“Baby Reindeer” costume designer Mekel Bailey scoured thrift shops and his grandmother’s closet to build the costumes for Jessica Gunning’s Martha on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated limited series.
In gathering wardrobe items, a few things about the obsessed woman came to mind. “It was all about the mishaps, the clash, the prints, the tones and the awkwardness,” Bailey says.
based on Richard Gadd’s one-man play, the series follows Donny Dunn (Gadd), a fictionalized version of the comic, as he tries to transition from barman to comedian while being stalked by Martha (Gunning), a woman who sends him thousands of emails and harasses his family and girlfriend (Nava Mau), growing increasingly unstable and threatening as time goes on.
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Bailey prepped by spending a lot of time alone, people-watching. “There’s a lady in my area, and at least once a month, I’ll see her. She sits outside this bus stop,” he says. “I was constantly trying to build up visual references, and I ended up with a body of real references along with references from TV and film.”
When audiences first meet Martha, she seems innocent. Clad in a pink top, she tells Donny that she’s a lawyer who works for Britain’s top politicians. She can’t afford a drink. Feeling sorry for her, Donny gives
her a cup of tea, a gesture that sets off their twisted journey.
Bailey needed to navigate the mood changes in Martha, who shifts from harmless to fun to angry, and build those elements into her wardrobe. “I played with cardigans, maxi-tops, skirts and used them on rotation because she doesn’t have money,” he says. He also had to consider Martha’s bag “because she’s recording, and the shape of that needed to be right.”
He also used sweaters and knits to reflect Martha’s inner mood “when she’s not at her best.”
In episode three, after Martha has taken her stalking to a disturbing level, Donny moves to block her on Facebook and steps away from the pub, hoping she will get bored and move on. Instead, she keeps track of his movements and waits at the bus stop near his house for hours.
In one moment when Donny finally approaches Martha, Bailey puts the character in a purple cardigan adorned with white hearts.
Whenever Martha was sad, Bailey would find tones where the colors were sucked out of them. “That cardigan is where she’s at emotionally. She’s so sad.” Bailey adds, “The hearts have a connotation behind it as you really care for her because she’s in this vulnerable state.”
In contrast, prints and patterns were used to reflect the dramatic side. “Polka dots were about this angriness, this villain and there was this rage coming through,” he says. “With animal prints, that was showing she was preying, and that reflected this predatory element.”
Flowers were a throwback to her childlike unsophistication. Similarly, a tweed tartan jacket was a great find from a charity shop. “It was to show the fun side, this energy and vibrancy behind this woman.”
The costume designer had a method to what he wanted in his search to fill Martha’s closet: specific tones, including reds, oranges, browns, greens and pinks.
There was a logic behind everything. He went all over London to piece her wardrobe together — Angel, Brixton, Clapham, Penge, Putney. “Week by week, I’d go postcode to postcode, and some days I’d find nothing,” he says.
In the end, he was successful in finding each item, often at the end of the trail. “I wanted something that was worn and had character …” he says. “A story within a story.”
