Meet the Stylish Ladies of The Astronaut Wives Club

“Rene Carpenter is very daring and kind of the most outspoken of the wives,” The Astronaut Wives Club’s costumer designer Eric Daman says. “Rene was someone that was very ahead of her time. She was a really a big feminist and was really about expressing herself through clothing and through her opinions. She wore curve-hugging things, but not to be sexy or va-va-voom, but just because that’s who she felt she was and that’s how she expressed herself.”

“Trudy Cooper is a bit of a daredevil. She likes to fly planes and drives sports cars, so I wanted to give her a little bit of a tomboy edge,” Daman says. “She’s one of the only women you’ll see in the beginning that’s actually in pants all the time and a lot of masculine shirts. Trudy also has a past in Hawaii—she met her husband there, so there is a little bit of a tropical element in her color palette.”

“Betty Grissom is from the Midwest and she wears things that are always just left of center—she’s always just a little off in her choices and how she puts things together in a good kind of Midwestern way, which makes her really endearing,” Daman says. "We gave her what I call 'The Frozen Vegetable Palette': bright oranges, yellows, greens—like frozen peas, frozen carrots, and frozen corn.”

“Louise Shepard: the graceful one. We call her ‘The Swan,’” Daman reveals. “Louise grew up around the DuPonts so she’s the only one that’s really been around money and is a little bit of an ice queen at the beginning," he explains. "We wanted her silhouette to be a little more severe and European fashion-influenced, like Dior’s New Look."

“Jo Schirra is the daughter of a Navy officer and is also a military wife. She is very prim and proper and is definitely the prissy, snarky one—she has some great one-liners,” Daman says. “Jo’s style is also very prim and prissy. I put her in a lot of twin sets and cardigans with pearl accents draped over her shoulders."

“Marge Slayton, aka ‘Mother Marge.’ I feel like Marge and her style peaked in the 1940s, so she has a little bit of film noir style going on … pencil skirts and tight sweaters and maybe a little bit of shoulder pad here and there,” Daman reveals. “I think Mother Marge was a sex bomb in the 1940s and stuck with her pieces from that time, so her style has little bit of a throwback.”

“I think because of Annie Glenn’s speech impediment, she comes off very meek—she doesn’t really talk much at the beginning of the show. She and her husband are very church-going people so we kind of wanted to give her a naïve and modest feeling so everything is very buttoned up,” Daman explains.