FIT CHECK

Reese Witherspoon Kept Her Original Legally Blonde Costumes. None Made It to the Prequel Series, Elle—Here’s Why

Elle Woods, the most legal of blondes, is back as a 16-year-old in Seattle. Here, series costume designer Sara Byblow explains how the production made sense of it all—and, honestly, pulled it off.

By José Criales-UnzuetaJuly 1, 2026

Image may contain Kayla Maisonet Adult Person Clothing Shorts Accessories Bag Handbag and Beachwear

The mere idea of relocating Elle Woods, the most legal—and most California—of blondes, seems and is preposterous. And yet that is the exact premise of the Legally Blonde prequel series, Elle, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video today.

The show is as fun and bubbly as one would anticipate and hope it to be, but it is its fashion that takes the spotlight alongside its star, Lexi Minetree, who settles nicely into Reese Witherspoon’s shoes. The costumes, which range from vintage Chanel to custom-made pieces and contemporary fashion, were designed by Sara Byblow, whose name you will certainly hear more following her work on Elle.

Byblow, who first worked with Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company while doing the costumes for Surface, partnered with original Legally Blonde costumer Sophie De Rakoff for the first episodes of the season. “It felt like a passing of the torch,” Byblow says as we speak days before the release of the show.

As charming as Byblow’s architecture of young Elle Woods’s style is, with its junior-prep silhouettes and many shades of pink, it’s the contrast of this effervescent character against the backdrop of a rainy, grungy Seattle—it’s the 1990s, after all—that is the most impactful. “Pink is not a personality,” a new classmate tells Elle in an attempt to take her down. As it turns out, it very much is. Below, Byblow and I chat about how she put these two disparate worlds together and why she chose not to reuse any clothing Witherspoon wore.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Vanity Fair: I have to start with this. What was your reaction when you heard about the Seattle of it all?

Sara Byblow: Obviously, Elle Woods is the character of your dreams, but the Seattle…it’s so fun. I mean, 1995 Seattle was like the land of grunge music and street fashion, so to be able to get both ends of the spectrum, it was literally a dream job. I was screaming when I read it. It was perfect.

You worked with Sophie De Rakoff, who did the costuming for the films, for the first few episodes. What was that like?

One of my biggest worries was that the character is so iconic. Those are huge shoes to fill, so having the opportunity to team up with Sophie at the beginning was amazing. I really wanted to do it justice. It really feels like a passing-of-the-torch moment. Reese [Witherspoon] is passing this character to Lexi [Minetree] and to the next generation. It really felt like Sophie was passing the torch to me when we worked together at the start so I could also bring it to the next generation.

I was going to ask if you felt at all daunted by the legacy. It’s just such an iconic character and story, and it has, similarly to Sex and the City, such a recognizable fashion vernacular. How did you feel about approaching the legacy, and were there any liberties you took or things you felt really attached to?

It was definitely daunting. I was so excited, but I was nervous. I’m huge on building out the worlds around my characters first and doing that research prior to ever touching clothing. At the end of the day, Reese created this character that is so beyond memorable and iconic in the sense that it pushes itself forward. Lexi does an incredible job at this character. I don’t think anyone else could have been young Elle Woods.

This is also a new character. No person is the same as they were at 16 years old. Those are such formative years in someone’s life, so in a way we were coming up with a new character. What was cool is that, usually with a character, there’s a million different routes that you can take because you don’t know where people end up. With Elle Woods, we had this final picture, so it gave us a North Star in regards to where we would take her. It was just about immersing ourselves in the ’90s and in Elle Woods and then finding those puzzle pieces that would eventually form the woman that she was.

Image may contain Alba Galocha Person Student Child Desk Furniture Table Face Head Clothing Footwear and Shoe

What’s really fun visually about the context of Seattle is that on one hand, you have California prep, and on the other, you have grunge. What was that research like in terms of putting these disparate worlds together?

I’ll first read the scripts, first and foremost, and get a sense of who are the characters that we have, what are the things that they have to go through, and then I try to take on the mindset of each of those. For Elle, being 16 years old in 1995, when she’s lying in her bed at night, what posters are on her wall in her bedroom? What’s happening in pop culture then? The supermodels were taking over the world then; who would she have been drawn to? For us, it was Claudia Schiffer, and then she also became a North Star to shape Eva [Woods], her mom, because she looks up to her mom. Gwen Stefani would have been someone that she listened to. We also went and found vintage yearbooks from 1995 in Beverly Hills and looked through them to see what the kids legitimately were wearing at the time. I think we all have this sense of nostalgia. I lived through it, but my memory of the ’90s is my own brain’s version of it, so pulling up those images and printing out the runways from 1992 to 1995 and just circling the things that we think Elle would’ve been drawn to was the foundation.

In the first episode, someone tells Elle that pink is not a personality. But her pinkness, I think, contains multitudes, in a way.

Pink does contain multitudes. I didn’t realize how many tones of pink there are in the world until I worked on this show. I always say what I do is visual storytelling. I am a visual storyteller, and you can tell so much with different tones and you can tell a lot with different tones of pink.

Something that’s so compelling about Legally Blonde is that the fashion was a character that was also going through its own growing pains, that recontextualization from California to Ivy League, northeastern prep. You have something similar here with Seattle. Do you think it changed her style?

A big portion of it was how we tell the story of what she’s feeling emotionally through color and texture. At the start, at her sweet 16, she’s in hot pink. That is when she’s at her most confident. And then when they’re making their move, she’s in this soft pink, a little sadder. On her first day of school, she’s trying to be confident; she’s trying to make the most of it. We put her in a satin light pink dress. We wanted to mirror her vulnerability and have this stark contrast between her and the Seattle world. We actually camera-tested that dress against the high school lockers with, like, a plethora of plaids behind. We wanted it to feel almost like this wall that she couldn’t get through.

This show will have so many fashion fanatics watching. Are there any true vintage runway moments in there, and where did you source clothes from?

Absolutely everywhere. We shopped vintage and new. Even though this is based in 1995, we never wanted it to be a documentary. The movies have stood the test of time for a reason, and my goal was to make my biggest attempt at making the show stand the test of time. We really wanted it to be nostalgic through a modern lens. There are new contemporary pieces in there too.

Image may contain Tom Everett Scott People Person Adult Fun and Party

Reese Witherspoon famously kept her entire original wardrobe. Did any of it make it to the show?

The fact that she kept everything is incredible. She was so kind and shipped a ton of the costumes to us. My inner child was screaming [while] unpacking it. For us, though, we wanted it to be new and fresh, and so we didn’t want to just remake what we’ve already seen. You know, if something was in the movie, we didn’t want to grab it and be like, Okay, well, she wears it here, so let’s just put it in here. We took inspiration from those pieces.

There’s a couple that we decided to put in and give them a bit of an origin story. There’s a red Bottega Veneta bag that she wears in the movies that we love. I really wanted to use that, but, again, I didn’t want to just pick it up and just give it to her at 16. So we ended up giving it to her mom. So Eva wears the bag, and in our mind, that was this sweet little thing that would have been an heirloom.

Did Reese have any sort of input or advice in terms of how to approach the building of young Elle?

Reese is an executive producer, and, truly, this is the most collaborative show I’ve ever worked on. Everyone was involved, including Reese, in all of her wardrobe. But at the same time, she was so trusting. She knew that there was love and care going into this character. She definitely was involved in the overall picture of Elle, but she did really let us run and play with it. There was a moment where we were shooting in LA, and she said, “I’m so proud of you. Everything looks amazing.” I was just like, I can die happy now.

Elle contains multitudes. She’ll wear a crochet beanie or a silk smoking jacket—things that are not obviously Elle, but they are so when she wears them. How do you pick and choose what makes sense?

That’s so hard. I feel like I have never gotten this question before. It happens in the fitting room. With actors especially, I find, on multiple occasions, when we’re in the fitting room and you’ll try on and you’re basically playing dress-up and you’ll put on an outfit, you just know right away. There’s been so many times where in fittings an actor will go, like, “Oh, we found her.”

As a fan, did you have any reservations or excitement, or did you feel any sort of responsibility? Perhaps that’s not the right word…

Responsibility is the perfect word for it. I felt a massive responsibility to do her justice. I am one of those superfans of the movies. Elle Woods has inspired so many women and people in general. Hopefully it touches them in the same way that it touched us.

Reese Witherspoon Kept Her Original Legally Blonde Costumes. None Made It to the Prequel Series, Elle—Here’s Why

Reese Witherspoon Kept Her Original Legally Blonde Costumes. None Made It to the Prequel Series, Elle—Here’s Why

More Great Stories From Vanity Fair

May you like

Other posts