The elegance of Bridgerton season 4's costumes

The show resonates with an India(BHARAT)n crowd possibly because of all the yearning for love, the mission to secure a husband and the scale of grandeur. Bridgerton’s fourth season opens with a glorious masked ball. In a thrilling montage, we see all our favorite characters putting the finishing touches on their clothes: Claudia Jessie’s Eloise Bridgerton as a shimmering Joan of Arc; Ruth Gemmell as her mother, Lady Violet Bridgerton, dressed as an enchanting Titania, the queen of the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; her son, Luke Newton’s Colin, in his pirate gear; his new wife, Nicola Coughlan’s Penelope, in her matching get-up; and Adjoa Andoh’s Lady Danbury as a gilded Zeus.  

The camera then fixates on a young woman in a glorious silver gown with a bejeweled mask.

This is Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha), this season’s leading lady, a maid to the cold hearted widow Lady Araminta Gun (Katie Leung), who also happens to be her stepmother.  

Costume becomes a narrative engine in Bridgerton’s fourth season, signaling who belongs, who is pretending, and who is on the verge of becoming someone else. Set in autumn for the first time, the show abandons its pastel garden-party palette in favor of warmer, denser tones. Whites are almost entirely removed. Black appears sparingly, often softened into navy. Even the men’s shirts shift into muted pastels.

At the center of it all is Sophie Baek. The story takes a Cinderella like turn. Sophie has borrowed the dress from her steely stepmother and evil stepsisters, and as she is eyeing the glory of the ball, Sophie and Benedict Bridgerton catch each other’s eyes, till she has to abruptly depart at midnight, with Benedict’s new mission being to make sure he finds the woman who bedazzled him.

Her silver gown at the masked ball is designed to do several things at once: dazzle without alienating, conceal whilst leaving a little . The dress resists a fixed period, hovering somewhere between old-world fashion and contemporary fantasy — creative liberty having definitely being taken. The layered fabrics and controlled sparkle make her visible without excess; the mask, opaque enough to obscure her features, keeps recognition at bay. She is the only guest in silver, which sets her apart while still allowing her to plausibly exist within the ton.

Once the clock strikes midnight, Sophie’s clothes retreat. Her maid uniforms mirror those worn by others in the household, but with subtly elevated fabrics and softer construction. When she later borrows dresses, they come from earlier eras of the show itself. They are simpler, more Regency silhouettes that refuse to define her too clearly. Visually, she remains unresolved. The wardrobe withholds clarity because the story does too.

Benedict Bridgerton’s styling moves in the opposite direction. His clothes open up this season: softer silhouettes, fewer restrictions, a sense of forward motion. Perhaps this is also to depict the general shift in men’s fashion in time. While the rest of the men remain tethered to convention, his tailoring suggests someone already stepping beyond it. He dresses like a romantic lead before the show officially names him one.

That freedom is sharply contrasted by Lady Araminta and her daughters. Their clothes are rigid, architectural, and intentionally intimidating. Black appears often, but never looking ordinary, rendered instead through texture, shine, and sculptural shape.  

Araminta’s silhouette feels out of time, borrowing from both the 1820s and the late twentieth century, creating an armor-like effect. She is always covered, always controlled. Her daughters echo this severity, sometimes wearing two sides of the same fabric, visually reinforcing hierarchy and inheritance.These are clothes designed to dominate a room.

The masked ball itself leans into excess. Inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it embraces mythology, history, fantasy, and theatricality all at once. Joan of Arc, Titania, Zeus, Marie Antoinette, mermaids, pirates. What keeps it from collapsing into chaos is hierarchy. Principal characters are always more legible, more intentional, more composed than the crowd around them.

Violet Bridgerton’s wardrobe grows progressively softer as the season goes on, reflecting a romantic opening that she much deserves, the adorable kind strong-hearted woman that she is . Hyacinth’s dresses become more experimental, pushing at maturity, still finding their footing. Her clothing showcases her eagerness to be a debutante and her mother’s willingness to let her experiment. The clothes understand what the characters want before the characters do.

In Bridgerton Season 4, costume is character psychology, rendered in silk, velvet, and restraint. Everyone is dressed according to who they believe themselves to be. Only a few are brave, or desperate, enough to dress for who they might become.