Belly's Custom Prom Dress in 'The Summer I Turned Pretty' Season 2 Is 'a Callback to the Book' (Exclusive)

Costume designer Jessica Flaherty tells PEOPLE how she and Jenny Han landed on the beautiful lilac prom dress Belly wears in season 2

Belly gets her princess moment in The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2.

Adapted from Jenny Han's bestselling trilogy of the same name, the second season picks up almost a year after the season 1 finale, when Belly (Lola Tung) found herself in a complicated love triangle between brothers Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney).

Much like Han 2010's novel, It's Not Summer Without You, the second season jumps back and forth in time, filling viewers in on the gaps with various flashbacks.

In one of those flashbacks, a pivotal moment from the book comes to life as Belly goes to her high school prom with her longtime crush Conrad. To ensure that the scene stayed true to the novel, costume designer Jessica Flaherty tells PEOPLE she worked extensively with Han to find the perfect dress.

While Han immediately set her sights on a beautiful Teuta Matoshi gown for Belly, they quickly hit a snag as the dress only came in yellow.

“Jenny saw a dress that she liked and it was really beautiful but it wasn't in the color that we needed,” Flaherty says, noting Han really wanted a purple dress as “a callback to the book.”

Though Flaherty says they tried to “play around with finding other things” for Belly’s prom look, they just kept coming back to the Teuta Matoshi gown. So, they reached out to the company to see if they could work some magic.

“We shoot in Wilmington, which is so beautiful and prolific for locations, but less so for shopping. Being in a not-as-metropolitan place, shipping and things like that can sometimes be challenging,” Flaherty prefaces.

“Basically, my incredible team had to outsource and reach out to this company and see if they could make the dress not only one, but two and ship it from Europe, and have it arrive to us in time for shooting.”

Thankfully, the brand agreed and the result was a beautiful custom gown for Belly that also paid tribute to the book.

“Those are the things that make it challenging and exciting to kind of bring Jenny's vision to life where it's like, this exists in yellow, but we want it in lilac. We did it, and it was great, and it was a spectacular dress.”

Flaherty adds that the gown just felt like the perfect princess moment for Belly. “Prom is kind of your last princess moment before you go and get married and have your next, if you decide to do so, princess moment,” she says.

“And again, these are all these flashback sequences. So I love we have this beautiful, dreamy, timeless look for her when we go back to that. Because to me it feels like you can replace your own memory, whether you're that age or not, in these timeframes.”

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