How Kim Kardashian and Emma Roberts Made Quiet Luxury Spooky in American Horror Story: Delicate

“You think you know everything about the person wearing quiet luxury, but you really don’t. That’s an eerie quality for me,” costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio tells Bazaar

Ever since news broke that American Horror Story: Delicate—the 12th installment of the long-running FX horror anthology series—would feature Emma Roberts, Kim Kardashian, and Cara Delevingne, horror fans and fashion lovers alike have been eagerly wondering: How is the new season going to look?

Over the years, the show has brought us through so many different eras, from spooky 1920s old Hollywood in Murder House, to the Catholic-tinged horrors of Asylum, to Lady Gaga as a high-camp vampire in Hotel. This season, costume designer Jacqueline Demeterio (whose credits include Sex and the City 2, The Intern, and Younger) leads us into the spookiest of all contemporary trends: quiet luxury.

Emma Roberts stars as Anna Alcott, an emerging actress vying for her first Oscar. As Alcott struggles to get pregnant, she starts to believe that someone—or something—is maliciously trying to control her body. Kardashian supports as Anna’s publicist, Siobhan. The costumes and sets this season are decidedly sleek and minimal, allowing for a sense of dread that builds and builds. The result is part Tár, part Rosemary’s Baby—and one of the strongest seasons of AHS in recent memory. We caught up with Demeterio to learn more about bringing this season’s horrors to life, and why she thinks quiet luxury is the scariest trend of all.

This is your first horror production. How is costuming horror different from your past work?

There’s definitely a lot more blood. I’ve done stunts and blood work, but this is a lot more. But it’s been fun.

Tell me about your process. You receive a script and then …?

It was always described as a sleek, minimal, modern season. Our color palette would always remain in the grays, steels, and beiges, in a very Jil Sander, Rick Owens, Prada way.

Were there any specific collections that inspired you?

I was inspired by a lot of John Galliano for Christian Dior. His Fall 2000 couture collection featured this nurse with her hands bound. There was also this sort of torture or BDSM nod in his collections that represent that horror feeling—but are still fashion. I wanted to achieve the combination of both.

How would you describe the overall ethos of this season’s costuming?

These days, all we hear is “quiet luxury,” but Emma’s character was definitely quiet luxury. For her, my inspiration was very Carolyn Bessette and ’90s Gwyneth Paltrow. We haven’t really seen Emma like this before. The movie Tár was referenced a lot, too. For Kim’s character, Siobhan, Schiaparelli was a big inspiration. A lot of couture, sculpted, strong pieces. A lot of leather trenches. Against the quiet luxury of Emma, what Kim wears is a great contrast.

Are there any particular looks you loved this season that viewers should watch out for?

There’s one coat on Emma that really sticks out for me. It appears in the first episode and reappears later. It’s a gray Gabriela Hearst long, double-faced cashmere coat. There’s a scene where Emma walks out of a restaurant into an alley and there’s this amazing sH๏τ of the coat swaying cinematically. And there’s another scene of Emma with this time lapse in her apartment, and she is in the gray Prada twinset, a cashmere tank with a cashmere shrug with a silk skirt. They were just such beautiful pieces.

Kim Kardashian is such an icon of contemporary fashion. What was it like to costume her?

Kim has probably touched every piece of couture out there. From my standpoint, I was like, What can I show her that’s fresh and new? And obviously dressing for a character is always different from dressing for yourself. But she was super professional, so game, and so fun, and willing to try anything on. She has very specific proportions and knows what she looks good in. I started with racks and racks, and we worked together to make a really tight edit. It was such a great collaboration.

On the recent season of The Morning Show, Sophie de Rakoff told me, Jennifer Aniston offered some personal wardrobe for costuming her character. Did Kim do the same?

There’s a scene when Kim and Emma are walking down a beach and Kim has this black Alaïa skirt. In our fittings, she told me that she had a similar one at home, and it was already altered. She would offer to bring things in, but we ended up doing all our own alterations in our costume department.

Any standout looks for Kim this season?

Kim is in a lot of Schiaparelli. There’s a scene where she’s walking outside on a terrace in this beautiful Bordeaux trench by Saint Laurent, and this corseted Schiaparelli suit underneath. And then at the Gotham Awards, we see her in this black velvet Schiaparelli gown. We only see part of it—and that’s the problem with TV is that things get lost—but in the back, it’s super low-cut and it was stunning on her.

Was there anything your actors tried to steal from set?

That definitely happens, but it hasn’t happened on our set, yet. All the actors are constantly saying, “I’m taking this, I’m stealing that, I want this.” When I did our first fitting with Emma, she was like, “I want all of this stuff.” She’s really into her wardrobe this season.

Why do you think “quiet luxury” lends itself so well to horror?

I think it’s because it’s unᴀssuming. You look at it and you might think, Oh, that person lives in an unᴀssuming world. But then if you really get into the pieces of quiet luxury, they’re not unᴀssuming at all—the fabrications, the cut, the fit. You think you know everything about the person wearing quiet luxury, but you really don’t. That’s an eerie quality for me.