'The Buccaneers' costume designer says producers wanted to avoid 'doing Bridgerton' 2.0

• Apple TV+'s period drama "The Buccaneers" starring Kristine Froseth premiered on Wednesday.
• Set in the 19th century, "The Buccaneers" is already facing comparisons to Netflix's "Bridgerton."

For better or worse, the Apple TV+ show "The Buccaneers" is already facing comparisons to Netflix's smash hit "Bridgerton."

Based on the 1938 unfinished novel written by Edith Wharton, "The Buccaneers," which premiered on Wednesday, follows a group of young, wealthy American women visiting the UK in the 1870s. Unlike "Bridgerton," which takes place in England during the early 1800s, "The Buccaneers" is set closer to what is known as the Gilded Age.

The setting, plot, and characters of the period dramas are completely different, but that hasn't stopped comparisons from rolling in. A review in The Guardian calls "The Buccaneers" "enormous fun for Bridgerton fans," while another published by CNN said it's clear the show wants to "emulate" Netflix's hit series.

But according to costume designer Giovanni Lipari, who worked on the first two episodes of "The Buccaneers," creative producers made it clear from the start of production that they weren't interested in making "Bridgerton" 2.0.

"The creative producers, they said, 'We're not doing, with the respect of that, we're not doing 'Bridgerton,' we're not doing 'The Gilded Age,' we're not doing any of these things, meaning we need to find our own way to be successful visually,'" Lipari said.

"They wanted to find their identity," he added. And costume design was one of the key ways they did just that.

Putting a modern twist on historical fashion

"The Buccaneers" takes place in the 1870s, but the style of clothing worn by the cast is actually based on the slightly more tight-fitting, revealing style popular during the 1880s, Lipari said.

"It's the time when the body of the woman is starting to show," he said. "This was the first time after hundreds and hundreds of years that those ladies could actually say, 'This is me.'"

Meanwhile, "Bridgerton" is set during the Regency era, a time when Empire waistlines that mostly masked women's figures were all the rage.

Lipari said the costumes for "The Buccaneers" stayed true to historical silhouettes, but the department added a twist by using modern fabrics to finish the looks, such as chenille, tweed, and denim.

Those fabrics, and the array of colors Lipari said they used, not only worked visually onscreen, but they also allowed actors to move more easily throughout filming than if they'd made the costumes as historically accurate as possible. That, Lipari said, would've meant using "thick woolen material," which is incredibly heavy and difficult to move around in.

As Lipari's first foray into a period drama, he said he came away from working on "The Buccaneers" feeling as if they captured the essence of the era without having to be 100% accurate.

"You can do this in a modern way without betraying the past," Lipari said.