We’re in the midst of a period-drama packed autumn: Sense and Sensibility is now in cinemas, Pride and Prejudice will soon be on Netflix, and before the latter hits the streamer, another lush, literary adaptation is about to dominate the platform: a new take on John Steinbeck’s magnum opus, the sweeping, sprawling East of Eden.

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Created by Zoe Kazan – who is, coincidentally, the granddaughter of Hollywood legend Elia Kazan, who helmed the 1955 big-screen version of this story, starring James Dean – it offers a new focus: Cathy Ames, the tale’s irresistible, larger-than-life anti-heroine, as played by Florence Pugh. As a little girl, she begins to understand the overwhelming desire men possess for her, and slowly learns to use it for her own gains. She becomes entangled with a powerful man who casts her aside, and eventually winds up at the door of Adam Trask (Christopher Abbott). The pair marry and move from the East Coast to California, but Cathy is dissatisfied with her long days as a wife and mother to twin boys, Aron and Cal. She abandons them, leaving the family’s Chinese-American housekeeper, Lee (Hoon Lee), to care for them. Soon she has fled to a brothel run by the formidable Faye (Martha Plimpton), and builds a new life, renaming herself Kate.

Crafting Cathy-turned-Kate’s knockout, late 19th- and early 20th-century wardrobe is Kirsty Cameron, the New Zealander also behind the intricate costumes in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, another tale of love and loss in the American wilderness. Ahead of East of Eden’s Netflix release on 1 October, she talks us through her most unexpected sources of inspiration and our leading lady’s turbulent, fashion-filled arc.

What references were on your moodboard for creating Cathy’s look?

I looked at a lot of photographers, especially those who were taking candid snapshots of real life more than 100 years ago. Two stood out: Edward Linley Sambourne and George Hendrik Breitner. They both photographed women on the streets in this very cool way. It reminds you that these people were modern in their own time, which is important to think about when doing period work.

There’s also Alice Austen, David Hamilton, Deborah Turbeville, and Arnold Genthe’s photos of [San Francisco’s] Chinatown [which provided inspiration for Lee’s look].

We also had a huge list of painters, going from [Mary] Cassatt and [Pierre] Bonnard to [Berthe] Morisot, [Henri de Toulouse] Lautrec and [Edvard] Munch. Because the photography is black and white, the paintings brought a real sense of the colours of the period.

Can you talk me through Cathy’s long arc in terms of her clothes?

Her character goes through so many changes. When she’s a child, she’s being dressed by her mother and being brought up to be a wife, which she never intends to be. She plays along with it, so there’s already an artifice in what she’s wearing.

When we see her at her youngest, she’s reading , but she also seems to be dressed like Alice?

Yes, we were totally jamming off Alice in wonderland [for that look]. I looked a lot at Lewis Carroll’s photographs as well.

Then, Cathy grows up and meets Mr Edwards.

And he’s dressing her to play this role of his mistress. We wanted to create a kind of brocade heaviness [in these looks] and think about what he was buying for her and what she was buying for herself when she’d go out and spend all of his money on these more elaborate pieces. Which, of course, leads to the dress that she gets beaten up in. Zoe wanted it to have a really feminine quality which contrasted with the damage that’s done to Cathy in that dress. We printed that silk fabric and constructed those layers; when she’s on the ground, those layers needed to have the capacity to speak to a sort of femininity and brokenness [in Cathy].

That incident brings Cathy to Adam.

[Adam and his brother, Charles] really have nothing else but men’s shirts and their [deceased] mother’s dresses. So, Cathy wears her dresses. There’s a faded quality to them, as well as the sense that this is the mother that Adam revered, who he transposes onto Cathy.

Next comes Cathy’s wedding dress. What went into crafting that?

We made a couple of renditions of that dress, and I remember going to [Florence’s] trailer and her trying them on. The one we ended up going with is the simplest of them all. It’s beautiful, elegant and has a kind of timelessness. Those [sorts of wedding portraits] always look timeless. There’s also an innocence there which is unusual for her character.

After that, Cathy and Adam move to California.

In this chapter of the story, there’s a sense of Cathy exploring her own taste. Zoe and I always spoke about her as being quite tasteful. She’s playing a part, but she’s also exercising her own sensibility.

In the show’s final chapter, Cathy becomes Kate.

With Faye, Cathy plays the innocent country girl, but that look quickly develops into these elaborate brothel gowns which she uses to fit in. She fits in with these girls and then she rises above them to the top.

As Kate, [once she’s in charge], she exercises a kind of self-branding. Zoe even talked a little bit about Patti Smith – this sense of someone who’s created their own image which is so recognisable. Kate likes a cleaner, more elegant line, less decoration, and a more edited, sophisticated aesthetic. And she loves the dramatic. This was, perhaps, her chance to be who she’d always wanted to be, but never had the capacity. It’s her own performance, as opposed to performing for somebody else. It’s also a uniform and the palette is severe, but there’s variety to it and texture, and Florence wanted it to be really sexy. She also loved the idea that Kate collected all of these mementos from men, so those are on her body as well as being next to her bed and on her desk. And then, of course, all the girls at Kate’s wear all-black, too.

And finally, what other characters were fun to dress?

The guys – I love menswear. Creating those pieces from calico or a homespun cotton, and we did huge amounts of dyeing as well. I love Charles and Adam’s farm clothes. Mike Faist [who plays Charles] took his clothes out to the location [where we were shooting] and spent a weekend wearing them. I love Adam’s vagrant clothes, too. He has a huge trajectory, but it’s much more subtle than Cathy’s. He absconds from himself, in a sense, but then he comes back to the farm, falls in love, and we see a heightened sense of self – you see his suit, his taste, elegance, optimism and intense ambition. But he’s also trying to get down with the Californians, so he brings some of his farm clothes and wears them to ride. Then, he’s forsaken, but later, there is a return to himself and a kind of settling into who he is. There’s a plainness there.

There’s also Abra [the young girlfriend of Aron Trask, Adam and Cathy’s son]. Her looks were fun to play with because she brings a modernity to the story. Again, we looked at those candid early street-style photographs. She wears these pleated skirts and things you can stride around in much more easily.

And Lee, of course. He’s playing a role, too, in the beginning. He wears his Chinese garments on the farm, he plays the humble servant, and then when he goes to Chinatown, he wears his suit. Over time, he evolves into who he really is. I love his character so much.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

East of Eden will be streaming on Netflix from 1 October.