Living up to the looks of “Blade Runner,” Ridley Scott’s 1982 science-fiction classic, was stressful for Renée April. She began designing costumes for “Blade Runner 2049,” the sequel starring Ryan Gosling, with the bar already set pretty high, she said. Over-the-top zoot suits, slashed stockings and other fashions that mixed punk and noir had made Mr. Scott’s hyperfuturistic world unmistakable.

“You have no idea how many sketches I did of crazy stuff in the beginning,” Ms. April said by phone from her home in Montreal. But in the end, the “2049” director, Denis Villeneuve, wanted these characters brought back down to earth, three decades later.

[Movie Review: “Blade Runner 2049”]

The atmosphere of the original film, starring Harrison Ford as the troubled hunter of android replicants, was “dark, ominous, always raining, but this world is brutal,” she said. “It’s snowing, freezing, pollution everywhere. There is no fashion. We had to be humble.”

But not too humble: some flamboyant characters do make their way into the film (due Oct. 6). And Ms. April, a big fan herself, slipped in plenty of nods to the original: a transparent raincoat here, a practically nude android there. It’s still science fiction, after all.