Costume Designer Olga Mill on Gen Z Vintage, Millennial Anxiety, & Old‑Money Fantasy in “Beef” Season 2

Beef won four 2023 Emmy awards for its road rage drama about vengeful Los Angeles characters gone wild. In Beef season 2 (streaming on Netflix), creator Lee Sung Jin shifts focus to a billionaire country club located in the wealthy California community of Montecito. There, lowly Gen Z staffers, Ashley and Austin (Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton) blackmail the club’s debt-ridden manager, Joshua Martin (Oscar Isaac), and his unhappy wife, Lindsay Crane-Martin (Carey Mulligan). When a ruthless Korean businesswoman, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), takes over Monte Vista Point, everyone goes sneakily ballistic, leaving blood and heartbreak in their wake. 

Beef costume designer Olga Mill, who moved to New York from Ukraine at age five, studied costume design at New York University, then worked on indie films including the Kristen Stewart-led Love Lies Bleeding and writer/director Ari Aster‘s Hereditary before teaming up with “Sonny” Jin. She tells The Credits, “I like to think of every project as if you’re going into a different pot of soil. As a designer, you have to figure out ‘Okay, what kind of climate are we in here? How do I grow something?’ Working with Sonny on Beef, I felt like this was very fertile soil.”

Speaking from her home office in Los Angeles-adjacent Woodland Hills, Mill unpacks “California wealthy,” explains Marie Antoinette’s influence on the show, and details the thinking behind her Gen Z costumes.

Early on in this year’s Beef, Charles Melton’s working-class Austin character uses the term “late-stage capitalism,” which seems to set the table thematically for the new season.

Even in Beef season one, as a fan. I could tell Sonny [Lee Sung Jin] was interested in this, and for Season 2, we explore it generationally: Montecito represents boomer generation wealth. Then you have Josh and Lindsay, the millennial couple in their forties, who aspire to that level of wealth. “Actually, it looks pretty comfy. I want in.” Charles and Cailee’s characters have the Gen Z perspective: “I don’t want to join the rat race.”

This is your first time working with Beef showrunner Lee Sung Jin. Did he give you specific directions about the look for each character?

A little bit, but our conversations always came more from a kind of philosophical, anthropological point of view, talking about what motivates each generation.

For example, Oscar Isaac’s millennial character, Josh?

Josh does not come from a wealthy background, but now he’s immersed in Monte Vista Point [country club] for the one-percenters. How does a person who doesn’t come from money navigate that world? There’s a lot of hyper assimilation that happens, I think, where you subtly look around to see what other people are wearing and mimic that. We wanted Josh in a lighter colored sneaker and a personality sock with a t-shirt or a polo. That was his kind of core aesthetic.

The members dress casually, so Josh does too.

Yes. Researching this kind of club, I found that the higher up you are on the managerial ladder, the more you don’t want members to feel as if they’re paying you. Like: “You’re not the manager of a club that I pay a lot of money to be a part of – you’re my friend, and we’re on the same level, aesthetically, so I can invite you into my world.” But if you compare Josh to somebody like Troy [William Fichtner]—who actually is a member and has the wealth to back it up—he’s a lot more casual.

It’s interesting that nobody wears a tie. The East Coast “power suit” is nowhere to be seen.

East Coast wealth is very different, more buttoned up. California’s wealthy are more relaxed, almost feeling like they want to be in Tuscany. There’s a breeze in the air. “We’re not trying too hard, but all of our things are made of really nice fabric.”

Josh’s wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), favors floral dresses, almost like a prairie woman. What’s that about?

Lindsay’s sort of cottage prairie core, but that look really came from me thinking about Marie Antoinette in her shepherd’s garden and the idea of the very wealthy class wanting to cosplay country life. If you follow Oprah on Instagram, she has a wicker basket and a garden, and she’s growing vegetables. “We’re making our own jam!” So, Lindsay leads this pastoral life, but it’s very curated.

She stands out in a crowd.

Lindsay would hate it if somebody called her “basic.” She feels that her style is more elevated, like she’s kind of better than everybody else, and yet she can fit in when she needs to.

Did you make Carey Mulligan’s dresses from scratch, or did you purchase them?

It was a mix. The first dress we see her in at the party was purchased, but then we changed the neckline and built this almost acid green slip underneath it, using the sheer element to make it feel like some energy was sort of pulsating through. [Fashion label] Agua Bendita did that great blue pastoral dress Lindsay wears at the kids’ birthday party. And there are also brands like Sézane and Heidi Merrick, who has a store in Montecito.

The Gen Z couple, Ashley and Austin, keep it simple at the start, when Charles Melton’s character works as a personal trainer at the club. What’s his clothes story?

We wanted him to feel a little bit beachy surfer, in sun-kissed cottons, like he could be working out and then stop by a backyard barbecue. There’s a casualness to his look, and his clothes feel quite worn in.

Does that change?

Later in the season, when he gets the promotion at the club, Austin starts wearing sleeker fabrics.

What about the color palette?

We tried to be quite strict about Josh and Lindsay being autumnal, the Gen Z couple Charles and Cailee being more pastel-spring colors, and the Korea portion [Chairwoman Park] and her assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang) being winter and kind of icy. And then the world of the club was like this eternal summer.

Within that spring palette, the colors for Ashley and Austin seem fairly subdued. Why is that?

They’re dialed down because the more I dug into the philosophy of Gen Z dressing, the more I came to see it as considered cool to wear secondhand and vintage because you’re trying not to overconsume. We wanted everything to feel like it had a long life before reaching Austin and Ashley.

Of all the characters, Cailee Spaeny’s Ashley experiences the most dramatic professional trajectory. How did you build out her costume story?

The main idea for Ashley is that she doesn’t really have a strong sense of a grounded self. When Austin becomes interested in Eunice, Ashley starts copying Eunice’s wardrobe. “Oh, I’m gonna do a silky button-down blouse and get a blazer.” And as Ashley gets closer to Lindsay toward the end, she’s wearing one of those puffy-sleeved pastoral dresses. That was a [big] swing, but the idea behind it is that Ashley is prepared to mimic anybody around her who has what she wants.

Most of the drama takes place in Montecito, a couple of hours north of Los Angeles. Working on a TV show that’s filmed in California, were you mindful of the kind of economic impact a project of this scale can have on the community?

Of course! I felt a great sense of pride shooting here. To clarify, we did shoot around Montecito, but we were mostly in L.A. The Josh and Lindsay house is around Calabasas, towards Malibu, and we filmed at Radford Studio Center [in Studio City]. But it’s not just film industry infrastructure you’re tapping into here. There’s also the local economy, like when you shop at smaller, vintage stores or brands that are based in LA. Shooting here, where the stuff is, ultimately makes the work look better because you just have more tools at your disposal.

Featured image: Beef. (L to R) Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller in episode 202 of Beef. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026