‘Palm Royale’ drenches a suntanned and striving Kristen Wiig in ‘60s poolside glamour

A rollicking romp soaked in sunshine, “Palm Royale” tells the tale of striver Maxine Simmons, played by Kristen Wiig (also an executive producer), who is bent on breaking into the upper echelons of Palm Beach society, specifically the titular Palm Royale club. The sets are modelled after mid-century-modern documentarian Slim Aarons’ photographs of the sun-drenched leisure set.

“Every episode there was a gala or charity event or something,” said costume designer Alix Friedberg (known for “Big Little Lies”). For those, she busted out the big gowns, but the bigger task was outfitting these ladies who lunch and play tennis and shop, all requiring multiple costume changes per episode.

On the less tony side of town, West Palm Beach, we have Laura Dern (also a producer) in a delicious hippie iteration as Linda, who runs a feminist bookstore and epicentre of the counterculture.

The creative teams used strict colour palettes to convey the two worlds. “When you are in Palm Beach, it’s Lilly Pulitzer, it’s really bright sherbet pastels and bright white,” said Friedberg. “Then when you get into West Palm Beach it’s a lot more patinaed, orange and chartreuse, a lot more earthy. In terms of Linda’s character and her band of feminists, it’s the only reality showing what is really going on in the world in 1969.”

There is an image of a giant uterus on the bookstore wall. “It’s counterculture and it’s youth revolt and denim and wood and natural fibres. We wanted a contrast so that when Maxine enters that world she’s a complete fish out of water.”

But Maxine is a fish out of water in upscale Palm Beach, too. “Kristin Wiig’s spray tan was an integral part of the character,” said Friedberg, as was her bouffant hairdo. A pageant queen from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Maxine married a pageant judge, a pilot, who she then found was the sole heir to a major fortune via his ailing aunt, Norma Dellacorte (Burnett).

Working with Burnett was thrilling for Friedberg, who went back and watched the comedy legend’s variety shows (“they really hold up”), introducing them to her kids.

“She always wanted to push the comedy,” said Friedberg. “For the majority of the show she’s in a hospital bed, but every time you saw her she had a new peignoir, each more ridiculous than the others. She had feathers and vintage kimonos and full jewelry and full makeup and hair completely done with that flat pillow back.”

Friedberg worried about putting Burnett in some of the more outlandish costumes, like a flashback montage of grand ball entrances where she’s dressed as Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette. “She is 90 years old. I was always so worried about fabric or jewelry being too heavy,” said Friedberg. “But Carol would say, ‘Don’t worry, I got this. Norma would do this.’”

As the grand dame, Norma goes in big for turbans, many of them vintage, which Friedberg hopes will drive a comeback.

The younger “Palm Royale” set includes Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia Gerber in a small but resonant part as a manicurist and aspiring model. But interestingly, all the main characters are 40-plus. These aren’t kids playing in a ritzy sandbox; they are fighting for the top of the food chain, to rule the lucrative charity circuit. A delightfully cast Allison Janney plays Evelyn Rollins, a would-be successor to Dellacorte’s turban. The woman can work a caftan.

The Palm Beach look is aspirational by design. The late entrepreneur Lilly Pulitzer, herself a Palm Beach denizen, made her fortune by democratizing the look, taking the sunshine to malls all over America with her watercolour-printed A-line frocks that are still worn today, especially in Palm Beach. With the launch of the show, Anthropologie has taken up this mantle, debuting a “Palm Royale” collection filled with candy-coloured mini shift dresses, printed two-piece sets and rattan handbags.

The show’s wardrobe is made up of “60 to 70 per cent” genuine items from the era, plus new garments made from deadstock fabric of the time. There are some designer pieces: Galanos, Dior. Friedberg’s team was able to find a lot of suitable vintage as the 1960s are recent enough and much of it was made of hardy polyester. “People saved their grandparents’ archives from the ’60s,” she explained. Pieces from the ’50s and older have mostly been lost to dry rot or are preserved in museums.

One thing that doesn’t hold up: the swimsuits. “The old swimsuits we found had lost all their elastic,” she said. That took a good deal of fiddling to fix. Ricky Martin, who plays charming pool boy Robert Diaz, walks around in trunks topless. He was a great sport, said Friedberg.

Showrunner Abe Sylvia comes from a theatre and costume background; “he’s not afraid of a sequin or a feather,” Friedberg said. He made the writing very costume-focused — for instance, the local dress shop is a frequent hangout spot.

They had to work together, along with the set designer, to figure out how to make all the colour and pattern in the clothes, furniture and wallpaper go together without clashing. “We needed to decide ahead who was going to take the forward pattern,” said Friedberg.

The sherbet palette of pinks, oranges and turquoise particularly suits Maxine, “who has a childlike quality to her,” said Friedberg. “Lots of florals and bows, like what an eight-year-old would pick out of the closet. Everything matchy-matchy, down to the accessories.”

Janney’s Evelyn is more sophisticated, and eventually Maxine begins to emulate her wardrobe when she realizes “the other ladies are more elegant and studied.”

The entire job of these women was dressing up for photos in the society pages. The creative team had to find a way to “depict in a visual sense this unabashed concentration on their own vanity.”

The end of the ’60s marked a changing of the guard. As the merry band of feminists demonstrate, the days of society ladies setting the standard for women were on the wane. The world was on the brink of change, and women were dressing for their jobs, for real life. But not everyone was quick to adapt. One “Palm Royale” character remains stuck in the Jackie O. era, never showing a knee, with proper white gloves and foundation garments, big hats and pearls.

“The jewelry was incredibly cumbersome and heavy. There is no way I could do anything but lift a martini with this stuff,” said Friedberg.

Well, that or scratch a rival’s eyes out.