High Potential Costume Designer Breaks Down Morgan's Season 2 Style, Including The Skirt Every Fan Wanted

There are two things that "High Potential" fans have come to expect from Morgan Gillory: she'll solve any crime thrown her way, and she'll always make a fashion statement while doing so. That first part is mostly thanks to the ABC drama's writers, but when it comes to Morgan's signature style, the credit goes to costume designer Sandra Burns.

"It shows us a little bit of the way that she thinks, the way she puts things together," Burns tells TVLine of Morgan's outrageous fashion. "She likes to take risks, and she doesn't care what other people think. She loves things that are bold and different. She's unapologetically herself, and that's how she wants to move about the world, wearing what she loves. Maybe the way she layers or combines things is a bit like the way her high potential intelligence works. She puts things together in a way that, honestly, most normal people wouldn't."

And thank goodness Morgan is anything but normal. As actress Kaitlin Olson tells TVLine, "Morgan's wardrobe is a huge part of the character, so the outfits are extremely important. Because it's so different from how I dress, the clothes really inform how I stand and move and carry myself."

The process of dressing Morgan is a collaborative one, with Olson only occasionally vetoing an outfit if she's "too uncomfortable in it for some reason." But after working with Burns for two seasons, her faith in the show's costume designer, whom she says "also happens to be a hilarious person," is practically unshakeable.

"It's not like a normal fitting where I help choose what top could go with what bottom," Olson says. "None of these things go together! And yet somehow they all do! The more patterns the better. Or six different animal prints in the same outfit. Then she looks at me and says, 'Too much?' I love her."

Below, Burns breaks down five of her favorite Season 2 looks for TVLine, including the skirt for which she received the most DMs from fans. ("Everyone wanted to know where the skirt was from," she says.) Read on, then drop a comment with your own thoughts Morgan's fashion below. What was your favorite outfit from Season 2?

Costume designer Sandra Burns' first favorite look comes from Season 2, Episode 4 ("Behind the Music"), which finds Morgan rocking a crinkly blue leather blazer, a Waylon Jennings graphic tee, a leopard skirt that was reused from Season 1, and a pair of denim boots.

"We love the idea that Morgan thrifts and holds on to these special clothes, like with the graphic tee," Burns tells TVLine. "We layered it with a business blazer, but it's bright blue and crinkly, and then we added some insane Jeffrey Campbell boots that had extra embellishments. That episode was also was about music, so it was a slight little nod with the t-shirt."

"One thing we started in Season 1 that we've carried through is that we like to layer the same pattern on itself," costume designer Sandra Burns tells TVLine. "We love to do leopard on leopard on leopard, but they're different prints, and we kind of combine them. For Morgan, we also do denim on denim. She had some denim on denim looks in Season 1, and we revisited that idea again in Season 2."

That revisited look can be found in Season 2, Episode 9 ("Grounded"), in which Morgan was forced to complete mandatory detective training as part of her punishment for skirting the rules (no pun intended).

"She has a photo-printed denim mesh shirt, then she has a lightweight denim short-sleeved jacket layered on top, and then this tennis skirt made out of denim," Burns says. "We had these insane boots that we found that were denim with the hardware of the button-up waistband of jeans. I remember putting them in Caitlin's trailer being like, 'She's either going to think these are insane or she's going to love them.' Both were true. She thought they were insane and she loved them."

The episode may have been called "NPC," but Morgan was serving main character energy (as always!) in this head-turning look from Season 2, Episode 11.

"We had this burgundy leather jacket that had this fluffy huge collar and these huge cuffs, and underneath we had a polka dot mesh shirt, which we layered with a heavy brocade skirt, then layered again with these snakeskin boots," costume designer Sandra Burns explains to TVLine. "This outfit really shows how we like to play with textures and patterns, and how they complement but also clash with each other to keep your eye moving."

"High Potential" costume designer Sandra Burns is used to getting feedback from viewers about specific looks, but she says the most DMs she's ever received was from a custom skirt Morgan wore in the season's penultimate episode.

"One of our shoppers found this really cute Marc Jacobs fabric with red and blue lips on it, and the reverse side of the fabric was the same print in the opposite colors," Burns tells TVLine. "It was really cute and fun, and we played around with different ways we could lay it out. Ultimately, we decided on doing one panel one way, then flipping it the other way for the other panel. And we put a big red zipper down the center, so it was really graphic."

"High Potential" pulled out the big guns — and the big boots — in its season finale. ("No spoilers in case anyone isn't caught up!" costume designer Sandra Burns tells TVLine.)

"At some point during the season, I had bought these hot pink snake print thigh-high boots," Burns recalls. "I didn't know where they were going, but I was like, 'These are great. They're completely insane.' Finally, there was this scene in the last episode of the season where Morgan and Wagner go to his dad's country club to confront him. We put together this outfit that had a bright neon yellow leopard print pussycat bow blouse, a heavily brocaded skirt, and thigh-high boots. It worked so well because it was a really demanding outfit, so we didn't want it to be something that was in the whole episode. It was just one really short scene, and it was perfect because she really stuck out going into this country club."