Mild spoilers below for those who haven’t caught up on The Last of Us via Max subscription.
HBO’s The Last of Us has often proven its potential as a blueprint for upcoming video game adaptations, with co-creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin’s creative team knowing when to strictly adhere to the source material and when to change up key moments and explore areas the games couldn’t. Bella Ramsey understandably doesn’t look precisely like pixelated Ellie from head to toe, but they are rocking a lot of wardrobe elements crafted with such fidelity in mind, with costume designer Ann Foley leading that charge in Season 2.
I was excited to talk to Ann Foley about bringing Ellie’s look to life as she aged up throughout the years since Season 1’s tragic events. In particular, she talked about giving Ellie’s Converse sneakers — a look core to the game character — a completely unique look thanks to Ramsey’s involvement, as well as being able to show off the beloved character’s scar-covering tattoo.
Bella Ramsey’s Converses Are More Special Than Audiences Might Realize
In the Last of Us games, Ellie sticks with her signature sneaks to the point where it became something of a joke to think about her surviving for so many years wearing only Converses instead of a variety of more heavy-duty boots. After taking on costuming duties for Season 2, Ann Foley made a point to ensure that the shoes fans saw on screen this season were more than just a bare-bones reference.
To that end, when I asked about the element Foley was most proud of from working on the seven episodes, she brought those up directly, saying:
I mean, honestly, there's so many. But I always come back to the same answer, which is Ellie's Converse from Episodes 1 and 2. I gave a pair of those to Bella and said, 'Okay, I want you channel Ellie and doodle on these like Ellie would.' Mainly because I've always loved when I watched playthrough of the game, I was obsessed with Ellie's doodles. I always wanted to see what they were, and I would hit pause and just try to see what those doodles were.
While peeping out Ellie’s journaling perhaps isn’t the most rewarding for gamers more enthralled by burning bloaters with flamethrowers, both the written and illustrated entries provide more ways to understand the character’s worldview and the beauty she finds in her surroundings. To Foley, it also represented another great way to meld the characters. She continued:
So when I was putting the boards together for Ellie, all the mood boards, I just kept coming back to the doodles, and I really wanted Ellie to have doodles somewhere on her clothes, like teenagers would do. I thought that the Converses were the best place to do that. Craig Mazin was completely on board with that idea and loved it, and so did Bella. And I never even asked Bella what the doodles meant, or what they were. To me, it was between Bella and Ellie.
Because it’s the kind of visual flair that doesn’t get extended close-ups during the episodes before Dina convinces Ellie to ditch the shoes, Foley made sure to provide a place where viewers could get a closer look at the doodles, even if we might never know what inspired them. As she put it:
But I feel like it was really effective and became a very wonderful detail in Ellie's costume, even though the audience doesn't necessarily see them. Which is one of the reasons I posted them on my Instagram, because I really wanted the audience to see a close up of those doodles.
Considering she played a big part in making them unique to the TV show, I asked Foley if she was able to keep a pair of the Converses, and was sad to hear this as her answer:
I did not. They are in our archives. Thankfully, my breakdown team, who are all absolutely incredible artists in their own right, were able to duplicate all of those doodles onto multiple pairs of sneakers. I think we had probably close to 20 pairs.
If there are that many, at least one pair should go in a museum, and one should go in Ann Foley's closet.
Ann Foley On Using Silhouettes To Show Ellie's Aging And Showing Off Her Tattoo
Episode 6, “The Price,” was such an emotional ride, not just for Joe Pantoliano’s magnificent guest role, but also for the truncated evolution of Joel and Ellie’s relationship in the years between the Salt Lake City massacre and Joel’s brutal demise. Fans were able to watch Ellie grow up, as it were, with Ann Foley’s team doing a lot of legwork to make those year-to-year transitions feel legitimate.
When I asked about Ellie’s look changing and her repeated urge to wear short sleeves again, the costumer designer spoke to the challenges of representing those highly formative years of someone’s life, saying:
I think that one of the most interesting parts of creating Ellie for Season 2 was showing that difference between a 14-year-old child and a 19-year-old young woman, and working on the silhouette. Episode 6 is a really great showcase of how to show Ellie as [maturing]. On her birthday, just turning 15, and then as the episode progresses, to 19. We did that with silhouettes and just subtle little changes.
Similar to how Stalkers and Clickers and others TLoU creatures can be identified through silhouette alone, Foley made sure that each mini-era of Ellie’s teenage years could be identified in the same way. She explained:
So as the 14/15-year-old, the clothes are baggier, the jeans are baggier, the T shirts are baggier. But as she becomes more of an adult, the jeans get slightly more tapered, and they're not as baggy as they were when she was younger. The length of the T-shirts is even a little bit shorter, the hem on the arms just a tiny bit shorter. The volume of the shirts also closer into the body, just to sort of show this new silhouette.
Obviously everyone is different, but Foley hit the nail on the head there for a vast swath of my friend group in high school. I never lost my appreciation for baggy jeans, but I can’t imagine they would be a big help when trying to run away from grabby monsters in the rain.
Ann Foley also spoke to going shorter with the sleeve lengths with Ellie in the flashbacks that introduced her tattoo, as well as in key moments during the present timeline when the elements weren’t a problem.
And I loved as Season Two went on, being able to have Ellie wearing short-sleeve shirts to show off that gorgeous tattoo that was done by our amazing makeup artist Rebecca Lee, because it's such an iconic part of the character, and it needs to be shown off. I mean, she does wear a jacket in some of the rain, but there are really great moments when we do have that jacket off so that we can see that tattoo.
Another fantastic look that Foley talked more in depth about on her Instagram page was Ellie’s straight-from-the-game look during her birthday trip to the natural history museum, and how they hand-crafted the striped shirt. As excellent as that sequence was all-around, from the dinosaur statue to the blast-off, I don’t think it would have hit as hard for me if Ellie would have been wearing a band T-shirt or something monochromatic.
The Last of Us Season 2 comes to a close on HBO on May 25 at 9:00 p.m. What will YOU be wearing when it all goes down? Wait, no, that didn’t come out right…
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