Bustling With 'Bridgerton': Penelope Featherington's Transformation Into A Glamorous Wallflower

Welcome to the third issue of Bustling With Bridgerton, a series where we’ll be celebrating and delving into the costumes designed for 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. The first two issues in this series covered developments in Queen Charlotte’s and Eloise Bridgerton’s costumes across the series’ first three seasons. This week, we’re discussing Penelope Featherington’s (Nicola Coughlan) transformation from wallflower to glamour queen of Mayfair.

Previously, On Bridgerton

One of the best things about Bridgerton’s third season, aka the Polin season, is that it’s vindicated all the fans who have been on the “Nicola Coughlan is already very gorgeous!” train. In Julia Quinn’s novel Romancing Mister Bridgerton, Penelope’s glow-up is tied to aging up from 18 to 28, losing weight, and suddenly being worthy of male notice. In Bridgerton, she instead takes a portion of her substantial Lady Whistledown earnings to Genevieve the modiste, banishes citrus shades from her wardrobe palette, and is off to the races.