Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick on Severance (Episode 2.04: “Woe’s Hollow”)
Vitals
Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick, devoted Lumon Industries floor manager
“Dieter Eagan National Forest”, Winter 2024
Series: Severance
Episode: “Woe’s Hollow” (Episode 2.04)
Air Date: February 7, 2025
Director: Ben Stiller
Creator: Dan Erickson
Costume Designer: Sarah Edwards
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Now more than midway through its second season, Severance fans know shit’s about to get real when Milchick pulls up in a turtleneck. Whether it’s spinning defiant jazz for our first on-screen music dance experience (MDE) or asserting his power after a promotion, Milcheck’s roll-necks are his defining sartorial signature to distinguish him from the everyday short-sleeved white shirts and ties he wore in his lower supervisory position.
“I really wanted to tap into this ten-toes-down, more locked-in character, this energy that he has,” Tramell Tillman explained of his character to Killian Faith-Kelly for GQ UK ahead of the second season premiere. “His hair is more quaffed. He’s no longer in the short-sleeve shirts and the tie anymore. Now he’s wearing turtlenecks. His clothes are a bit darker. His approach is darker. I think he’s enjoying this new place of leadership that he’s in.”
One of the most chilling episodes—if you’ll forgive the pun—illustrates Milchick’s leadership style as he hosts the first-ever Outdoor Retreat and Team Building Occurence (ORTBO) for the four troublesome macrodata refiners: Mark S. (Adam Scott), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), and Irv B. (John Turturro). “This ORTBO is in response to your desire to see the outside world,” explains “Mr. Milchick from work” in a mechanical video greeting the four innies upon their awakening along the icy ridges. “With your outies’ blessings, you will spend the next two calendar days walking the meadows, thickets, brambles, and brooks that make up the Dieter Eagan National Forest.”
The innies contend with the knowledge of a heretofore unknown Eagan, the ill-fated brother of the mythic company founder Kier who ostensibly murdered Dieter in retaliation for his wanton habits of self-abuse. Dieter’s eponymous forest was portrayed on screen by Minnewaska State Park Preserve in New York’s Hudson River Valley, overlooking the Catskills. (I had the good fortune to visit this beautiful park in October 2022 when my wife and I drove through the area after our wedding.)
The refiners follow ghostlike apparitions of themselves to Woe’s Hollow, where Milchick literally greets them with open arms. Given the innies’ lack of familiarity with the world outside their severed floor, Milchick takes advantage by making outlandish claims, like that he brought them to “the tallest waterfall on the planet,” though the thirty-foot Awosting Falls—while lovely—isn’t even close to being the tallest waterfall in New York state. Milchick leads them to a campsite, resplendent with individual tents for each refiner, four-ply washroom tissue in the outhouse, and “copious luxury meats” on the grill.
The fun comes to an abrupt end when Helena punctuates Milchick’s recital of the masturbatory Dieter’s death with sardonic laughter, prompting an offended Milkshake to demand that his mysterious babyfaced assistant Miss Huang (Sarah Bock) dump their yet-untouched dessert into the fire:
Marshmallows are for team players, Dylan. They don’t just hand them out.
What’d He Wear?
Executive producer and frequent director Ben Stiller recalls on The Severance Podcast that he collaborated with costume designer Sarah Edwards to discuss how the refiners and the limited Lumon staff would be dressed for the ORTBO, following series creator Dan Erickson’s concept of “something that would feel like it was from a hundred years ago.” With that direction, Ms. Edwards crafted costumes of long coats and fur hats: black for the refiners, inverted by a more pristine white for Mr. Milchick and Miss Huang.
“They look like they’re in The Empire Strikes Back, and we look like we’re in Jeremiah Johnson,” observes Adam Scott of the black-clad refiners as opposed to Milchick and Miss Huang’s more elegant white winter gear.
The white vs. black costumes create an obvious divide, perhaps a subtle sartorial reminder to the innies that the outie staff did not have to undergo as much of a trek, thus their clothing can remain pristine and clean while the innies must wear darker clothes that better hide the dirt attained through their rugged journey—a callback to the era when white clothing indicated an elevated status as only a privileged few could afford to wear clothing that required such maintenance to keep clean. The white also camouflages Mr. Milchick and Miss Huang into the snowy forest, reinforcing to the outies that their Lumon overseers have a stronger sense of “belonging” in the outside world—while still illustrating, perhaps more to the audience than to the refiners, that they are still restrained to a degree of uniformity.
Milchick’s white costume nearly blends into the snowy forest, while the four black-clad refiners starkly stand out against their surroundings.
Milchick is bundled in white from head to toe like a corporate abominable snowman. His knee-length coat resembles classic shearling sheepskin outerwear, with a suede-like outer shell and a soft piled fleece reverse side that shows against the broad, ulster-like lapels and along the ends of each set-in sleeve.
“You have followed the path of Kier and Dieter and reached Woe’s Hollow. You stand upon sacred earth.”
The toggle-fastened, double-breasted front recalls classic duffel coats. A column of three horn toggles are positioned along a swelled seam down each side of the coat, with a braided ivory leather rope extending out from the left-side toggle to a small loop that can be fastened around the right-side toggle. The vertical swelled seam is met perpendicularly by a horizontal swelled seam that aligns with the second row of toggles. The only outer pockets on this ventless coat are set-in along each side, with a wide-welted entry that slants back from the bottom of these horizontal seams.
Milchick and his assistant Miss Huang are nearly identical in their white layers, though her coat has a full hood and pom-like baubles hanging from it, emphasizing her incongruous youth… as she has yet to eradicate childish folly from her essence.
Marshmallows are for team players… aka the Lumon staff members who are literally dressed like human marshmallows.
After debuting the first of his powerful turtlenecks for the “defiant jazz” MDE in the first season, Milchick pulls on a newly seen roll-neck for the snowy ORTBO, layered over a white long-sleeved base layer shirt.
The soft white turtleneck features a variety of different knitting patterns, including a wide-ribbed neck, cable-knit bib, and denser wave-knitted lower body arranged in columns to align with the upper cable-knit bib.
Awakened by the disturbance with Helly and Irv, Dylan and Mark did not have time to pull on their black turtlenecks over their long johns. “Everything down to the undergarments were period, were from a particular time. It felt like revenant era,” Adam Scott shared on The Severance Podcast.
Milchick’s ivory-colored trousers are made from a heavy cloth intended to withstand the cold and snow, styled with a flat-front, side pockets, and sets of two nickel buttons at the top of the waistband for his suspenders. His white suspenders (braces) have sets of two long taupe-brown leather straps, which connect to these buttons.
Though the trousers lack belt loops, Milchick still wears a belt over the top of the waistband—a fitting sartorial decision for this untrustworthy character, recalling Henry Fonda’s observation in Once Upon a Time in the West: “How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? The man can’t even trust his own pants.” Milchick’s belt is a wide strip of stone-colored rawhide, fastened through an ornate blued copper-noted buckle with a decorative etching which appears to depict two bulls charging at each other. This illustration must be of some significance to Lumon, as the refiners appear to be wearing identical belt buckles.
Milchick tucks his trouser bottoms into his fur-trimmed, calf-high white snow boots. Of their footwear, Adam Scott recalls in The Severance Podcast that “we had these boots that also had crampons attached to them that were made for walking on slippery ice… like straight claws that lift you an extra five inches off the ground. But walking through deep snow and/or blueberry bushes made lifting our feet up and down exhausting, and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we made it across those fields.”
Everyone wears the same type of round fur hats with wide cuffs, similar to the pie-shaped Cossack hats known in Russian as Шапка Пирожок or “shapka pirozhok”. (Note that this differs from the ear-flapped ushanka hat.) Naturally, Milchick wears a white hat as opposed to the refiners’ black hats. Following the rest of what he wears, the hats may also be sheepskin like these “snowball hats” by Cloud Nine Sheepskin.
Milchick also wears three-point sheepskin gloves, lined in the fluffy white fur and presenting a neutral cream-colored suede-like outer fabric with top-stitched seams exposed along the edges.
How to Get the Look
Tramell Tillman as Seth Milchick on Severance (Episode 2.04: “Woe’s Hollow”)
Please enjoy each part of Mr. Milchick’s costume equally.
- White sheepskin knee-length coat with fur lapels, double-breasted 6×3 toggle-fastened front, slanted wide-welted hand pockets, set-in sleeves with fur-trimmed ends, and ventless back
- White turtleneck with wide-ribbed roll-neck, cable-knit chest bib, and wave-knitted lower body
- Ivory flat-front snow pants with suspender buttons and side pockets
- White suspenders with taupe-brown leather double-hooks
- Stone-colored rawhide belt with blued copper ornate double-bull buckle
- White sheepskin fur snow boots
- White sheepskin fur Cossack hat
- Cream-colored sheepskin three-point gloves
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the series on Apple TV+, and praise Kier!
The Quote
You know we often laugh at what we don’t understand.
The post Severance: Milchick’s White Winter Gear at Woe’s Hollow appeared first on BAMF Style.