“Buy Her More Blue, Lorelai”
Costume Design on Season Three of Gilmore Girls
Originally published on Letterdrop 8/18/2022
Welcome to season three, the pivot point of the series, the lining up of the dominos that will fall in seasons four and five: Lorelai and Sookie buy a property for their future Dragonfly Inn—and their beloved Independence Inn closes. Rory, a senior in high school, applies to her long-awaited Harvard—but ends up going to Yale. Mid-season, she starts dating Jess—and her ex, Dean, starts dating his future wife, Lindsay (run, girl).
Lorelai in 3.4
As Rory and Lorelai’s world grows and ages, so does their style: While Lorelai favored kitschy T-shirts and corduroy jackets for casual wear in seasons one and two, she starts leaning toward more polished blouses and coats in season three.
Rory in 2.22
And Rory, who preferred higher necklines and looser sizing in season one, wears slightly more body-conscious tops and dresses, with slightly more exposed skin, in seasons two and three. (We’ll delve more into her evolving relationship with her body in future seasons.)
A notable exception to this season’s evolving color palettes: Lorelai in blue and Rory in red (3.7).
Even the Gilmore girls’ color palettes, well established in season one (reds, oranges, and olives for Rory; blues, purples, and pinks for Lorelai), have expanded.
No other color symbolizes this shift more than blue: In season one, it is distinctly Lorelai’s color, but as the seasons go on, Rory wears it more and more outside of Chilton. It links her to her mother, emphasizes their shared eye color. And in season three, it means Yale: Richard’s alma mater, Harvard’s rival, and the school Lorelai has long resisted for her daughter. Rory’s choosing of Yale is almost the completion of a prophecy: She fulfills what her mother never did.
Note both Emily and Lorelai in black (3.5)
In episode five, Rory wears a blue sweater to Friday Night Dinner, and Emily comments on how “pretty” it is: “I do love you in blue. You should wear blue more often. Buy her more blue, Lorelai.” Emily uses the color not just to lavish compliments on Rory but to ice out, then reprimand, Lorelai. If Rory is not wearing enough blue (and, by extension, not treating Yale as a serious option), then it must be Lorelai’s fault. It’s the natural pattern of Emily’s thinking: If Lorelai and Chris aren’t together anymore, then Lorelai must’ve done something wrong (3.1). If Chris is miserable with his pregnant girlfriend Sherry, then Lorelai should reach out to him (3.2).
The Gilmores in 3.8 (Rory in a Yale-appropriate navy-blue sweater)
After all, Emily made a play for Richard while he was dating another woman. In episode eight—while the Gilmores are visiting Yale, no less—Richard reveals that he was in a “very serious relationship” with Pennilyn Lott before he and Emily started dating. Emily brushes off his story: “I did not steal your grandfather. I simply gave him a choice.”
“When you showed up at my fraternity party in that blue dress, I had no choice,” Richard replies. A blue dress, huh? Sounds like a Gilmore girl to me.
Emily has her own Lorelai moments in season three: Whenever Richard’s mother, Trix, appears, Emily assumes the role of the never-good-enough daughter, the disruptor of carefully set decorum.
A woman undone (3.10)
Trix arrives unexpectedly for Richard’s birthday in episode ten. Emily, who normally pulls out all of Trix’s tacky presents before her visits, has no time to prepare. In her bright purple suit jacket, Emily is the focal point of Trix’s critical eye.
Trix in 3.10
Rory and Lorelai in 3.10
Trix’s wardrobe has all the color and variety of a Victorian widow’s weeds: a black jacket and long skirt, a high-neck white blouse, and jet earrings. The other Gilmore girls—the ones who delight and are delighted by Trix—follow the matriarch’s lead: Rory in a black dress with a ruffled cream color, Lorelai in a dark blouse and a black beaded pendant.
Chekhov’s jacket (3.15)
By episode fifteen, Trix has moved back to Hartford, and Emily is at her wit’s end. Her purple jacket reappears at the beginning of the episode, as she complains about Trix’s constant questions.
Tinky Winky chic (3.15)
The jacket is an omen of what’s to come: Emily accidentally sees Trix kissing an older man in a “purple velour jogging suit.” Finally, she tells Lorelai, she has something to hold over Trix’s head. To Emily, Trix’s purple-veloured paramour looks just as gauche, just as low-class, as Emily looks to Trix. “She should be [embarrassed],” Emily gloats. “He was dressed like a bookie.”
Trix’s “biddies,” to quote Emily (3.15)
At Lorelai’s encouragement, Emily agrees to keep Trix’s secret—a promise that lasts about sixty seconds, until Trix insults her again. “I saw [Trix] kissing a man in a tracksuit!” Emily blurts to Richard, Lorelai, Trix, and Trix’s friends. Like Trix, her friends are all older white women in black layers, lace collars, pearls, and cameos—and thoroughly shocked by Emily’s revelation. (Based on their earlier conversation, these ladies still seem scandalized by Cubism, so no one tell them about the internet.)
Lorelai and Richard in 3.15
Richard, however, finds humor in the tracksuit. “I wonder if he was wearing Nikes,” he says to Lorelai. He laughs at his potential “new daddy”: “We could get matching jogging suits!” To WASP-y Richard, there’s nothing more preposterous than the idea of wearing a tracksuit, especially alongside a man who could be his father. The only person he matches is his daughter, fresh from work in her camel-colored blazer.
Of course, Richard and Emily find any shift from their rigid way of dress hilarious. Take episode thirteen, when Rory and Lorelai reveal they’ll backpack through Europe after graduation. Emily and Richard laugh wildly: “Perhaps we should join them,” jokes Richard.
“That sounds wonderful,” Emily replies. “Tomorrow I’ll go out and buy some cutoffs!” The next week, Emily sends Lorelai and Rory a box of guidebooks, as old as Rory and far posher: Myra Waldo’s Travel and Motoring Guide to Europe, ’78, for instance.
Teenage Chris and Lorelai in 3.13
These guidebooks are a window into the Gilmore mansion circa 1984: The episode flashes back to teenage Lorelai and Chris, planning their own backpacking adventure. Lorelai’s school uniform is far removed from Rory’s: a crimson cardigan instead of a navy one, a gray kilt instead of a blue plaid one, a crimson necktie instead of a navy crossover tie. Lorelai is already aspiring to Harvard crimson—though neither backpacking nor Harvard will be in the cards for her.
I bet Emily chose the pearls (3.13).
In the next flashback, Lorelai’s cotillion gown won’t zip, much to Emily’s frustration and Lorelai’s mounting horror: She’s just realized she’s pregnant.
Eighties Emily looks a lot like her present-day self: Sure, her hair is longer and the cut of her skirt suit is boxier, but she still loves pearls and double-breasted gold buttons. But eighties Lorelai? She might as well be one of the porcelain dolls on the mantle behind her: ruffled and corseted in white tulle.
Teenage Chris and Lorelai in 3.13
Later, Lorelai and Chris listen from the stairs as the Gilmore and Hayden parents decide how to handle the pregnancy: Richard prescribing marriage and employment for Chris at his firm. Lorelai wears a blue-and-white polo shirt, black leggings, and silver hoops—foreshadowing, perhaps, a pair she often wears in the present day—while Chris wears a yellow argyle sweater over a teal polo and acid-wash jeans.
Emily and Francine in 3.13
Down below, the children’s color palettes are mirrored by their mothers: Emily in a blue-and-white dress and Francine in a teal jacket and teal-and-yellow paisley dress. The Haydens are ready to blame Lorelai, to send her away and let Chris live his life without consequence, but Emily pushes back. She’s the closest thing to an ally that Lorelai has in the room, though even she doesn’t bother to bring the teens into the conversation (or consider the option of an abortion, presented crudely by Straub).
Chris, like his parents, is ready to go along with Richard’s plan. Only Lorelai wants something different: After Rory is born, she quietly moves out of the Gilmore mansion, leaving behind the episode’s eponymous “Dear Richard and Emily” letter. Ultimately, the flashbacks allow the viewer to confirm what Lorelai never quite believes: Her mother was devastated by her daughter’s sudden departure.
Lorelai wears black in 3.2 . . .
. . . and again in 3.9, for a little Thursday Night Dinner (aka Thanksgiving).
Even in the present day, Lorelai doesn’t fully understand how to navigate her independence and her mother’s old wounds. Throughout the season, Lorelai wears an unusual amount of black to the Gilmore mansion: Though she’s favored the color in past seasons—even wearing a black sweater and skirt to that ill-fated first Friday Night Dinner—its frequency this season gives her dinner appearances an almost ominous quality. She is the Grim Reaper of Friday Night Dinner.
Reputation Era vibes (3.18)
By episode eighteen, we find out why: Richard sells an investment he made in Lorelai’s name and presents his daughter with a fat check. Lorelai decides to use the money to repay her parents for Chilton, thus severing the obligation that kept her going to the Gilmore mansion every Friday night. For some strange reason, she decides the best time to do this is her birthday dinner.
Maybe if Lorelai had gotten a big Publishers Clearing House check (3.18)?
Emily, unsurprisingly, takes the check as a rejection—and Richard and Rory sit in discomfort. Just look at the three of them in blue, Lorelai’s signature color. Only Lorelai stands alone in all black, a snake graphic on her T-shirt. It’s the most informal she’s looked at dinner: perhaps because she’s anticipating a town birthday celebration after, perhaps because she knows she’s no longer tied to the rules of FND.
Lorelai in Rory red and Emily and Richard in Lorelai blue (3.22)
By Rory’s graduation (3.22), the show has conceived a way to keep Friday Night Dinners: Rory asks her grandparents to loan her money for Yale after a convoluted financial-aid plotline. At graduation, Lorelai sits side by side with Richard and Emily: Richard in a pale blue shirt, Emily in a pale blue sequined jacket. “Red goes wonderful with nature,” says Miss Celine—but blue goes better with the Gilmore girls.
Miss Celine in 3.21
I must pause, of course, to discuss Miss Celine, Richard and Emily’s seemingly immortal “fashion consultant.” Miss Celine loves to name-drop, whether she’s recounting advice she gave to a famous client (Ginger Rogers, Jimmy Stewart) or comparing Rory or Lorelai to an Old Hollywood star (Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood). For her own wardrobe, Miss Celine favors dramatic touches: a cream turban, piles of necklaces, pale pink opera gloves, and rhinestone-embellished glasses. She looks like some Old Hollywood stereotype of a fortune-teller—the implication being, I think, that she’s a bit of a charlatan. Did she really dress all those Hollywood legends, and if so, why the hell is she dressing the Gilmores for a high school graduation?
Blue on blue (3.3)
But let’s go back to the beginning of the school year, to the youngest Gilmore girl, Rory. In these early episodes, Rory is still set on Harvard, as is her friend Paris. Rory and Paris even facilitate a panel on Ivy League admissions (3.3), both girls in blue blazers but ill-equipped for their takeaways from the panelists: Paris worries she’s “hyper-intense”; Rory, “unprepared.”
No, DARREN Springsteen (3.3)
The Chilton headmaster suggests setting up a dinner with a Harvard alumnus, and so Lorelai and Rory end up at Darren Springsteen’s house.
Marie Springsteen (3.3)
Jack and Jennifer Springsteen (3.3)
The Springsteens are friendly if off-puttingly alike, with a penchant for quizzes at the dinner table. Their preppy clothes are almost uniforms, a way of demonstrating their allegiance to the family and the Ivy League path: Darren in a charcoal-gray sweater and blue plaid button-down, his wife in a brown sweater set and pearls, their Princeton son and Harvard-bound daughter in navy cable-knit sweaters and white polo shirts.
Rory and waitress Carol (3.3)
The only family member in an actual uniform is the third Springsteen child, Carol. Rory stumbles across her bedroom, where Carol is changing from one uniform (waitress) to another (birthday party bunny). Carol isn’t on the Ivy League “conveyor belt,” and Rory insists she isn’t either.
Rory and bunny Carol (3.3)
Still, the cream and pink in Rory’s striped sweater pick up the colors in both of Carol’s uniforms. Rory may thank her mother for not “putting [her] on the conveyor belt,” but she’s not entirely different from Carol. Lorelai never quizzes Rory at the dinner table or dresses her like a pod person, but that doesn’t mean their Harvard dreams aren’t codependent.
Only a handful of episodes later (3.9), Lorelai is miffed to find Rory applied not just to Harvard but to Princeton and Yale. (I have to say, the Chilton guidance counselors are incompetent, elitist, or both. They seem to spend all their work hours harassing students for eating lunch alone and not reminding them to apply to a safety school. I’m sure many of them went on to employment at Constance Billard.)
Francie (right) confronts Rory in the bathroom (3.2).
As Rory and Paris await their Harvard acceptance letters, they assume their new roles as student body vice president and president. The first issue on the agenda? Skirt lengths. Francie, the senior class president, wants shorter hemlines and threatens to make Paris an ineffectual president if Rory doesn’t get her behind the issue (3.2).
Francie, you likely remember, appeared in season two as the leader of Chilton’s most powerful sorority, the Puffs. Then, she wore a navy cardigan, like the rest of her sisters; Rory was the lone girl in a navy sweater-vest. Now, Francie prefers a gray sweater-vest and white button-down: She’s trying to align herself with Rory, but her colors are off; Rory, like Paris, will always favor blue.
Paris and Rory in 3.16
Despite Francie’s machinations, Rory and Paris come together for a speech commemorating the Chilton Bicentennial, to be broadcast on C-SPAN (3.16). Paris arrives just in time, her hair mussed, her lavender sweater and khakis rumpled; the unseemliness of her appearance made even starker by Rory’s tidy black cardigan and dress, a prim pink bow at the waist.
Onstage, Paris brandishes her rejection letter: She’s not going to Harvard—but she did have sex with her boyfriend. In Paris’s mind, Harvard and sex are intertwined, one desire subsuming the other. “I’m being punished [for having sex]!” Paris declares. “Pack your chastity belt, Gilmore! You’re going to Harvard.” And indeed, Rory could: At home, acceptance letters to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale wait.
I wish I could say that this episode is a real critique of the ways teenage girls are punished for having sexual desires. But in reality, it seems only to enforce those punishments: Earlier in the episode, Lorelai overhears Rory and Paris talking about Paris’s first time, then creepily whispers to herself that her daughter is “the good kid.” Later, Lorelai promises to take Rory shoe shopping—just because. Rory gets to look pretty and poised on C-SPAN, her adoring mother and grandfather in the audience; Paris gets to look disheveled and crazed, seemingly no family around to help her.
The threat of sex hangs over season three, over Rory and Jess’s burgeoning relationship. It’s the real reason, I think, that Lorelai is so wary of Jess. He represents new possibilities, new choices, new desires.
Shane in 3.4
At the beginning of the season, Rory is still dating Dean, and Jess is dating another girl, Shane. Though the show never says it outright, Jess and Shane are almost certainly having sex: Her off-the-shoulder tops and formfitting jeans imply that she is a girl unafraid to show her body, much to Rory’s jealousy and discomfort.
Jess and Shane in 3.1
Lorelai and Rory in 3.1
When Rory does put on a fancy dress, excited to see Jess after a summer incommunicado, she’s greeted with the sight of him making out with Shane, his hand tucked in the back pocket of her jeans. Within the binary sexual politics of the show, Shane must be a bimbo, the body to Rory’s brains, the “bad kid” to Rory’s “good” one.
Jess and Luke in 3.12
Rory and Dean, and Jess and Shane, break up in episode 3.7, and Rory and Jess finally get together. Jess’s uncle Luke approves of the relationship, thinking Rory a good influence on Jess. Luke and Jess are finally aligning, Jess dressing, unironically, like his uncle. In 3.12, for example, Jess needles Luke about his dating life, while wearing the most Luke-like outfit. All that’s missing is the baseball cap.
But unbeknownst to Rory and Luke, Jess has been cutting class, picking up extra shifts at Walmart. He thinks he’s going to school enough, but by 3.19, he learns he’s not graduating and he can’t take Rory to prom.
Jimmy in 3.20
When his long-lost father, Jimmy, appears in 3.20, Jess sees a glimmer of possibility, an escape from the mess he unintentionally created. Jimmy, after all, has turned his life around: He runs a hot dog stand on the Venice Beach boardwalk, and he’s in a committed relationship with a single mother of one daughter (sound familiar?). Jimmy is California Jess, a little looser, a little crunchier: Like his son, he favors graphic Ts over long-sleeve shirts and jeans.
Jess on the bus (3.20)
Jess follows Jimmy to California; on the bus out of Stars Hollow, he runs into Rory, and though he never says his destination, she knows he’s gone for good. His outfit speaks louder: a black leather motorcycle jacket over a black hoodie, over a black T-shirt. The layers are his armor, the callouses he’s built up so he won’t feel the pain when he leaves. Jess has never worn a leather jacket before, despite his “bad boy” image around town. (Dean and Chris, “nice guys” they’re claimed to be, actually wear leather jackets a lot more.) Jess is almost saying, I’ve become who you think I am.
Jess in 3.22
On the bus, Rory asks Jess to call her, and he does, though he can’t bring himself to speak (3.22). He listens as Rory says she may have loved him, but she needs to move on. When she hangs up, he’s left at the boardwalk pay phone, his own “I love you” left unsaid. Fittingly, he looks the most like Luke he ever has: a black flannel shirt over a black T and jeans. Like his uncle, he struggles to express the depth of his feelings.
Dream Lorelai in 3.1
In this same episode, Luke dreams that Lorelai tells him not to get engaged to his girlfriend, Nicole. His dream parallels one that Lorelai had in the season premiere: She imagines she and Luke are married, and she is pregnant with twins. Her outfit should’ve been the tip-off: Dream Lorelai wears a pink negligee, while Real Lorelai favors T-shirts and sweatpants to bed.
Coulda left that bucket hat in dreamland (3.1)
And yet, in the very next scene, Lorelai is wearing a pink dress, the color, neckline, and trim mimicking her dream negligee. Rory may interpret Lorelai’s dream as a sign that she’s still upset about Sherry’s pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean there are no real feelings underneath: ones that neither Luke nor Lorelai will express for one. More. Season.
Lane in 3.3
Dave in 3.3
Let’s end on a high note, on the best couple of season three—and maybe the series: Lane and her bandmate Dave Rygalski. They meet in 3.3, when Dave answers Lane’s “Drummer Seeking Band” ad. He recognizes her by her Dead Kennedys T-shirt, and they quickly fall into a repartee of band references and audio geekery. It’s basically love at first sight.
“Trust God” is a good band name (3.3).
Before Lane heads home, she strips off her Dead Kennedys T-shirt, revealing the “Trust God” T-shirt underneath.
“Is that a band?” Dave asks.
“No, my life,” Lane replies.
And so Dave knows, from their first meeting, the two lives that Lane leads. But unlike last season’s love interest, Henry, Dave doesn’t mind a bit of subterfuge. He happily plays hymns at the Kims’ Thanksgiving dinner. He knows Lane is worth it.
Shoutout to Lane’s punky red plaid kilt and striped wristbands (3.19)
In style, Dave is a little nerdy, a little proto-hipster-y—but sincere. He’s not wearing argyle sweaters and printed button-downs ironically; he genuinely seems to like them. He can roll with Lane whether she’s wearing a band T-shirt or a Mrs. Kim–approved blouse.
Mrs. Kim and Dave in 3.20
When Dave asks Mrs. Kim to take Lane to prom, he tells her he doesn’t mind wearing a tie. Or a suit, for that matter: gray, like Mrs. Kim’s signature coat. Mrs. Kim sees herself in Dave—in the all-nighter he spends reading the Bible—and she agrees to let him take Lane to prom.
Finally, Lane’s two lives are moving closer together—though next season, they’ll crash. Let’s talk about it more in a few weeks: Season four will publish on Thursday, 9/8.
Favorite Line from Season Three
Every issue, I’m providing my favorite line(s) from that season. This one comes from Luke, to Taylor Doose in episode 3.3 and always:
Luke: Taylor, no. No, no, no, and every day from now on ’til the end of my life, I’m gonna come in here and say, “Taylor, no!” And when I die, I’m gonna have them freeze me next to Ted Williams, and when they find the cure to what I died of and they unfreeze me, my first words are gonna be “How’s Ted?” followed closely by “Taylor, no!”
Essential Episodes for Season Four
4.3: “The Hobbit, the Sofa and Digger Styles”
4.6: “An Affair to Remember”
4.11: “In the Clamor and the Clangor”
4.15: “Scene in a Mall”
4.21: “Last Week Fights, This Week Tights”
