Think <i> Big!</i>

The Series: “Women of the House.”

The Setup: Suzanne Sugarbaker (Delta Burke, pictured), late of “Designing Women,” resurfaces in Washington to take over her late husband’s congressional seat.

The Costume Designer: Clifford Chally, designer for “Designing Women” and “Hearts Afire.”

The Look: Suzanne, who sounds like no one in Washington, resembles no one you have known and loved in the nation’s capital either. The ex-beauty queen, flaunting a Rubenesque shape, enormous breasts--the subject of gags--and even bigger hair, would send Giorgio Armani into intensive care. Chally has succeeded in giving Suzanne a talent for wearing the brightest, drapiest ensemble in a room, and that’s on a workday. Scene after scene, her uniform is a silk dress that is really a lapel-less jacket (with some form of drape instead) and matching skirt. One royal blue dress/suit appeared to have an attached scarf trailing behind, a style unlikely to be favored by, say, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. If her wardrobe tends to look like holdovers from an earlier life of ladies lunches at the country club, that’s obviously the point, but it would be nice if Suzanne were more in touch with contemporary fashion. Even her hemlines are a stodgy inch below the knee.

Playing for Laughs: Not surprisingly, Suzanne’s clothes are also the catalyst for jokes. “You wear that, and Sally Quinn is going to have a field day,” someone on her staff warns her about a flashy purple-blue big-print number. (She wears it anyway, but the staff member had the right idea.) But Suzanne looks loud even when she’s not trying, partly because the super-bright colors she favors make the actress look larger than she intends. (In December, Burke reported that she had dropped 35 pounds from her high of 215--her emotional nadir--and hopes to lose 30 more.) She looked quite stunning and slim, however, in a black suit with a beautiful white lace blouse peeking out.

Trivia: No, you’re not seeing things. Suzanne wears a lot of bright blue. So much so that around the wardrobe department, they call it a “Delta blue.” “Her skin is porcelain color that looks best in very strong colors. Delta blue is like a royal but it’s deeper and not as bright. It looks better on her than anything else, and it does happen to be her favorite color. She’s radiant in it,” Chally says.

Quoted: “Delta has a very period figure. She has a ‘90s figure, but it’s 1890s--she’d be the first to tell you that. She loves period costumes and being laced up in corsets. One of her prettiest features is her waist and you’ll rarely see her not accentuating it,” Chally says.

You Should Know: Suzanne’s press secretary and former Washington Post style reporter Sissy Emerson (Teri Garr) is the chicest of the bunch in her taupe pantsuits and Chanel backpack. Chally says Sissy’s “very close to creator/executive producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason’s taste. She does dress in a similar way sometimes,” he says.

Sources: About one-third of Suzanne’s clothes are custom-made; the rest include the Nolan Miller, Liz Claiborne, Scaasi, Dana Buchman, Daymor and Christian Dior labels. Sissy’s labels include Armani and Calvin Klein.