Young Royals and Snabba Cash's costume designer on dressing two of the most popular Swedish Netflix shows

Snabba Cash and Young Royals are two of the most popular Swedish Netflix shows to air in recent years, with hotly anticipated second seasons set to come out in late 2022. For the costume designer, curating and designing the looks for a TV show or a film provides one of the greatest privileges of the whole project: to bring a character to life.

For Stockholm-based creative powerhouse Sara Forsberg, 35, being in charge of the costume design for Young Royals season 1, and Snabba Cash season 2 have been one of the most pivotal, and challenging, projects she’s been a part of so far.

Related: Everything we know about Snabba Cash Season 2 so far

Forsberg, who has always possessed a keen passion for fashion and film, though never studied the topics, has honed her sartorial cinematic skills through old fashioned hard graft. And after working on a host of independent Swedish films, she caught the eye of Netflix execs. "I love telling a story with clothes; you can jump into all sorts of different worlds," says Forsberg.

Her Netflix stint kicked off with Young Royals' season one, one of the most significant projects Forsberg says she has had as a costume designer. "Everything is produced so fast – you get the script and then you meet the actor and then you start prepping all the clothes and then you have a fitting, that's actually when you get to know the character," she explains.

So, how does one delve deep into the sartorial world of elite boarding school teens? Or gangsters living in the bleak outskirts of Stockholm?

"I love the beginning of a new project, that's when everything is possible. Every day, I basically stalk people on the street," Forsberg laughs. "I'm like: 'oh, that's an interesting look,' and I always take pictures or write it down. For research, I also interview people and browse social media. I'm getting to know the characters through all the people that I talk to or see on Instagram and TikTok."

As the Swedish royal house is currently low on moody teens, Forsberg looked to the Danish royal family to draw inspiration for modern-yet-regal Gen Z dressing. "I found a lot of inspiration through the Danish princes, they were actually my first inspiration with Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and his brother." Along with becoming attuned to what the teenagers of today are wearing, designing costumes for Young Royals also presented an interesting challenge for Forsberg: creating a posh boarding school uniform.

Related: Loved Young Royals? Here's 10 similar shows to watch right now

Getting tasked with designing and producing the uniform over the summer holidays may have felt like an impossible talk for some, however, Forsberg set to work, scoring a collaboration with Tiger of Sweden, and the uniforms were produced in a month. Taking cues from elite schools overseas, along with Sweden's three (proper) boarding schools, Forsberg designed a uniform that looks both authentic, but still firmly sits in the fictional Young Royals universe.

"We wanted to create our own reality and a fictional boarding school, so choosing the colour [for the uniform] was very important," Forsberg says. "I saw this burgundy colour pretty fast and then I had to go through it with the director and the production designer. We also did a camera test with it to see if the colour even worked. I was really happy that I did all of that work before we started making the actual jackets."

By now, the burgundy Hillerska boarding school uniforms are etched onto our memories, and so is another humble style hero seen in the series; Simon's (Omar Rudberg) purple hoodie. "There's been a lot of talk about the hoodie, and I was so happy because I found it at the thrift shop and I've had it for a couple of years. I was like: 'OK, I'm going to find a character for this one.' And then when I met Omar, it just felt so right with that purple hoodie," Forsberg explains.

Colour, according to Forsberg, is one of the most crucial factors when creating a character's wardrobe. "Wilhelm is blue and Simon is a mix of the yellows and purple. My intention was that when Simon felt more and more for Wilhelm, he started dressing in more purple. Finding the right colours for them was so important-- William is wearing an orange sweater in the beginning [of the series], he doesn't know it then, but he's on his way towards Simon."

After wrapping with Young Royals, Forsberg was slated for costuming Snabba Cash's second season, focused on an entirely different universe. Stepping into the shoes of legendary Swedish costume designer Cilla Rörby, Forsberg switched from dressing teens to styling Stockholm's most notorious gangsters and entrepreneurs.

"As they do in Young Royals, in Snabba Cash I didn't re-use the wardrobe that much from season one. I started off with loads of new costumes, which was fun." Forsberg says. This is partly because director Jesper Ganslandt wanted the audience to feel like the characters, and their style, had developed from season one.

Related: It's been a year since Young Royals first hit our screens. Here's everything we know about Season 2

Because Forsberg loves to incorporate thrifted and vintage garments in her work, costuming a violent action series such as Snabba Cash, where multiple versions of the same item are needed, posed a challenge. Instead, Forsberg had to assemble a wardrobe that had enough extra sets of garments to last through all the takes, including fighting, shooting and fake blood.

"If you have a jacket, then you need maybe eight or ten of that jacket. Snabba Cash's wardrobe was much larger than in Young Royals because we had an extra set of almost all of the garments," Forsberg explains. Luckily, a collaboration with Adidas yielded the show's wardrobe of numerous pairs of sneakers and tracksuits.

But with so many incredible costumes to choose from, is there an outfit that really stands out to Forsberg? One that she would have quite like to smuggle home and hang up in her own wardrobe? In Snabba Cash, the ensemble has got to be the red suit worn by character Leya, an aspiring tech entrepreneur: "she has this maroon Tiger of Sweden suit, a Y/Project body underneath and a Maria Nilsdotter necklace. I just love that on Evin [Ahmed]."

For Young Royals, Forsberg's answer is a no-brainer: the school uniform. "It's everything that sums up the series."