Inside “Another Simple Favor”’s Costumes: From a 40-Lb. Halter Top to a Jackie Kennedy Nod (Exclusive)

• Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick return for the sequel Another Simple Favor, directed by Paul Feig

• Set in Capri, Italy, the twisty comedic thriller features more over-the-top and memorable wardrobes

• PEOPLE spoke to costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus about the biggest looks, gaining behind-the-scenes insight into how they pulled them off

Another Simple Favor has plenty of deadly twists and turns, but its costumes are what’s to die for.

The 2018 original, also directed by Paul Feig, brought stylish power suits to the forefront with Blake Lively’s cool murderess Emily Nelson. Now, seven years later, the whodunit is moved from Connecticut to Capri, Italy, where the sunny locale inspires a new wardrobe that’s just as memorable.

Returning costume designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus tells PEOPLE all about the “heightened” fashion on display in the sequel, which also sees Anna Kendrick reprise her role as blogger Stephanie Smothers.

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The cast and crew took over the Grand Hotel Quisisana on Capri in the spring of 2024 to film the movie. To grasp the scope of the wardrobes at play, Kalfus says it took an entire hotel suite, emptied of all its contents, to house Lively and Kendrick’s costumes alone.

Read on for a breakdown of some of the most memorable style moments from Another Simple Favor.

Fresh out the slammer

For Emily’s grand entrance post-prison, the team aimed for attire that expressed life in jail, including handcuff-like earrings and a striped suit.

Director Feig says he was “enamored” by the scene’s shackled suit. “I collaborate with my actors very heavily on their wardrobe, since wardrobe kind of makes the character for them,” he says.

“I remember Blake just, she came in at a different angle and she’s like, ‘What if I show up in a prison suit?’ … Then Renée and her brilliant team came up with this, and Blake added all these shackles and stuff to it. It’s so clever without it being in your face. It makes you think of what we want you to think of.”

The look is completed with sparkly Christian Louboutin boots, which Kalfus says are like “the Queen’s jewels for your feet.”

Related: Blake Lively Wears Ryan Reynolds’ Shirts and Socks in It Ends With Us, Plus Gigi Hadid’s Sweaters (Exclusive)

A weighty pre-wedding look

This sculpted 40-lb. floral halter top from Tamara Ralph was “very beautiful” but “almost impossible to wear,” says Kalfus.

“We discussed it endlessly, knowing that [Lively would] have two days of filming in it,” recalls Kalfus. “We had to build an entire corset underneath to protect her. I mean, that was a sacrifice for a really good look.”

One sizable, shady sunhat

One of the most laugh-generating moments comes when Lively shows up onscreen with an enormous, floppy sunhat atop her head. Lively herself picked out the hat from Fiore, a local shop in Capri.

The actress said onstage at the film’s premiere at the SXSW Film & TV Festival in March, “That crazy, beautiful hat was just a hat they sell in the store. Humans buy that! It’s amazing.”

Kalfus tells PEOPLE, “We had smaller hats, and she somehow found that one in the corner of this tiny little place, that gigantic hat.” The costume designer adds, “Those are the sort of serendipitous moments that come about. If you stay flexible and open and you see something, why not?”

Til death do us part

A custom-made wedding dress meant to evoke bloodstains required a last-minute ferry ride to Naples for more red dye, says Kalfus: “Because it was an island, I remember that we had to get more dye from Naples, which was a full ferry away. And the ferry stopped at 6. We had a lot of drama.”

The 40-foot bejeweled veil that trails down the entire aisle took an estimated 100 hours to create. Kalfus says the blood-soaked effect “was perfect — you have a hint of what is to come, basically.”

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Inspiration from real-life tragedy

No spoilers here, but the body count gets high in Another Simple Favor. When one character is left in mourning after a murder, she shows up onscreen in an all-black veiled look that Kalfus confirms is inspired by one once worn by Jackie Kennedy.

“I mean, that was very dramatic,” Kalfus says of the historic Kennedy outfit. “It was a really good reference. I believe we wound up with exactly that,” with layers of lace, embroidery and gloves.

Detective Kendrick on the case

Kalfus thinks of true-crime author Stephanie (played by Kendrick) as “this sort of detective,” putting her in a trench-like look at one point. “She’s going to uncover what the madness is, and she is the foil to Blake’s character. Anna is sort of buttoned up but also kind of, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here.’ “

In the sequel, Stephanie also gets her own take on Emily’s slow-motion entrance from the 2018 film, going less glamorous with sneakers and a neck pillow before boarding the private jet.

“I remember early on asking our costume designer Renée, like, you know Stephanie is, as the kids would say, addicted to not serving,” Kendrick joked onstage at SXSW in March. “I was like, ‘Can I just be not very well dressed but comfortable?’ So I was really excited to play Stephanie but in sneakers.”

Also at SXSW, Feig said Kendrick’s character “brought the Midwestern mom along but then she brought the glamour when she goes to the events where she needed to dress up. It’s just such a great juxtaposition between the two [characters].”

When all was said in done on the Capri-based production, Kalfus is proud of what her team pulled off: “Paul, as the director, really loves to participate in over-the-top. I feel incredibly satisfied with where we got and what we were able to accomplish.”

Another Simple Favor is on Prime Video May 1.

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