
Griselda costume designer Safowa Bright Bitzelberger brings Griselda Bianco’s world back to life with the acclaimed Netflix series. Bitzelberger and her team crafted both authentic, vibrant, and character-driven costumes. They always tell Griselda’s story and paint the world around her with believability.
Bitzelberger’s work is nominated for an Emmy Award this season, thanks to her impeccable work on episode five, “Paradise Lost,” which features a transition in time and rise in power. It’s a big shift done seamlessly. Recently, Bitzelberger told Immersive about depicting the ’70s and ’80s through Griselda Bianco’s (Sofía Vergara) lens.
I appreciate that you make some unconventional choices with Griselda herself. You often put her in these angelic white costumes, not the typical outfits that project power.

Thank you. It’s interesting because I think that when we did that jump forward in time from the seventies, it really started late. The story takes place in the late seventies, and then it jumps forward not a decade, but really, maybe four years. I think ‘78 to ‘82. And so, within that time, she’s such a badass. She takes over, she takes over Miami, she takes over every corner of business, whether it’s real estate, obviously the drugs, banking, everything, and her hand is on it. And so, we wanted to be able to really portray her jump forward financially.
Of course, it’s tempting to put a woman in a more traditional position. It’s a male-driven industry. I think that it would’ve been tempting to put her in pants suits. It would’ve been tempting to put her in men’s wear or men’s wear-inspired female apparel. I discussed this with Sophia and her perspective is she didn’t need to wear pants in order to have this power. I think that that’s something that really comes across at every level, especially as we jump forward.
It also helps us really bring to light how much power she would have to have in order to reach that level in such a short time period. And so, when I was just working on the color palette, of course, the ‘80s had so many pastels and this whole palette that was definitely accustomed to peaches and turquoise and saturated pastels.
How’d you land on white?
I think that we landed on white for her in some key moments, because I wanted to really play with that polarity. It’s tempting to put someone that has gone down a dark path in something dark. Sometimes it’s a little literal and it makes sense. When we leaned in to wearing the white, I thought it was a play on the silhouette. She’s in a dress, she has all this power, she’s leading all these men. She’s instilled fear in them. With this light color. she doesn’t need to really get her hands dirty at this stage. She really has people that are willing to do anything, murder everything along those lines for her. So again, she can step back and watch instead of being.

You didn’t go with many major designer label outfits for Griselda either, right?
It was really tempting. She’s a billionaire, which is actually a lot of money now. Again, it was tempting to put her in piece after piece of designer pieces, whether it was Versace or Chanel. We leaned into the fact that the fabrication is really going to help us see where she has brought and the wealth and the structure and the construction of the garments. She wasn’t going to be that she is a trendsetter or a trend follower, that’s something that Sophia was very adamant about.
For “Paradise Lost,” the scale is next level. You have a big club sequence followed by a lavish birthday party. Where did your work begin? Does it always start with Griselda and then you build around her?
Absolutely. Everything was built around her. For that time jump, we wanted to be able to tell that story of this new rich wealth around her and the people at that birthday party. These partygoers had a lot of money, and you see it as they drive up in their Lamborghinis, they’re dripping and they’re trendy. I was able to get those creative juices out because we weren’t going to do that to help Griselda’s new look come to light.
And so, we reverse-engineered around her. Once we locked in what her look was, it absolutely dictated, it dictated Marta. I had a little fun with that Turquoise fan. I loved it. It’s what I envisioned. It was exactly what I was looking for. Because we were under time constraints with just the sheer volume of who was going to be at the party, who was going to be alongside Griselda, we had to have so many options ready at the same time.

How about Carmen?
The same thing with Carmen and how I approached her look. She was a little more reserved, but for her it was, she definitely spent much and had her house on the water.
And so, no matter how much she was the voice of reason and ethics to Griselda, she still gave in. There is something that still drew her to it to the industry, although she had enough caution and ethics in place to really step up once Griselda crossed that line, as we know.
But yeah, it was a huge amount of background. I was so fortunate to have an amazing team around me and the amount of attention that and detail you have to put into the club. When we shot the mutiny [club] scenes, which were shot at the Queen Mary, around four or five days. We shot all the ‘70s stuff first, all of it. And then, we shot all the ‘80s, and it was so impactful because everyone had been wearing ‘70s for a while on shoot days.
You could just tell that the cast was so excited, and it was interesting to see how they chose to spend this newly earned money alongside Griselda. Were they going to honor the look that they had in the ‘70s and turn it up a notch? Were they going to drop their money on designer pieces like Carmen?

How’d you see Dario there? How did you want to define his relationship to Griselda’s wealth and power?
Dario is a good example, because we decided that he was not going to be a trend follower. He was there for the love, really, of Griselda and to protect her. He wanted a family and he wanted normalcy. Still, she needs to have someone alongside her that looks as wealthy as her, but maybe it won’t be as trendy. And so again, I chose timeless ‘80s, but a little less trendy for him. It was more about maybe the colors. And then he sort of peeled that away as he realized that she didn’t want the same path as him.
The ‘80s were such an excessive time, especially for fashion. As a costume designer, did you feel for that shift you had such a greater, wide range of colors to use?
Oh, it’s great. We had a story to tell, but I think that we definitely went with cooler tones, so we honored the ‘80s palette, those pastels, but also saturated tones that are within them. So, a pastel aqua and then a saturated turquoise and aqua. They obviously belong to the same family. I think that that also allowed us to very quickly do that switch in time. That was challenging for the eye to see that change. And so, that’s why I went with the cool palette compared to the warm palette of the seventies with the browns and the rust and the orange and gold. All of those warm tones, really, I stayed away from as we jumped forward.
I really enjoyed Griselda’s big day out, just running errands and living life. You see she has these flowers on her costume, and then when you cut to June, she has much darker flowers. It’s subtle, but how’d you want to show parallels between those two?
I think that there were connections and parallels. Absolutely. They both were mothers, right? They both had the barriers to moving forward, to moving upward within the industry. Specifically as a detective, no one took June seriously. Obviously, the same thing for Griselda. She’s trying to make her way within the drug cartels. And so, I definitely think that they had a lot in common.
I think one thing that really resonated at the end, with June, you can choose to reach that pinnacle, and that’s what we saw Griselda do. At the end of the party, the next day, we see her children because of what has happened. I’m not going to do any spoilers for someone who may not have watched it, but the truth is, that disappointment propelled her to be so desperate, leave, and to flee is because I think that’s where we really saw that she was willing to do anything to get what she wanted. June was not willing to do that. It was very important that she still was a mom to her son.
Then the other difference that we really wanted to be able to portray is that as we saw Griselda move forward with this exceptionally powerful cartel and the ruthless things that she did in order to move forward and to attain the power and money that she acquired within a few years, we see her evolve. For June, something that we really discussed is that she’s not going to be able to get a whole new wardrobe in four years, so there are going to be selective items that she is going to update and will have that appropriate silhouette.
June is not super trending and she does not have the finances to replace everything. We deliberately even chose to keep some pieces in June’s wardrobe, like brown and black slacks. We kept them and we incorporated them with a new blazer that definitely had an ‘80s silhouette. She actually did stay in a warmer color palette, but where she went in a cool direction, it was really maybe if we just chose to use charcoal. But she definitely still had a warmer palette than Sophia.

I love when the show cuts from Griselda’s world of cartels to June’s world of law enforcement, and just all the fun and life is sucked out of the frame. The party is over. A fun play on colors.
[Laughs] Yeah, no, it’s true. Even when we decided what Griselda would take with her as she fled, we decided that she was grabbing things desperately. What could she fit in a suitcase and what pieces? When she’s arrested, I actually believe that he’s wearing a warmer dress. It’s very traditional and not trendy, even though it’s period appropriate. So yeah, it makes me really pleased that you noticed all of this.
Looking back at your experience on Griselda, what are you most proud about?
Oh gosh. It was a gift that we were on it for a long time and that we had, the team had a good amount of prep, and as you know, everything has done so much more quickly these days. And so, that to me was great because what it allowed for you to establish these connections with everyone, with the director, with your DP, with the production designer, with the set decorator, with hair and makeup and the prosthetics and all of these elements that came together to tell the story.
As I step back, I’ve done a number of projects after that, it was a gift to work locally on a period project that spanned two decades. It was great creatively. Sophia is amazing, too. I mean, her performance was exceptional. Her dedication to the character was just exceptional.
Griselda is available to stream on Netflix.