Bari Weiss is innovating entire new dimensions of failure. She's failing in ways hitherto unconceived of. A pioneer of failology. A faileontologist. Whole career is a Fail Mary. She's beyond the fail. The Daily Fail. She's on the quest for the Holy Fail. Making tomato and Fail Salad.

...and casual danger that something more familiar or first-draft scary/cool can't hope to match, because you're presenting the context. And more than anything else, it cements the immersive feeling of time and place that will allow you a LOT of historical leeway with the details.

Yes, your audience will at first glance think that these extremely period costumes are ridiculous, ESPECIALLY if its citing a historical era that has less genre presence. But it's precisely BECAUSE of the ridiculous unfamiliarity that you can assign to the costume, and the era, a degree of menace...

This not only creates wonderfully visually-iconic and memorable villains, but also makes those villains wholly entangled with the world against which the hero finds him or herself or theirselves at odds. The become a physical manifestation of everything wrong with and unfair in that society.