‘The Shards’ Turns 1981 Los Angeles Into a World of Glamour, Anxiety and Teenage Rivalry
Goldlaner.com – FX’s “The Shards” places its young characters in a version of Los Angeles where image is a form of survival. As a group of privileged prep-school students begins senior year in 1981, their concerns include college, romance, social standing and Homecoming Court. But a far more ominous threat shadows their polished routines: a killer known as The Trawler is preying on high school students.
The series, directed in the heightened style associated with Ryan Murphy, treats its murder-mystery plot as only one part of the experience. It is also a vivid immersion in the music, fashion and cultural atmosphere of the early 1980s, when oversized silhouettes, platinum hair and dramatic makeup could be as expressive as dialogue.
Shoulder pads are everywhere, and the characters’ wardrobes reflect both their wealth and their desire to control how they are seen. One extended midseason dance sequence, set to Rick James’ “Super Freak,” lets the central cast dance, toss their hair and fully embrace the era’s flamboyant energy.
A carefully built 1981 fantasy
Kaia Gerber, who plays Susan Reynolds, credited the show’s commitment to period detail for making its world feel so specific. Costume designers Joshua Marsh and Lou Eyrich created extensive mood boards and assembled numerous vintage items to shape the characters’ appearances.
“The attention to detail is what makes it so incredible,” Gerber said. “It’s such a specific moment in time.”
Gerber’s character is Buckley prep school’s class president: disciplined, exacting and outwardly flawless. Susan is dating Thom Wright, played by Graham Campbell, a football star whose place in the school’s social hierarchy appears equally secure.
Hayes Warner plays Debbie Schaffer, the girlfriend of Bret Easton Ellis, portrayed by Igby Rigney. Debbie’s look draws on Blondie’s visual language, pairing light platinum hair with striking red lipstick. Bret, a Joan Didion-loving aspiring writer, provides the central perspective for the story.
The character shares a name with Bret Easton Ellis, the novelist whose 2023 horror autofiction book inspired the series. Ellis is also a co-creator and co-showrunner of the television adaptation.
The fragile balance among the students shifts when Robert Mallory, a new arrival played by Homer Gere, enters the group. Gere is the son of actor Richard Gere. Robert’s presence disrupts the two established couples and adds another layer of uncertainty to a season already haunted by The Trawler’s crimes.
From the makeup trailer to everyday style
Gerber and Warner developed a close friendship while filming. Their workdays often began with more than two hours in the makeup trailer, where they rehearsed scenes while being transformed into their characters. The long preparation process helped create the precise, immaculate visual identities expected of students in this particular 1981 setting.
Some elements of the show’s styling followed the actors beyond the set. Warner has recently favored shoulder-padded jackets, including pieces Gerber gave her from her own wardrobe. Both performers have also found themselves returning to side-parted hairstyles.
For Gerber, the production’s maximalist approach was enjoyable partly because it contrasts with contemporary casual beauty habits.
“Post-pandemic, effort is very minimal, which I love,” Gerber said. “I don’t want to spend two hours on my hair for my everyday life, but I appreciated that teenagers in high school in 1981 were actually getting ready. We now have pimple patches on our faces.”
The contrast is central to the appeal of “The Shards.” Its teenagers inhabit a world in which public presentation demands effort, even as their private lives become increasingly unstable. The series finds humor and spectacle in that excess while maintaining an undercurrent of danger.
Kaia Gerber’s connection to Susan Reynolds
Gerber was familiar with the book before the adaptation moved into production and became involved with the project early. Even so, she did not allow herself to assume it would happen until shortly before camera tests began.
“I was in such denial that it was going to happen,” she said. “I didn’t fully celebrate until we all got drinks a week before we did our camera tests.”
Across the show’s nine episodes, Susan’s perfectionism becomes more than a surface trait. She is the kind of student who appears to have every detail under control, an identity Gerber can understand after years working in fashion, where polished appearance is often connected with an ideal of beauty.
“Just because something is on paper the perfect thing to do, does not necessarily mean it’s the thing that will make you feel fulfilled and happy,” Gerber said. “I relate to her journey in figuring out what her desires are outside of that pressure.”
That perspective gives Susan’s carefully maintained image additional weight. Her composure is not simply a period-fashion statement; it also reflects the pressure of meeting other people’s expectations while trying to identify what she genuinely wants.
The books behind the character
Gerber is also a reader and the co-creator of Library Science, a book-club project launched in 2024. She has considered what Susan might have had on her bedside table in 1981, suggesting Scott Spencer’s 1979 novel “Endless Love.”
The turbulent romance between two teenagers in that novel would suit Susan’s world, particularly her evolving relationship with Thom. It is a small but revealing detail: in “The Shards,” literature, clothes, music and social rituals all help define young people who are still trying to understand themselves.
Gerber brings the poise and controlled movement shaped by her fashion career to Susan, while Warner approaches Debbie as an actor newer to the screen. Together, their performances help anchor a story that moves between campy suspense, teenage melodrama and a highly stylized vision of early-1980s Los Angeles.
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