The latest season of HBO’s hit series The Gilded Age kicked off with a wedding and a birth. One went off without a hitch. The other not so much. SPOILERS AHEAD, so if you haven’t watched the episode yet, just ignore all the text and enjoy the pictures. There’s certainly a lot to enjoy, especially this episode, where costume designer Kasia Walicka-Maimone had the gargantuan task of of outfitting the Russels, Van Rhyjns, et al for a grand society wedding and it’s aftermath. Pics and quips ahead.
The episode began dramatically enough in England, where Bertha Russell (the incomparable Carrie Coon) attended the harrowing birth of Gladys’s first child the future Duke of Buckingham, looking markedly less glamorous than usual, which, of course, makes sense given the situation.
Gladys’s sour faced sister-in-law Lady Sarah Vere was also in attendance and more buttoned up than a governess on her first day of work. She really is one of the show’s most potent villains, as she proved this episode when she made it very clear that she would sooner see Gladys dead than risk the family losing a potential future heir.
The Gilded Age, Season 4, Episode 1 (HBO)
As Gladys fought for her life and the life of her child in England, Oscar van Rhijn and the recently widowed Mrs. Enid Winterton (nee Turner) were wed in New York. Enid may have started the show as a villain in season 1, trying as she did to seduce Mr. Russell away from Bertha, but she’s become much more rounded since then and her eyes-wide-open marriage to the very gay Mr. Van Rhijn has her now recast as something of a heroic protagonist.
The Gilded Age, Season 4, Episode 1 (HBO)
For her wedding day, Enid opts for a sophisticated and demure dress in shades of pink and lilac (it is a lavender marriage after all) with a fabulous train, though her crown of pink rosettes looks a bit like it was hot glue gunned together at the last minute by an interpid (but not particularly skilled) costume assistant.
Of course, all of New York society showed up to the wedding, dressed in their best frocks and grandest hats. Mrs. Fish looked particularly fabulous in fuchsia, while mother of the groom Agnes and sister Ada were a bit stuffier. Do those two ever cut loose? No. Of course not.
Marian’s mint green and black number was a real showstopper, though the satin piled on top of her hat looked a bit like an overabundance of whipped cream on a child’s sundae. Perhaps if it had matched the black of her dress it wouldn’t be so jarring? Then again, maybe it isn’t appropriate to wear black on wedding hats in the New York in the 1880s. I suppose the hat does match her gloves. Well, almost.
The Gilded Age, Season 4, Episode 1 (HBO)
Here’s Peggy and her mother looking very festive while planning Peggy’s own wedding with her snobbish and passive aggressive future mother-in-law, Mrs. Kirkland.
The Gilded Age, Season 4, Episode 1 (HBO)
After the wedding reception, Oscar and Enid convince Marian to join them for a real party at a dance hall downtown (Webster Hall to be exact) — the very kind of place Marian condemned her then fiancé Larry Russell for visiting at the end of season three before breaking off their engagement. Now that she sees it for herself, though, she realizes it isn’t quite as wretched and debauched a place as she once believed and after dancing with Larry, it seems, at least for a time, like their relationship…