‘Wednesday’ Costumers Talk Season 2 Looks (Exclusive)

Wednesday is back and spookier than ever.

With the return of season 2 on Netflix, fans were treated to even more Wednesday (Jenna Ortega), Enid (Emma Myers), Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and a bevy of new characters — including one played by Lady Gaga.

This season, split into two parts and now streaming in full on Netflix, brings the students back to Nevermore Academy for another school year. Wednesday, of course, is always up to some mischief, bringing Enid in with her. The two even have a body swap in the second half of the season — which resulted in the only colorful outfit we’ve ever seen Wednesday in (she is “allergic” to color, after all).

Costume designers Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland broke down everything that went into keeping Wednesday’s wardrobe fresh (despite it being monochromatic), going bold with Enid after she “wolfed out” last school year and bringing new characters into the fold — including Lady Gaga’s Rosaline Rotwood.

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PEOPLE: Wednesday’s wardrobe is, of course, so monochromatic, but you never let it get boring. She even gets one colorful day! How do you play with textures and consider all her settings in putting together her wardrobe?

Mark Sutherland: At the beginning, we have a huge fitting with Jenna. We go through as many looks as you can, we try to get a feel of the character for the season. We will have a certain amount of looks that Colleen, myself and Jenna will all agree on. Once we start getting scripts, we’ll have an idea of what Wednesday has to do, like if she’s at Willow Hill, and it’s in the dark, what will we utilize? We need something that will reflect in the dark.

This season, Wednesday has taken on more of a detective role. From when we first see her, she’s out, she’s that sleuth, she goes to Kansas, she does all that. So it’s trying to incorporate that detective element to Wednesday that she could have throughout the whole show, even with her school uniform, when we see her drifting around.

It’s working with what we know about Wednesday and trying to elevate her, but without losing the essence of her character.

PEOPLE: Enid gets a little bolder, a little edgier this season after she “wolfed out” last season. Can you share a little bit about how you amped up her wardrobe?

MS: We just wanted to make her a bit more edgy, especially with her uniform. Everything sort of happened in the fitting with the skirt, because her dress is really her skirt from season 1, and we adapted that and made some straps out of one of the old school ties, chopped off the poor blazer.

And then one of the other things was we put this fine Angora wool through the stripes. That gave her the werewolf element that’s almost seeping through her costume.

She’s the It girl [this season]. We wanted to bring that element into her casual wear, and a lot of that came from the look of Japanese street style. She’s got tears in her tights, that sort of wolfy element that we wanted for her.

Colleen Atwood: Enid is more New York. We were shopping in Williamsburg [Brooklyn] and Downtown New York, and there were a couple places that were just great there. They really helped us by finding these street things, combined with other old stuff and high street stuff. It’s sort of that New York edge meets Tokyo, is where Enid gets reborn for series 2.

PEOPLE: There’s so much Morticia in this season, and Colleen, you told us last season that you hoped that would happen so you could do more with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Her outfit at the camp was especially fun. Tell us about getting to expand her wardrobe this season.

CA: That outfit evolved. We went to New York to do a fitting with her, and we knew we wanted a super sculpted and lamping look for her. We had a veil, and then Catherine goes, “What about a pith helmet with the veil that’s black?” So that’s really that. And then we added the parasol as the last icing on the cake.

She’s a great collaborator for the character; she comes up with a lot of things. Once you get Catherine in a costume, she really owns it and really makes it work in so many ways. She had a lot of looks. She had the at-home look, she had her new dress, which, because her set had a lot of red accents, we’re just like, “Can we just put some red in her costume?” And the showrunners gave us their blessing for that.

It was just fun to open up the Morticia closet the way the story opens up the relationship between her and Wednesday, the troubled teen mother, kind of thing.

PEOPLE: You had a lot of new faces this season, including Lady Gaga. What went into deciding on her ghost costume?

CA: Her character [Rosaline Rotwood] did have an origin story within the parameters of the script, which set us in the period that her costume is an homage to: the ’30s. It’s cut with a little bit of a flare at the bottom.

Then it was sort of a ghost, but we didn’t really want to make it white, so we did it in a really pale gray and her hair was platinum, and then we put this kind of super sheer white silk veil over all of it just to give it an element of ghostliness without really being that.

She was in this weird rig for it that she had to fly across the room — and that she did herself, I might add. It was quick. We had one fitting with her. She came, she worked for one day, and she was gone off back on the road, so it was quite a great experience.

PEOPLE: At the end of the season, we finally reach the gala, which is no small feat for costuming. How long did it take to pull together all those looks, and what went into it?

MS: Oh, we started thinking about it at the beginning.

CA: We started organizing it, designing it, finding fabrics to make stuff, reaching out to costume houses like Tirelli [Costumi] and Angels and Costumi d’Arte, and all the great costume houses really of the world for what they had.

Angels made us a lot of men’s costumes. They were very supportive of the numbers, so we were able to make stuff that could be rented after, which is really helpful when you’re trying to get something original. You can use stock pieces, which are wonderful.

Then we were at Tirelli in Rome and we saw this costume that we’re like, “Oh my God, that’d be great for [Steve] Buscemi.” It’s a version of a costume from Casanova, but we made it purple because of Nevermore. It was hilarious. He’s in this big purple confection of a costume.

But as you go, and you know you have this stuff coming up, even though you might be doing something else in the room, you see something and it resonates. That’s how that scene came together in a way that was really exciting and fun for us.

PEOPLE: Enid and Agnes (Evie Templeton) did their dance at the gala, so their looks had to allow movement. How does that affect the curation or design process?

CA: It’s always fun when you do those clothes, but you don’t know what the dance is until two weeks before they shoot. We knew they were going to dance in it, so we were good there, but we didn’t know what the dance was, which is always a bit nail-biting, but it turned out fine. We just deferred to more danceable shoes than we would’ve if we’d been left to our own devices.

MS: There’s the element when Agnes disappears. We had to do a lot of work with the rigs and stunts, and you’ve got these two girls, and it’s also about how to make people look decent when they’re dancing. So it was good fun to do and good fun to work with all our choreographers as well.

PEOPLE: Lastly, what big ideas do you have for next season?

CA: I think next season we have to meet more Addams family members. That would be fun. Maybe there’s an Addams family member that nobody ever talks about that’s going to come back. Maybe they travel somewhere groovy like Mexico City or somewhere in the world that’s unexpected, would be cool.

And bring Gaga back.

Wednesday season 2 is streaming on Netflix now.