Palm Royale (2024) Is Glorious!

If you haven’t already, run don’t walk to watch Palm Royale (2024), the 1960s-set comedy starring Kristin Wiig as a newly arrived Palm Beach, Florida, resident who is determined to join society’s inner circle. It’s well acted, well written, absolutely hilarious, and the costumes are faaaaaabulous!

Wiig’s character is Maxine, and she starts off as a nobody who literally climbs the wall to enter the exclusive Palm Royale club. However, she’s got hidden connections and backstories…

And she gets to know a number of other characters who have their own hidden connections and backstories, like:

There’s also some unexpected appearances, including:

The costumes were designed by Alix Friedberg (many modern-set films/shows including Big Little Lies and True Detective), and the show is set in 1969, so it’s a great mix of “60s” and proto “70s.”

Friedberg did her research; she told Who What Wear that this involved,

“Starting with vintage fashion magazines and photography — there’s a lot of really brilliant photographers at the time. We dug around in the Slim Aaron’s world quite a bit. Getting Maxine’s palette and her journey together and then building the other women around that is the way that I started” (Costume Designer Alix Friedberg Takes Us Behind Palm Royale’s Perfect ’60s Style).

The best part is that this is such a great era for crazy, over-the-top fashions, so there was no need for Friedberg to embellish. And given how relatively recent an era this was, at least half of the wardrobe on the principals ended up being actual vintage, and the story of how Friedberg sourced these is wonderful:

“There are vast costume houses in Los Angeles and New York that have extensive archives of vintage fashion, but a lot of it is recycled and has been altered and over-dyed for other projects — the challenge with our show is that it has to feel bright and fresh and brand new; like someone has just shopped it from Worth Avenue,” says Friedberg. “So I had to turn to a lot of independent vendors around L.A., there’s quite a few in Palm Springs and New York, and of course Etsy! I [worked with a] couple of really, really knowledgeable shoppers who had relationships with different vendors around the U.S. and we would send them a mood board and say, here’s what we’re looking for — we’re doing golf, and this is what we need. And it was astonishing. People got so excited about the show that they were sending us boxes and boxes and boxes of beautiful pieces to work with. It’s like they had been waiting for our show to happen.”

The show is popular enough — and the costumes are having a big enough impact — that there are even articles out there on how you can find evocative pieces for your own wardrobe.

Honestly, this is the show that made starting up Apple TV worth it. If you like comedies and/or this period, fire up Palm Royale!

Have you seen Palm Royale? Which costumes are your faves?