“They’ve changed. They’ve seen some sh*t,” Taylor says of the crew’s journey before the new season begins. Creator David Jenkins told her the crew had already been with Blackbeard for a few months when the new season picked up, so their transformation needed to be apparent in the costumes.
For the crew, Taylor imagined all their new outfits were made from stuff they found on the ship. Jim (Vico Ortiz), for example, she says, “They’ve found a whole lot of ropes on the ship and fishing hooks and scraps of leather and pieced together this ‘Mad Max’ look based on their own concept of what a badass pirate might look like.”
Also for Jim, who’s nonbinary, Taylor used the same ethos of found objects to create a binder that felt “kickass cool” for the character. “And then we built the costume over that,” she explains. “I wanted to make a real point of that to be open and accepting of all of our queerness and our beautiful, beautiful cast.”
If you want to copy Fang’s necklace of teeth (which Taylor says are also fake in the show), she recommends using FIMO or similar modeling clay, then stringing the teeth together with hemp rope. In the show, the teeth are based on sperm whale and walrus teeth.
“The key with Blackbeard’s crew is to make sure that you’re just head-to-toe black,” she says. The only exception is hardware, which could be silver or gold. If you’re looking for embellishments at Goodwill, Taylor says, “Don’t just look in the clothes section.” The kitchen section especially has lots of odd bits that can be repurposed in unique ways as long as you think outside of the box.
As for makeup, Taylor suggests, “Any sort of makeup that they used would have been from the ship, so they’ve just used gunpowder.” Feel free to go wild with some black eyeshadow to mimic it.