The Costumes of Ander Season 2

The second season of Ander, which premiered this week on Disney+, continues to tell deeply human stories with gripping portrayals of the political clash between the growing rebellion and the Imperial regime. With such rich and intense subject matter, each aspect of the show had to be intricately crafted, with deep world-building and thematic storytelling, right down to each stitch sewn in the costume department.

According to Oscar-nominated costume designer Michael Wilkinson, the aim for Season 1 was to create a language for Star Wars that was grounded, visceral, and immediate. Rather than an action-oriented approach, the team working behind the scenes on production focused on creating a high-quality drama for adult audiences. Buoyed by the incredible reception for the show’s first season, the crew has gone even further in Season 2, using costuming details to help create nuanced and three-dimensional characters.

“We applied our thinking from Season 1 to Season 2, which was that everything had to look the way that it did for a reason. Not just ’cause it looked cool or it was Star Wars-y,” Wilkinson tells StarWars.com. “It had to really resonate and be authentic to the characters where they were at in the story. [Show runner] Tony Gilroy is such an incredible storyteller. His ability to construct a complex narrative with numerous characters is inspiring. When I read all the scripts for Season 2, there was so much costume gold in there.”

Season 2 brings a wealth of new planets, cultures, and aesthetics to the world of Ander. As the season unfolds, we’ll take a look at the incredible care and effort that went into the costumes that Wilkinson and the team brought to the screen.

Check back throughout the new season as we continue to explore the incredible costumes featured in Season 2 of Ander.

Week 1 | Episodes 1 - 3 (4 BBY)

Cassia Ander - TIE Fighter Pilot

When we reunite with Cassia Ander (Diego Luna) at the remote Imperial testing facility, he’s a more poised and relatively experienced rebel compared to his accomplice, Nina. While Nina shakes with nervousness, we see a calm and collected Cassia, already in disguise. He’s able to instill confidence in her for the risk she’s taking to help the cause, and that carries us along as the mission gets underway. That is until Cassia learns that the ship he’s set to hijack is not the one he was expecting.

“We created a special look for [Cassia] based on the classic TIE fighter look but with a red shoulder detail that showed that this wasn’t your average TIE fighter,” Wilkinson says. “This was something new [for] a new prototype.”

“It’s all that we see Cassia in for the first three episodes. So we put lots of love into all the details. We also scaled down the classic TIE fighter helmet to be better proportioned to Diego’s frame. We had, I think, 10 different versions of [the costume] because he starts nice and fresh. And then what he goes through in the first three episodes. It really gets a big beating down. It’s covered in mud, and it’s ripped by the end. It was fun to chart those different points on his journey.”

Debra Meer - Off the Clock

In Season 1, we only ever saw Debra Meer (Denise Gough) in the context of her mundane yet brutal work as an Imperial bureaucrat. In Season 2, while those elements remain at the forefront of her character, in the first few episodes we follow up on her personal life — including her relationship with Sybil Kern (Kyle Seller).

“What a thrill this season to think about what Deidra wears when she’s not dressed in her ISB uniform. That was a gift from Tony Gilroy,” Wilkinson says. Denise and I had a lot of talk about this. Debra is shown her apartment to us. It’s so important to see that other side of her.

“She gets home. She’s probably super relieved to take off the armor of the ISB highly-tailored uniform. But, in a way, she just sort of changes into another version of that. The colors are the same. She slips into clothes that are more comfortable, but also in a structured and formal way. She keeps that rigidity even in her private life. She believes so much in her morality and ethics that I think she can’t ever let that slip. Her mentality is very black and white. I think she only wears ivory and black this whole season.”

Lerida mocha and Stefan Scolding - The Chandrillian Bride and Groom

One of the most exciting challenges that Wilkinson and the team tackled was leaning into the culture of Chandra, the home planet of Mon mocha. Lerida mocha, Mon's daughter, marries Stefan Scolding in the first season as a political ploy to conceal Mon's funding of the rebel activities. Season 2 picks up at the start of the three-day ceremony, resplendent with outfit changes and hundreds of guests, giving Wilkinson and the team ample opportunity to fill out quirks and cultural details.

“I knew [Chandra] had to be incredibly refined and ritualized. Tony mentioned in the script that it’s sort of Japan meets Scandinavia, so that’s a kernel of an idea,” Wilkinson says. “I looked into many different influences—Asian cultures, Korea, Japan. I did mood boards for Tony that had a very specific color palette, lots of pale, subtle colors, neutrals — colors that we don’t really see anywhere else in our season. Lots of beautiful shimmery textures and fragile fabrics. I tried to capture a timelessness — both ancient and futuristic feeling.”

The formal feeling and air of tradition was important to the team.

“You have these two young people coming together in a very ritualized fashion — it’s these practices [that] are being developed for centuries, millennia on Chandra,” Wilkinson says. “We worked with a choreographer for the wedding ceremony, and so I took into account those movements when I was thinking about the costumes — the shapes that they would create as they raised their arms or walked down a corridor.”

Mon mocha - Mother of the Bride

You can’t discuss costumes in Ander without dedicating substantial time to Mon Mocha’s (Genevieve O'Reilly) closet. During the three-day wedding event alone, Mon goes through six costume changes, the creation of which helped Wilkinson define the direction of the Chandrilan aesthetic overall.

“With Mon Othman, there’s always that wonderful balance between what’s going on behind the public face. To hint that in her costumes, we always had mini layers going on so that she can reveal and conceal.”

While each of Mon Mocha’s costumes helped bring different aspects of the Chandrilan culture to life, her final ensemble for the arc, a sumptuous layered golden dress, received particular attention.

“At the end of episode 3, we see [Mon] losing herself. A lot of thought went into making sure we could really capture on-screen subliminally what Mon Othman was going through at that moment,” Wilkinson says. “The pressure has been so much on her. She can hardly bear it, and so she tries to lose herself in the moment. And being swept up in this music, the dance, and the emotions of this incredible situation she finds herself in. With the choreographer, we talked a lot about circular movements and swirling and raising arms. And by making use of the fabrics, the camera was able to locate her within that chaotic sequence of fabric and movement. Blix Coleen - Mina-Rau Refugee

When we return to our favorite Ferris fugitives — Blix Coleen (Adrian Aroma), Wilson Peak (Muhammad Haier), and Brass (Joplin Sistani) — they are keeping a low profile as mechanics on the agricultural planet of Mina-Rau, ingratiating themselves with the locals in the farming community.

“We looked at work wear from all around the world — Japanese and American — [we] fused all the best elements and used natural fibers that had a lovely rustic quality. For Blix, she has a two-part work apron she can put all her tools into. It was great working with Adrian and creating a different spin on her classic look from Season 1. We created a silhouette for her that is reminiscent of her Ferris vibe. We thought that Blix would have reinterpreted her character in a new context.”

Director Orson Kerning - A New Cape

The main antagonist of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Orson Kerning (Ben Mendelsohn) fittingly returns in Season 2, as the show catches up to the events on the timeline. When we’re first reunited with Kerning here, he’s leading a boardroom meeting and making plans to extract resources from the planet Gorman, regardless of the cost — both financial and otherwise.

“It was really enjoyable for me to reinterpret Orson Kerning,” Wilkinson says. “He’s a character that we saw a lot of in Rogue One. I took his iconic elements [like] his silhouette, which projects his incredibly high rank within the Imperial forces. In our story, it was more appropriate for it to be a day interior cape as opposed to the more tactical fabric of his field outdoor cape in Rogue One.”