present self. Hope for Cressida springs eternal! It’s not too late for her to continue becoming a person of substance. 

Bridgerton Seasons 1 through 3 and the Queen Charlotte prequel are streaming on Netflix. Season 4 is in pre-production and will begin filming in the summer of 2024.