The crocodile shirt. The bikini tops. How 'The White Lotus' costume designer uses clothing to tell a story.

With each season of The White Lotus, the fashion gets as much attention as the drama — and that’s by design.

Costume designer Alex Bovaird, who has worked on all three seasons of HBO's hit series, uses clothing to reflect everything from class dynamics to emotional unraveling, whether it’s the crocodile shirt worn by Lochlan Ratliff (Sam Nivola), custom Jacquemus designs on Charlotte Le Bon’s character Chloe or the endless stream of curated resort wear spotted throughout.

“I do feel very lucky,” Bovaird told Yahoo Entertainment. “I've done plenty of shows where the costumes are good, but there's something about The White Lotus that everybody just loves to love. [Creator] Mike White has created something that’s like a phenomenon.”

Bovaird first worked with White on the 2017 Ben Stiller film Brad’s Status, which ended with a week of filming in Hawaii. “I was very fortunate that when The White Lotus came around, I was the last person that had worked with [White], and so he called me,” she said.

Now three seasons in, with each installment set in a different location — Hawaii, Italy and now Thailand — Bovaird has been behind the visual evolution of every character who checked into the fictional White Lotus resort. She works hand in hand with White to build a visual language through the characters’ clothing.

“Mike tells me a little bit, as he’s writing, about who the characters are. Then I start thinking,” she explained. “Looking back, there's definitely a world that we've now created and come to know. There's a little bit of, like, overdressing, and everything's got some character to it.”

Building a character

Bovaird’s ability to decode character arcs through clothes is particularly evident in Season 3’s gal pals Jaclyn, Kate and Laurie, played by actresses Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb and Carrie Coon, respectively. Though they share nearly every scene together, their styles quietly track the growing passive-aggressive tension simmering beneath the surface.

“That's exactly what costume design is,” Bovaird said. “It's trying to underscore the characters and kind of help you understand who they are.”

Take Jaclyn, the attention-seeking actress. “She was a butterfly, so her clothes are often bright and bold and colorful and sparkly. She sort of flips around, and it’s beautiful,” she explained.

Kate, who is more restrained, “goes home and puts her pajamas on after a night of partying as the other girls are taking their clothes off,” said Bovaird. Then there’s Laurie, a high-powered New York lawyer, who started off “a little more drab” as a way to “project an image” but becomes bolder as the season evolves.

Southern belle Victoria Ratliff, played by Parker Posey “doesn’t really leave the hotel. In fact, she barely leaves the villa,” Boivard said. “She’s just gacked out on her lorazapam and not really interested in exploring Thailand or even knowing where she is.”

The costume designer worked closely with the actress early on to capture that specific, elitist coastal Southern vibe.

“She brought some family heirlooms to the shoot,” Bovaird said of Posey, who grew up in Louisiana and Mississippi. “She really wanted to feel the character, so everything we tried had to be something that felt correct for the South.”

Not every outfit makes the cut. One T-shirt — a Bella Freud design that read “Hello c***y” — was a favorite of hers and White’s, but “it was always overpowering the dialogue,” she said. “We kept trying with that T-shirt really hard. I still have it now. Maybe next season.”

Party girls and mood boards

For Season 3, Bovaird meticulously built out mood boards: one for Thailand, one for the show as a whole and one for each character. Her inspiration for the resort wear the hotel guests are lounging in came largely from past eras.

“I love the ’60s and ’70s resort wear,” she said. “We dissect the scenes and the characters, and I have to break down everything we need to do very methodically. Then I start gathering material, casting a net far and wide.”

With limited on-island resources, Bovaird and her two assistants had to prepare ahead and move fast, especially for culturally specific scenes like the traditional Thai dances featured throughout.

“I really leaned on my Thai staff and the choreographer,” she said. “Certain dances required slightly different looks.”

The party scenes came naturally to Bovaird. “I love party scenes,” she said. “I’m just an old party girl, so it’s an excuse to remember the untamed fun and going out for the night.”

That’s especially true for Chloe, played by Le Bon.

“There’s probably more of me in Chloe than anyone else,” Bovaird said. “She’s a free spirit. She collects different things from around the world. I remembered all of the markets I went to [in Thailand] and how I ended up just wearing my bikini top the whole time because it was so hot. That’s Chloe.”

The heat became a character of its own. “My hats off to [my department]. They were the true heroes, fanning people and giving them ice packs. They never stopped.”

Beyond the mood boards, Bovaird also had bigger plans to call back to earlier characters that never quite materialized. At one point, she tried to sneak in a tribute to fan-favorite Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, who died in Season 2.

“I brought Tanya's dresses that she goes overboard in. There were like six of them because she had to do it many times,” Bovaird said. “I took those dresses to Thailand with the idea that maybe, I don't know, like on the yacht, there could be a little Tanya floating by — or maybe at one of the parties, there was an apparition of Tanya because I knew everyone was gutted that she wasn't going to be in Season 3. I floated the idea, but it didn’t happen. Still, I thought it was really funny.”