When I saw promo pix for Hedda (2025) last year, I thought this adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s play had a modern, though gorgeous, setting. So I figured I’d just watch it whenever it came to streaming because Tessa Thompson, who plays the main character Hedda Gabler, is amazing, but I figured I wouldn’t review it for the blog. Then I saw it on Amazon and noticed a featurette with the costume designer Lindsay Pugh and realized this movie is set in a flamboyant version of an 1950s upper-crust world. And thus you get a review after all!
The story follows the general outline of the play, with some significant twists. The former lover who returns as competition for a professorship with Hedda’s husband is now a woman, Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), and the tag-along assistant, Thea Clifton (Imogen Poots), who left her husband to be with that former lover is still a woman. This makes the romantic entanglements primarily between Hedda, Eileen, and Thea, with Hedda’s husband, George (Tom Bateman), secondary. Having these characters be female isn’t just a “hey, let’s make it queer” — this also emphasizes the reduced opportunities for smart, ambitious women in the 1950s, and it’s a reflection of the glass ceiling women still hit today. Just with added romantic drama.
The main action takes place all during one night at a party hosted by Hedda and her husband, so there’s primarily one set of costumes for each character, and these are well-chosen and highly stylized by designer Pugh, who explained to GoldDerby:
“The film is set in 1953, so we had to honor that … Even though we were in a house hundreds of years old, I wanted the clothes to be modern for the time.”
Director and screenwriter Nia DaCosta also told Vogue about how the production design updated the ’50s style:
“We can get some murder-mystery vibes, some English country-house weekend-party vibes. I wanted it to exist within that tradition but also didn’t want it to look like every period drama and be overly familiar. This had to represent this very idiosyncratic woman in the center, and everything we see has to be hers. Production designer Cara Brower and I filled the house with some old, stodgy furniture that would have been there in the 1950s, but the portrait in the dining room — which is now in my dining room — is this Cubist modern-art piece. There are Art Deco touches because that was making a resurgence in the ’50s — the black lacquer and leopard print. We wanted it to feel like this meeting of the period and this modern woman. You see this clash play out at every level of the film.”
Hedda’s party dress has a big, poufy 1950s New Look style with tons of petticoats and a plunging neckline (perhaps a little too low to be period accurate?). Continuing in GoldDerby, costume designer Lindsay Pugh said of the dress:
“It’s a cocktail dress meant to be worn for two hours, not six weeks. But Tessa wanted it to be tight and restrictive. Hedda’s trapped — inside this life, this marriage, this dress — and Tessa completely understood that.”
Pugh also mentioned on Meet Me at Crafty:
“It’s very subliminal, but Hedda walks down the stairs at the beginning, she’s in three petticoats. She’s taking up a lot of space. And then as the movie goes on, we take the petticoats off. And off. So it’s a much slimmer silhouette below the waist by the end of the movie.”
She also noted on GoldDerby about the color of Hedda’s dress:
“There’s a line in the script about tainted, rotting fruit. We thought that was such a great prompt for the way that everything should look — and the color scheme. I wanted it to be camouflaged and snake-like. The dress is chartreuse silk underneath with brown lace on top, and two layers of tulle — one green, one brown. You’re not quite sure what color it is. It’s unsettling.”
There’s also a few glimpses of Hedda’s undergarments, which are reasonably accurate too.
Hedda’s old flame, Eileen, also wears an exuberant version of a ’50s New Look dress, though as the costume designer told GoldDerby: “For Eileen, it was about strength — a navy and white silhouette, masculine but elegant.” The director also discussed Eileen’s costume in Vogue:
“Loveborg was the most interesting person to figure out. Would she be a Katharine Hepburn or lean into the femininity? Costume designer Lindsay Pugh and I ended up on a dress that shows she’s a woman who’s doing both. She’s hemmed in but soft. She’’s saying, ‘I’m here as a woman, I’m not hiding that, but you have to accept me because my mind is what’s most important.'”
Lastly is Thea, who arrives unaware of the party and borrows a dress from Hedda. As the costume designer told GoldDerby: “For Thea, poor Thea, Hedda puts her in a dress from her own wardrobe that’s infantilizing. It’s part of the power play.”
This a dark, twisty movie, and nobody gets a particularly happy ending (not like Ibsen is known for “light” entertainment). But the acting is captivating and the visuals are gorgeous.
Have you seen Hedda?
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Gorgeous costumes and great performances by all. My only minor nit to pick is Tess/Hedda is kind of clearly not wearing the bra you later see her in under the dress because it would come up too high for the dress’ neckline (the necklace gives it away – when she’s wearing the dress, it’s sitting against her bare sternum but when she’s in her underwear, it’s resting against the centre piece of the bra).
I think Eileen’s dress is horrible, and very unlike the sketched design. The white part is more like an undershirt than a collar, and it presents her breasts front and center like headlights.
Hedda’s and Eileen’s dresses look neither like the (reasonably convincing) sketches nor like anything I remember from the 50’s.
Eileen’s dress looks more oktoberfest than Dior’s New look
The construction of the costumes is clearly not using period techniques, Hedda’s dress is made in the modern way it’s all wrong. And the skirt is wrong. There’s no hip spring in any of the gowns, when it is clearly in the drawings. Bah.