Below, costume designer Johanna Argan talks us through conceptualizing the wardrobe behind Presumed Innocent, including which classic Hollywood actor inspired Rusty’s closet, adding an artistic twist to Ruth Negga’s character Barbara, and even the intent behind Gyllenhaal’s workout wear.

What attracted you to sign onto Presumed Innocent as costume designer? The script is obviously very juicy.

David E. Kelley! I’ve always been a big fan of his shows. That being said, I’m always attracted to writing first—I’m a big reader, so story is always first for me. I love very complicated, layered storytelling, and this series definitely has all of those elements. I also liked that we weren’t doing another version of the 1990 Harrison Ford movie. It was distinctly its own story being told and shot very differently. And then of course, the actors who were attached were a big draw, Jake and Ruth. I could see in my head what their characters looked like and how I could translate that to screen.

We see many different sides of Rusty in the series—we see him at work, at home, as a dad, and as a lover. Was there a strategy to differentiating his wardrobe for these individual scenarios?

When I’m designing a show like this, I always try to tell who the characters are subtly with costumes. The costume choices also help to signify to the audience elements of what’s happening to the character during the telling of a story. For example, when we meet Rusty, we see him at home with his family, throwing a baseball around with his son. His whole family is at home; Barbara is watching through the window as she does the dishes. It sets up the illusion that these are very normal people having a casual day at home, being a family—it’s very wholesome.

Prosecutor Rusty is very different. Jake and I discussed how we make Rusty’s confidence and talent as a prosecutor stand out, but still convey the everyman’s type of man with some stylish nuances. We had also been discussing Paul Newman’s classic movie-star style and also a movie [Newman] was in called The Verdict. I was familiar with both and always loved Newman’s personal menswear style. In that movie, it looks like Mr. Newman’s character wears the same suit throughout that movie, and both of us thought that was interesting. We then incorporated the idea of how Newman has a prosecutor uniform, so to speak, in The Verdict, and we loved the idea of basic classic pieces for Rusty, from suiting, shirting, jeans, and other casual everyday pieces, as if they were straight out of a Paul Newman menswear collection.

It almost looks like Rusty is wearing the same three-piece suit throughout the whole series, but he’s not. We landed on a specific Giorgio Armani three-piece suit—a vest was the nuance for our version of Rusty. I couldn’t find the exact shirt to fit Jake the way I wanted, so I went to Anto, a Beverly Hills shirt maker, and curated the specific fabric, collars. and cuffs for Rusty’s dress shirts. I even had Anto make me some custom ties.

It’s a subtle thing, but we only see Rusty wearing the three-pieces when he’s an actual prosecutor. When he becomes the defendant, we remove it. It’s like he has lost a part of him when he’s the accused. When he comes back and takes over the case and defends himself, it appears again. In between—when he loses his job, becomes a defendant, and he fights to keep his family together—we deconstruct Rusty, but it’s a somewhat controlled chaos.

Many scenes, of course, take place in a courtroom, which involves a lot of men in suits. How do you know which suit is the suit for specific characters in a story like this? Where do you source them all?

I’m well versed in shows that require a lot of suiting. I did House of Cards for many seasons, and it’s always the question of: How do we make all of these characters’ suits say something about them individually, especially when they are going to share the frame of a show, up close, a lot? Again, it comes down to how descriptive David’s writing was at helping me envision [the individual characters].

I leaned into their individual traits with the suiting. Rusty had a classic polished, well-tailored look. [Peter Sarsgaard’s character Tommy] Molto was more dated, and his colors were drab and suiting less polished. Raymond [Horgan, played by Bill Camp]—again, he’s not sloppy, but his looks have been around for a long time, he had likely had that Brooks Brother suits for at least a decade. [O-T Fagbenie’s character Nico] Della Guardia has political aspirations, as we come to find out when he beats out Raymond for his job as DA of Chicago. The juxtaposition of those two in their suiting shows in an “out with the old, in with the new.”

Ties are also always important to me on each character. Rusty mostly has no pattern, especially when he was working in court. Color-on-color suit-tie combo is my favorite of all the combinations a man can wear. It’s very strong, in my opinion. We had classic striped ones when Rusty becomes the defendant—he loses the vest he wears, and those sleek monochrome tie combos, to present not like the accomplished prosecutor he is known for, but to be more relatable as a family man on trial. In my research and having done some other procedural shows, the appearance of a defendant is everything. What you wear matters.

The character of Mya Winslow (Gabby Beans) also has incredible suiting—tailored to a tee! What was the inspiration for her appearances?

When we introduce Mya, Greg Yaitanes—the director of episodes three through seven—wanted her to look expensive. Her look from literally her head to toe tells you who she is. I went to hair to show them looks, and we agreed her hair should also be severe. The audience knows when they see her, before Raymond speaks of how highly qualified she is for this complicated murder case, that she costs money to defend you. I, on top of that, wanted to incorporate some color, texture, and finesse in her tailoring to send the message that this woman is not only smart and the best at what she does, but she knows how to dress the part. She’s one of the few characters that has somewhat of a vibrant color palette outside of court, which I sometimes find hard to justify in such a dark story. I like when she’s among the men—she felt as smart and was like an exclamation point on women’s career dressing in a room full of men.

Rusty is often in workout gear when he’s home, whether he’s hiding out at home or doing a stress workout. What kind of athletic gear did you gravitate toward for these scenes?

Honestly, Jake works out. Have you seen the physique? Ha-ha, in all seriousness, we didn’t overthink it. Jake, because he actually works out, thought it should be simple and not fussy and I totally agreed. Simple shorts, tees, and sneakers. Nothing fancy, and I don’t like seeing branded clothing unless it’s for a purpose.

Let’s discuss Barbara and Carolyn. One is the wife and one is the other woman. How did you decide to dress these two women based on their relationships to Rusty?

I didn’t approach it based on their relationship with Rusty too much. I approach them as I did every character, in real life. What does a Black mother who is in an interracial marriage, who lives in Chicago, with a fine arts degree selling art in a sophisticated gallery in Chicago life, look like? Same with Carolyn—who was she and how do I make her different? I had to start with them both as individuals, because Rusty is only one part of who they are.

Did you add any specific details to Barbara’s outfits when she began her own affair? How does her style evolve throughout the series?

When she meets Clif, it’s after getting fired from the art gallery, he meets Barbara, the sophisticated art seller, before she reveals why she’s there in conversation. It’s one of the only times we see Barbara dressed and highlighted in a bright color. Her chartreuse dress makes a statement, like art does, and I wanted to show this part of her world outside the home. When she embarks on her own affair, we definitely made sure she made an effort with her clothes to go see him. Again, she’s a multidimensional woman who is living the darkest time of her life. This is an escape.

We didn’t choose overtly sexy clothes for her either, but things that show her confidence as a woman and showed her natural beauty. Ruth has such an extraordinary look and is very petite. I never wanted to compete with that. One of my most favorite scenes visually is when she goes to see Clif at his apartment and they have this very intense intimate conversation about his projection art. Her dress was simple in style, but it just outlined her frame, enhancing her femininity. The rust color I chose complemented the colors of his art so well that when the light hit, casting shadows and light on her, it felt like you were a voyeur witnessing this very intense attraction between two people. As the story progresses, everything starts to get even more intense and she makes a very committed decision to stay by Rusty’s side, not only as his wife, but as the mother of their kids.

She never quite falls apart—I think she holds herself together and gets up and gets dressed every day because it’s one of the few things she can control, considering what is happening to their family. Her court looks are very curated, as were Rusty’s. They are clean and sophisticated, but can’t state too much.

For Carolyn’s character specifically, there are very subtle sexy details. What was the motivation behind the pieces that she wears?

Carolyn, out of all the characters, was the trickiest to source for. All of her scenes are of her as a memory—Rusty’s, mainly. He was obsessed with her. We show him throughout the series, especially in the beginning, constantly going back to his times with her, a lot of them intimate. We didn’t want to do a typical overtly sexy mistress, that caught the man’s eye in the office and steals him away from the wife. That was too easy and obvious, and these characters were more complicated than that.

Anne Sewitsky, the director of episodes one, two, and seven, suggested Carolyn have less feminine silhouettes and more practical everyday work looks that were not over-stylized, which I supported. We purposely didn’t find the perfect matching lingerie for intimate scenes, either, so it felt authentic, never calculated and raw. But it was also important to me to show as they are carrying on the affair, we add in some feminine pieces. Like Barbara, she starts to dress with some femininity for the man she’s having the affair with. We see them stealing kisses at the office, going out after work. The costumes here are a tease, but not a distraction—showing some skirts or silky blouses with a button or two open and a form-fitted dress really help to play to that. Renata, our actress, really worked the looks for Carolyn in those scenes well.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for length and clarity.

Bianca Betancourt is the culture editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, where she covers all things film, TV, music, and more. When she’s not writing, she loves impulsively baking a batch of cookies, re-listening to the same early-2000s pop playlist, and stalking Mariah Carey’s Twitter feed.