For ’28 Years Later,’ the long-awaited continuation of Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic saga, Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl brought their avant-garde vision to both costume and production design. Working through their studio Hard+Shiny, the creative duo shaped the film’s haunting aesthetic – a world where society’s clock stopped in the early 2000s, and survival depends on ingenuity, not vanity.

Their approach fused fashion’s sculptural precision with cinematic world-building. Wardrobes were sourced and distressed from real early-millennium garments, reflecting years of wear and resourcefulness. Every detail, from scavenged uniforms to improvised protective layers, was designed with the logic of survival in mind. The result is a wardrobe that feels tactile, lived-in, and brutally authentic.

Beyond costume, Pugh and McColl’s vision extended into environmental design, including the film’s striking “Bone Temple,” a physical set built almost entirely by hand, embodying a pagan monument to a world in decay. This visceral, material-driven aesthetic grounds Boyle’s dystopia in something disturbingly real, bridging the duo’s background in performance art, fashion, and theatre with the cinematic scale of the 28 Years Later universe.