When costume designer Daniella Pearman joined Sex Education for the fourth and final season, she’d already begun working to connect with its characters. “I did mood boards before I even had the job, and thought about how the characters that we already have were potentially going to progress, costume-wise,” she tells Tudum. Once fully aboard, Pearman’s methods expanded. “It was a whole collaborative process — conversations with the directors, producers, and actors.”

With Season 4 taking Otis (Asa Butterfield), Maeve (Emma Mackey), and the gang to different schools (and in Maeve’s case, a different country), Pearman’s mood boards evolved with the show’s new elements. “We had two colleges — the Moordale lot coming into this new environment at Cavendish, and Wallace [University] in America. So, it was establishing those two looks and having quite a contrast,” she says. 

And while not every returning character had a drastic change in their aesthetic, many of them had purposeful differences that will make you want to watch and rewatch to catch all the tiny details.

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The evolution of Eric

One could argue that Eric’s (Ncuti Gatwa) had the most striking and expansive fashion since the dramedy premiered. Nevertheless, his looks were taken up another level in Season 4. “I think Eric’s whole journey is quite a big one. We wanted to show the influence from the new friends he joins at Cavendish through his costume. Especially [in] Episode 3, after the queer party, when he’s gone and seen this amazing world that the Coven take him to. They’ve helped him get dressed and he’s like, ‘Oh my god, this is wonderful. You can express yourself.’ ” says Pearman. “He’s always had confidence, but it’s just an elevation of that ––  because in this college, everyone is who they want to be. There’s no pretending to be someone you aren’t. I think he had the most drastic change.”

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Aimee’s alterations

 “Aimee [played by Aimee Lou Wood] has quite a few different looks in this [season] and in a way it’s kind of what teenagers do,” says Pearman. “They dress to their environment and to what they’re going through at the time. Looking back, Aimee had that, which kind of crescendoed at the end when she burns her jeans. She knows who she wants to be and who she is at this point, and she’s trying all these different looks to see how she feels comfortable as a woman, how she wants to express herself as a woman.”

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The chicness of Cavendish and the Coven

Expression through costume was crucial with a batch of new faces at Cavendish, particularly for the Coven, which consists of Abbi (Anthony Lexa), Roman (Felix Mufti), and Aisha (Alexandra James).

“When you’re establishing [new] characters [who] have such amazing and individual personalities, you want to help show that through the costume, because it’s the first thing you see. Before they even open their mouths, you see what they’re wearing,” says Pearman. “I think my main thing with the new lot was, because of how the college was described — being a sustainable, forward-thinking, techie, amazing place that was so different to Moordale — we kind of ran with that vibe and they look like [they] made their own clothes or adapted [them] from older clothes, or they might swap and share clothes.”

The keys to creating that sustainability aesthetic, according to Pearman?  Clothing that was “full of texture, [with] loads of color to show joy and happiness and [that] we’re in this amazing place [where] you could be whoever you want to be,” she says. That attention to detail extended to the background actors. “We’d mix and match stuff on the extras, or we put one in something one day and then maybe use the top of that with something else on someone else the next day,” she says.

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Campaign representative Ruby

In Season 4, Ruby (Mimi Keene) quickly learns that everything that made her popular at Moordale has the opposite effect at Cavendish, where students aren’t into fancy cars or designer fashion, prefering bicycles and thrifted clothes instead. To support Ruby’s journey, Pearman considered how Ruby would adjust to the vastly different environment while helping Otis win a school sex therapist election. “I think [Ruby] feels like a small fish in a massive pond. There’s a scene [in Episode 2] when she’s dressed up in rainbow colors to try and fit in, but then she still stands out like a sore thumb,” explains Pearman.

Her aesthetic transition into Otis’ campaign manager was quite fun, though, Pearman says: “The two-piece and the glasses and the clipboard — that’s kind of her armor in a way.” 

And on the topic of wearing clothing like armor, it’s only right that Sex Education’s most iconic, recognizable piece of attire be acknowledged…

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Otis and his famous jacket

Through the peaks and valleys of Otis’ story from Season 1 to Season 4, the iconic striped jacket was present and visible. While the original jacket lasted “very long,” Pearman says they had to make it sustain the duration of shooting, so there were additional duplicates made, allowing the crew to have multiple jackets available when necessary. Take, for example, the moment when baby Joy spits up all over Otis. Having an immediate replacement on hand was crucial. “We could swap it out without having to clean it between scenes,” Pearman says.

A visual staple of Sex Education, fans can be certain that the series may be over, but the jacket lives on with Otis. “You can never get rid of Otis’ jacket,” says Pearman. “I think that’s his armor and it’s such a part of his personality as well. We were never going to get rid of the jacket, never, ever, ever, because it’s an institution.”