This post contains mild spoilers for Netflix's Cowboy Bebop live-action adaptation. If you haven't watched yet, check out our Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Review.
In a world heavily influenced by a combination of western, samurai, noir, and gangster imagery it is hardly surprising that the Cowboy Bebop aesthetic is just as vibrant in the new Netflix series as it was in Shinichirō Watanabe’s beloved ‘90s anime. From the first image released of John Cho wearing Spike Spiegel’s signature single lapel blue jacket, it is clear the retro feel is still a vital part of the overall vision. Set in a future in which bounty hunters are called ‘cowboys,” Spike is joined by his partner Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) in this dangerous endeavor. All three are running from their pasts while trying to make a quick buck in the present, and each of them has a distinct style influenced by the source material.
“I had never seen the anime, I was completely unfamiliar,” costume designer Jane Holland explains over Zoom about the Netflix live-action remake and its origins. After reading the script, Holland watched the anime series, and “everything fell into place” regarding her vision for the series. Speaking from Auckland, New Zealand, the designer is no stranger to genre and her credits include Xena: Princess Warrior, Legend of the Seeker, and The Shannara Chronicles. While the Cowboy Bebop universe was an unknown entity to Holland, this wasn’t the case when she asked “Does anyone know Cowboy Bebop?” to the younger members of her family and their friends. "Oh my God, they're doing live-action?! Don't fuck it up!" was the reaction Holland was met with and she was not alone in experiencing this enthusiasm. “All of us had somebody who said that to us. That was when I realized it's precious,” she recalls.
Here, Holland takes IGN through the major players and moments from Cowboy Bebop’s first season including hidden details, influences, and Easter eggs to look out for.
Spike Spiegel
“I knew it needed to have a strong style to it and be well-tailored,” Holland says about her approach to Spike’s signature blue jacket. The single lapel, boxy silhouette, and skinny long legs all stood out to her in the animation, but she also had to translate this for a real person. In an early meeting with Cho, they discussed finding a way into the tailoring and getting the right proportions of the unusual lapel concept. Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons provided inspiration and Holland describes the final look as “a double-breasted suit and it's got this beautifully tailored little twist at the back of where the lapel disappears.”
The shape and proportions are significant because not only does Spike rarely change out of this suit but it is an action-heavy role. “The actor has to wear that thing every day for a long period of time,” says Holland. “It's really important you get as much into it as you can so that it embodies the character.” Even elements such as how Cho stood as Spike had a design impact, "John instigated there's a way that Spike stands — this hand in his pocket. So the height of the pocket was altered to suit the angle of his elbow so he could stand in that way.” To accommodate the framing of the shot Holland rounded the tip of Spike’s popped collar so it didn’t fill the screen. “There's a massaging and fine-tuning that you do. Definitely taking the spirit of the anime, but it becomes something else when you actually work with the person,” she adds.
Eagle-eyed fans should take note of “secret” references Holland incorporated to reflect Spike’s fighting style that suggests “affinity with water and fluidity.” The costume team jeweler made silver buttons for the jacket’s side fastening with the Kanji symbol for water. The cowboy motif is reflected through Holland’s penchant for trophy belt buckles on this project and Spike’s has “a Japanese wave so it's got this real power to the image of it, and then the tooling on the belt follows that wave pattern.” A nod to Julia (Elena Satine) is less visible, “I printed the lining of the jacket with falling roses and they are drawn by the same hand that did some of the work on the Julia costumes.” The reason for this imagery is “because he's a guy with a broken heart. And so there's this symbolism of Julia — the rose is wrapped around him —which we probably will never see, but it is a very beautiful thing.”
Jet Black
On a project with this many signature costumes, most of the garments are custom builds to take into account multiple versions required for the physicality, stunt doubles, and various states of distress. In some cases, Holland did get to combine her love of vintage pieces and with Jet Black, the retro influence helped conceive the straightforward concept. “I looked at vintage utilitarian military workwear and that's where the design lines came from on his overalls,” she says. The prosthetic arm is a specific piece made by the costume department, which includes a serial number and dents from previous fights to “give him a lived-in feel.”
Getting a glimpse into Jet Black’s past in Episode 5 gave Holland the chance to lean into noir sartorial elements. “You can't go wrong with Mustafa being able to wear some super cool suit,” she explains. In the flashback sequence when Jet Black is ambushed the plaid selection is purposeful. “There was no twist in the tailoring, so what do I do to give it a little bit of an edge? That fabric choice gave us that,” Holland recalls. “I've applied the same kind of idea to the background and the world-building.”
Faye Valentine
Faye Valentine is more of a challenge: “It was further to travel from the anime with Faye than there was with Spike and Jet because I didn't want a costume that was gratuitous.” Holland still wanted to draw threads from the source, but she also factored in the physicality of her bounty hunter role and the functionality of the clothes. “The choice of fabrics, and the fact she's got black tights, as well as the boots, It’s a bit more solid, a bit more grounded,” the designer says. “To me, it was looking for something that feels now and suits who the character is.”
A night at the opera in Episode 4 gives Faye the chance to dress up in a scarlet halter neck frock that added the challenge of mixing elegance with action. Figuring out elements like the slit are vital and Holland explains the choice of fabric is a big factor — “that was the heaviest silk.” Faye does go to the opera in a different episode of the anime (“The Ballad of the Fallen Angels”) and Holland used this as an inspiration springboard: if you look closely the green aquamarine drop earrings with gold are from this setting.
Vicious
“Beautiful, slick tailoring,” is how Holland initially describes the Vicious (Alex Hassell) closet. Mixing utilitarian style with a theatrical edge brought the Cowboy Bebop villain to life with European designers like Ann Demeulemeester and Margiela as references. “It's almost like a dress uniform, but it's not a glitzy dress uniform,” she says. “It's got the chains, tassels, and they were handmade beautiful jewelry pieces.” While Netflix has done away with Vicious’s cormorant bird, Holland pays homage via his hardware. A ring and the trophy buckle feature this winged creature and Holland “found an art deco print of a cormorant and that gave us the graphic shape on his trophy buckle.”
Other individual details to help build character occur in the layering as “there's a slanted pocket, which is on the jacket, and then it's on the waistcoat, and then it's on the shirt.” His boots are by Demeulemeester and a tie bar adds to the precise nature that makes it feel lived in without losing sight of Vicious’s end goal.
Santiago
Santiago (Blessing Mokgohloa) needs to match the theatricality of Vicious but it is also scripted that he is pretentious — the cravat nods to this. A strong 1940s gangster thread can be seen in his costume silhouette such as the wide-legged pants. To illustrate Santiago’s story arc in switching sides Holland uses his accessories to subtly portray this trait: “I took this idea of a leopard changing its spots, and he has an earring that is layered up between gold and silver leopard spots that shift. The same with his trophy buckle; the leopard spots shift and change when they get to to the other side.”
The designer also factors in another switch toward the end of the season when Vicious also wears this costume and there is “this consideration of movement” to incorporate the big fight scene in Episode 8. The fake blood continuity is a big challenge with both this look and Spike’s suit. “I don't know how many of them we have but you completely trash the suit,” laughs Holland.
Julia
“Julia strongly features in the anime, but her story isn't really fleshed out,” Holland points out about the source material and the character at the heart of the romance and power struggle. “There is this femme fatale feel because she moves between worlds,” is another defining part of Julia’s arc that incorporates the noir influence. It is important to show a shift in her circumstance but also maintain a connection to the past. Flashbacks in “Blue Crow Waltz” reveal how Julia’s singing career is an accident of sorts. “I had that idea of her having her everyday wear that could turn into a stage costume by taking a shirt off, taking a hat off,” she says. “I looked at [Lady] Gaga.” She drilled into the noir and jazz world using 1940s and 1950s references to tap into the retro glamorous aesthetic as Julia’s journey continues. “Her costumes are beautifully cut. The corsets are amazing,” Holland remarks. The hand painted rose motif is a direct anime reference that links to Spike and reflects the “true Julia.”
A gift from Vicious is layered with meaning that takes elements from the source material and marries it with the live-action depiction. The necklace in question is a cage within a cage that houses a pearl at its center. “I looked at Julia in the anime and there's a reference to The Beatles song “Julia,” which is written by John Lennon,” explains Holland. The song was written about both Lennon’s mother and Yoko Ono so Hamilton looked at Ono’s artwork to inform the lines of the pendant. She points out that it might be easier to make a random beautiful cage but this link to the anime gives it a deeper meaning, “It's not just a beautiful piece of jewelry.” The symbolism of the pearl in the cage also reflects what her life with Vicious has become, “There's the cage and then inside there's another cage and it's hanging by a chain and that's perfectly balanced.”
The Red Dragon Syndicate
Similar to the Spike lapel influence, the red jacket detail is straight from the anime. However, Holland did add a fun twist to the syndicate members’ seniority via their clothing. “We worked out if we were portraying the syndicate that we needed to have a ranking system,” she says. Cuff buttons come in single, double, or triple red, as well as differences in lapels, shirts, and ties to denote who is a higher rank in this criminal organization.
Ana
Ana’s Bar is a pivotal location in the live-action Cowboy Bebop and the melting pot aspect of the clientele fed into the look of the underground jazz bar owner. “She belongs there, but also she owns it,” Holland says. “That was this idea of her having this coat that was like a second skin with these long tassels on it.” This incredible patchwork garment “has this movement when she strides across but also is heavy.” To find the essence of the character, Holland looked at the Bebop jazz movement and the notion of breaking restraints. Images of actress Cicely Tyson when she was married to Miles Davis in the ‘70s “fed into Ana.” Drawing from this period she also looked at the Black Panthers and Erykah Badu’s jewelry provided a contemporary influence. Ana owns a corner store in the anime that has a honeycomb design element, which informed her trophy buckle and the amber color palette. “She is about strength, layering and powerful but also lived-in,” is how Holland describes her look.
Gren
While most characters don’t have a large closet, Gren (along with Julia) doesn’t stick to one repeat outfit. Changes have been made to the anime character as Gren is now non-binary and played by non-binary actor Mason Alexander Park. Working in Ana’s bar as an artistic director of sorts, Holland spoke to Park about “finding signature pieces that worked as modules. It was almost like I found these different shapes that were different modules and then could work together.” Park’s love of David Bowie is reflected in the suit they wear in “Blue Crow Waltz,” and a secret cipher from Bowie’s final album Blackstar provides deeper meaning. “Bowie is written in code on that album cover and you can find what the code means,” Holland explains. “So we took the code and made pieces for Gren out of that code.” Park has tattoos that read “they” and “them” and Holland used the Bowie code so Gren’s rings read “they” and “them” if you hold them up correctly — “these little lapel pins have the same code.” Additionally, the star broach worn with the gold suit in the flashback episode is fashioned after the Blackstar album cover and was made from a piece of violin ebony and silver.
Gren also has a trophy buckle utilizing “a butterfly motif” to show “transformation, taking flight and not being restrained.” Everything is custom-made for Park (including the corsets) and Holland talks fondly about this collaboration. “I really enjoyed the process of bringing all of this together and this freedom of doing a suit and a tie, or a suit and a corset, a skirt and something that's got military but then it's got lingerie,” she says. “Working with pieces and the pieces were all made to work on Mason's body, and what Mason felt comfortable with.” In terms of representation, Holland also discussed diversity within her costume team: “I had some input from one person particularly in my costume department, who was able to talk through some of the approach because I'm a middle-aged woman designing these costumes for a non-binary character. So I had a non-binary voice in there, and obviously Mason's voice in there.”
The Eco-Warriors
The rogue gallery of wanted criminals includes some memorable sartorial serves, and this includes the Callisto Liberation Army in Episode 4. Their logo and gas mask-adjacent design lines are straight from the anime, which Holland expertly executed using the endangered Ganymede Sea Rat inspiration — with a little dolphin tail addition. “You have to watch them when they run because these tails have this fantastic little wiggle to them,” she describes. Holland also took the sustainable ethos of these characters into account, “We got a lot of stuff from the army surplus store, and we pulled everything apart. Then put it back together and used vintage utilitarian fastenings.” The designer started with matriarch Maria Murdoch (Adrienne Barbeau) and mixed the eclectic elements, “This real feeling of a Victorian shape to her costume, but realized in this upcycling way.”
The night at the opera they gatecrash at the start of “The Callisto Soul” and the designer had to conceive a “black-tie event in Bebop terms.” Holland and her team utilized the New Zealand vintage scene to dress the large background cast: “We went out and bought every single '80s [and] '90s ball dress that we could find that had a big puffy sleeve or was asymmetrical. We pulled them apart and put them back together.”
Mad Pierrot
One of the most formidable foes Spike faces leans into the creepy theatricality of the abandoned fairground location in “Sad Clown A-Go-Go.” Actor and stuntman Josh Randall plays Pierrot Le Fou and Holland notes his tall height makes elements like the oversized top hat look even more outlandish. Contradicting the violence is the handmade ruff collar, “I love that it's this beautiful delicate piece of costuming.” The character draws on the imagery of a French clown and Holland also points out that the subtle diamond shape on his waistcoat is derived from the anime. “It works as a suit but then it does get pretty crazy when you put the ruff on,” she says about this memorable costume. This sums up the ethos of the series, which has a “love and respect for the source material” in the design concept. “Embracing the Bebop spirit of breaking the restraints, exploring and finding the twist,” Holland says. “I hope all of that is the energy that makes it fly.”