"Little Bird" by Annie Lennox plays in the background. Little feet in Reeboks (opens in new tab), white socks and ankle weights, walk down a carpeted hallway. The place looks familiar.

Hulu's "Little Fires Everywhere," adapted from Celeste Ng's New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, features two clashing mothers, Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) and Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) clash in suburban heaven. But the show is as much a time capsule of the 1990s as it is an intimate, dramatic examination of motherhood, gender roles, racism, and privilege (open in new tab). [The eight-episode miniseries deftly transports millennial viewers like myself to the bedrooms of my childhood, where I used to flip through "Tiger Beat" and "Sassy," whose pages were filled with Got Milk ads and *NSYNC posters. The show takes us back to a time when pagers, car phones, mom jeans, vests, Counting Crows, and chokers reigned supreme.

"My pitch deck included a section called 'Teens of the 90s' that showcased pop culture and fashion," Lynn Shelton, the show's lead director, told Marie Claire. To create the nostalgic cocoon, the creative team dove headfirst into Friends, Dawson's Creek, 90210, Boy Meets World, and ER, and consulted magazines such as Allure, Teen, and Rolling Stone. Hair designer José Zamora had nostalgic photos of Witherspoon and teen icon Joshua Jackson (who plays a picture-perfect married couple on the show (opens in new tab)) ready. Jennifer Aniston's "Rachel" hairstyle was used as a cultural touchstone. [Like the show's characters, whether you grew up on the East Coast or the West Coast, in the South or in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the 1990s was a decade of aesthetic prominence. (Marie Claire interviewed Shelton, the show's creator and writer Liz Tiegeler, and key crew members to hear how they went back in time and recreated the 90s through fashion and design.

Marie Claire: What does the 1990s mean to you?

Liz Tigeler, creator and writer: It's my decade. I graduated from high school in 1994 and college in 1998, and I remember each year of the 1990s very specifically, and I remember the first year of the 1990s as being the year I graduated from high school, and the second year of the 1990s as the year I graduated from college. I threw a "1994" party before the show started because I could specifically remember that '94 was nothing like '93 or '95. 20 years doesn't seem like that long ago, but when I see a Dodge Caravan with wood paneling on the side, it feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Jessica Kender, Production Designer: I graduated college in 1997, so this era holds a very special place in my heart. Memories of bodysuits, Snackwell cookies, and butterfly hair clips came to mind when I read this book.

MC: How was the world of the Richardsons and Warrens created?

JK: The characters are so well written that you already know who they are. My goal was to find visual material to support what I saw in my mind's eye. For Elena, I wanted to find the equivalent of the "blank house" of the 90s. She is all about controlling her story and her home and wants every aspect to be clean and right. the equivalent of the "white" of the 90's is beige and that is where we built our home from.

MC: Tell us about the Richardsons' picturesque home.

JK: The first floor of Elena's house has a lot of old Ralph Lauren and Ethan Allen to give it an "east coast money vibe." If you look closely in the living room, you can see that the fabric for the curtains has been flipped up and used as pillows for the sofa. In the dining room, the fabric runners on the table match the chair cushions and curtains. Laura Ashley and Calico Corners also provided inspiration for the softer second floor. [So we matched the wallpaper, the bedspread, and the curtains.

MC: And Mia's house is quite different. What affected it?

JK: Mia is more transitional. I wanted to create an organic, cohesive space by combining found objects. She's not afraid to take in the outside world and mix styles. When she heads to a thrift store, she can put together a living space that shouldn't work. My interior decorator, Lisa Clark, and I took a lot of cues from the way we decorated our own space in college.

The 90s was not a beloved decade in the design world, so the usual places we would go to buy furniture did not have the same inventory. Nor were there collectors to restore it in the same way that furniture from the 1950s to the 1970s was cared for. We turned to eBay and Craigslist to find people willing to sell their old furniture. We were able to repair and reupholster those pieces of furniture. Many of the fabrics were from discontinued lines where Lisa found one last roll. [So we had to be very particular about how we used each yard.

MC: What about character hairstyles?

Jose Zamora, hair designer: Jose Zamora (hair designer): I asked if we could do a 90s look. In previous projects, the powers that be did not allow us to make the period look authentic. So we really went for it. We used twists, Bjork knots, braids, and butterfly clips for the girls, and curtain cuts, sideburns, spiked hair, and lots of gel for the boys. This is set in Shaker Heights, definitely influenced by MTV and "Teen Vogue." Mia and Elena had their own hair stylist. But Mia went natural and Elena never left home without a proper blow-dry.

MC: Elena and Mia are polar opposites when it comes to clothing as well as home. What was your vision there?

Costume designer Lynn Paolo: This period is very new and I think it will resonate with many people who watch this series. I felt it was important to bring nuance to the look of each character. The costumes are a mix of custom-made pieces, vintage store and rental house finds, and pieces loaned from the archives by brands like DKNY, Brooks Brothers, Gap, Dooney & Bourke, Coach, Sperry, and Steve Madden.

Elena was the pinnacle of Midwestern fashion of her time. She is "Ralph Lauren Americana": argyle twinsets, shirtwaist dresses, pearls. [In contrast] Mia is more "thrift store." The T-shirts with iconography of the time represent concerts held in the various cities where she traveled and lived across the country. The Birkenstock socks represent the time she spent in San Francisco. Mia's outfits are very repetitive, and she feels like she has one small bag, as opposed to Elena, who does not repeat outfits. Each character also has their own color story. Mia is dark tones, gray, black, and dark tones of denim. Elena is red, white, and blue. The teens in the story also have their own color palettes. For example, as Pearl (Mia's daughter, played by Lexie Underwood) comes to resonate with the Richardson family.

MC: This story takes place in the 90s, is there any connection to the present?

LT: I think it's really interesting how the 90s and the present are related. As Celeste says in her book, in the 90s we thought we had it all figured out. We thought that racism was gone, that 1992 was the year of the woman, and that high school was the age of unity. But of course, now in 2020, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that we still had to go really far. And one only has to look at the violation of women's right to choose their profession and the treatment of illegal immigrants to see how backward we have become. It is good to see this parallel view of who we were as a culture and who we are today."

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