Perhaps more than any year in the last 40, 1981 was the nadir of American style. The ’70s of breezy feathered hair and brazen disco sexuality were over, but the adrenalized’80s look, marked by angular haircuts and eye-popping MTV colors, had not quite begun.

In short, it was a bridge year, poised uncomfortably between two over-the-top decades. It had all the sartorial bad taste of both but the exuberance of neither.

From a style point of view, then, 1981 is the perfect setting for “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp,” the new Netflix series adapted from David Wain’s love-it-or-hate-it 2001 cult comedy film.

“It was an awkward time, for men especially,” said Leslie Schilling, the show’s costume designer, who was tasked with recreating various looks of that forgettable year to comic effect. “Everyone already feels awkward in their short shorts. It’s even more awkward when you have people in their 40s playing 16-year-olds.”

Indeed, the reunion of most of the original cast makes for a built-in joke; it’s a prequel series, set eight weeks before the original movie’s action, but Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks and others are back, playing the same characters in the same terrible clothes they wore a decade and a half earlier.

To recapture the era, Ms. Schilling relied on modern-day retailers that traffic in retro chic, like American Apparel and Dittos jeans, which started in the ’70s as a division of Jordache Enterprises and was reintroduced in 2012.

“American Apparel still sells dolphin shorts with colored piping, they have tube socks in any color you want, basic tees and baseball tees,” Ms. Schilling said. “Because we needed a lot of multiples for stunts, and characters had to wear them for 30 days in a row, we couldn’t rely on vintage.”

Ms. Schilling discussed some of the more memorable looks from the show. (Her comments have been edited and condensed.)