Why Laurie’s Outfits Are Off in The White Lotus

In season 3 of The White Lotus, Laurie Duffy can’t seem to catch a break. On a tension-filled vacation with her glamorous childhood girlfriends, the burnt-out corporate lawyer and drained divorcée (played by Carrie Coon) is immediately positioned as the odd one out. Look no further than her outfits.

At first glance, one might view Laurie and her recently reconnected 40-something pals — fame-fatigued actress Jaclyn and possible Trump supporter Kate — as an aesthetic monolith. They all have blonde hair, they all wear gauzy caftans and they all emanate a vague air of Goop-adjacent wealth. But upon closer inspection, by subtle yet seminal margins, Laurie misses the sartorial mark.

It starts with her first resort outfit: a mustard one-piece and a turquoise cover-up tackily emblazoned with palm trees. The tableau of clashing colours is jarring, while the in-your-face tropical print gives off a try-hard effect. This is intentional. “It was important to me that [Laurie’s] packing feels a little hapless,” Carrie Coon said in a recent interview with Vanity Fair, noting that she worked with costume designer Alex Bovaird to craft the character’s clumsy style. “She didn’t really have the time or the foresight or the energy to pack… She’s trying to bring the vacation, but it’s just a little bit wrong.”

While her friends luxuriate in well-coordinated sets, Laurie’s colour pairings are drab and her silhouettes feel forced. Her nail polish is subtly off; her complexion is ever-so-slightly less dewy. Even her hair is not quite right. From afar, their salon-grade dye jobs all appear tasteful and steeply priced. But up close, Laurie’s hair is less precise. Jaclyn sports effortlessly crimped beach waves. Kate has a severe bob and a deep Southern side part. In contrast, Laurie’s frizzy strands are never as sleek.

Still, Laurie desperately wants to fit in. Their first night at dinner, she’s in a stretchy jumper with a warped beach motif. (Her girlfriends wear chic, solid-coloured dresses.) Despite her efforts at assimilation, there’s a pall of pity hovering around Laurie that manifests through subtle judgements or full-on dismissal from the group.

“I always brag that I know you,” Kate tells Jaclyn as if Laurie’s not there. “You’re totally winning life,” Jaclyn says back to Kate. They laugh in self-satisfaction and then, after remembering their third member is sitting right there, they offer Laurie some tepid half-praise. (“Everything you do is just so hard.”) When she excuses herself to her sectioned-off villa, Jaclyn and Kate reveal how they really feel about their friend. Laurie looks tired and defeated, they say. She drinks too much. Her parenting is questionable. Laurie looks on from her room, letting out a guttural sob. She may be dressing to fit in, but even her whimsical warm-weather wardrobe can’t shield her from being the least-favourite friend.

As the trip unfolds, unspoken strain turns to explicit hostility — and Laurie’s clothes follow suit. It starts when Jaclyn has a one night stand with Valentin, the resort’s sexy “health mentor”, whom she had been urging Laurie to hook up with since they arrived. Up until this point, Laurie’s outfits showcase her desperation to be seen as anything other than the third wheel. Under her tropical motifs and mismatched tones is an ill-fated attempt to belong. But after learning of this betrayal, we see a stylistic shift.

That night, she wears her most daring ensemble yet: a plunging brown halter dress. Her muted palette and backless silhouette feel uncharacteristically polished, while her dangly gold earrings are badges of boldness. At a rosé-fueled dinner, she lets out her decades-long grudges with the group, calling Jaclyn attention-seeking and Kate downright fake. In turn, Jaclyn and Kate tell Laurie what they’ve been saying behind her back: they think her life is sad. “If you always choose the short stick, is it bad luck?” Jaclyn asks. “Or are you doing it to yourself?”

The interaction prompts Laurie to leave and go to the Muay Thai fight they were all invited to. Here, she swaps her unconvincing loungewear for a baggy graphic tee and slouchy pants. It’s the first time she’s departed from the group, and clothing-wise, it’s an unprecedented picture of her actually letting loose.  In another chaotic move, she hooks up with Aleksei (Valentin’s friend). But before she can even relish in her caution-to-the-wind catharsis, Aleksei asks her for $10,000 to pay off his mother’s debt. “I know you’re rich,” he says in a not-unmenacing manner. “Do you have Paypal? Or Zelle? Cash app?” The interaction ends with Laurie jumping shoeless out the window and disappearing — walk-of-shame style — into the night.

In The White Lotus, Laurie’s entire vacation is one big hard pill to swallow — a continual coming-to-terms with the fact that she’s not on par with her blissfully ignorant friends. Laurie is something of a tragic heroine on the girls trip, an underdog whose fatal flaw is her inability to interrogate her own unhappiness.

Carrie Coon’s character needs introspection, and it won’t come from faking niceties with her friends or canoodling with sketchy strangers. Nay, Laurie is due for some serious soul-searching. To start, perhaps she can lay off the palm-tree patterns.