Given her penchant for bright pink outerwear, it is unlikely that Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) has items of clothing in her closet that bear some resemblance to Lieutenant Columbo’s iconic, worn-out beige raincoat. Yet Peter Falk’s formidable cigar-smoking detective serves as one inspiration for Elsbeth, with her deliberately disarming wardrobe, and how she outsmarts the killer of the week, played by a famous guest star.

“We really want Elsbeth’s clothes to be the equivalent of Columbo’s trench coat,” says Daniel Lawson, “Elsbeth’s” costume designer. He designed the wardrobe for the lawyer-turned-investigator, from Preston’s first appearance on “The Good Wife” in 2010 to the spinoff “The Good Fight” and now in the character’s title role. Lawson is attuned to the quirky character’s maximalist tastes and the way suspects act And The police are looking at her.

It is Columbo’s persistence and continued presence that Lawson takes advantage of. “Even at the police station, she comes around the corner, and some officers say, ‘Oh, come on. Here she is again. Look at that jacket, look at those pants, look at that hat,” says Lawson. ‘Her clothes is the Columbo trench coat – the idea of ​​it – the piece of sand in your bathing suit.

Like Columbo, who occasionally wore a tuxedo to ensnare a suspect, Elsbeth has already dressed up to attend the opera this season and dressed up for Halloween as Holly Golightly from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ .

Thursday’s episode featured a black-tie bash at an exclusive jewelry store, where Elsbeth comes face-to-face with the glamorous Vanessa Williams, who stars in a killer guest spot that revolves around a heist gone wrong. “It’s nice that each episode has its own world and theme. It keeps us on our toes and hopefully gives the audience the feeling that they have something new,” says Preston.

After the success of the first season of “Elsbeth,” which only had 10 episodes, CBS doubled the number of episodes for season 2, allowing the costume department to develop more playful fashion moments. Christmas is already around the corner and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner.

Here, Lawson and Preston discuss key costumes from the first four episodes of the second season, culminating in Elsbeth’s glamorous dress opposite Williams.