MORAGA — An image is price a thousand words, so costume designer Whitney Anne Adams works fastidiously to make sure that every small detail of the actors' clothing on screen gives the audience a visible representation of their characters – beyond what dialogue alone can express.
That's why Adams, who grew up in Moraga, said she worked on different color palettes, vintage fabric styles and other elements of every costume featured in “The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat,” the $23 million drama that Disney-owned Searchlight Pictures released in theaters and on Hulu last month.
The film, directed by Tina Mabry, is about three best friends living in Indiana – Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean, known as “The Supremes”. Based on the New York Times bestselling novel from 2013 The story of the same name tells how each of the three young black women learns, struggles and grows from teenagers in the 1960s to adults in the 1990s. They are played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Uzo Aduba and Sanaa Lathanrespectively.
Adams pointed to an asymmetrical, orange fall dress from the '70s that Odette wore in one of the film's first scenes. It was, she said, intentionally designed to look “extremely ugly” and to serve “as a guarantee of virginity.” Later, the audience learns that Odette's blind grandmother sewed the old-fashioned outfit.
Adams said she sourced vintage fabrics in earth tones from Etsy and eBay that helped define Odette's character as the down-to-earth member of the trio, while also highlighting her fiery spirit and unconditional loyalty to family and friends.
Adams said people can recognize, even subconsciously, how bright, cheerful colors can visually illustrate moments of youthful happiness, while softer, cooler color palettes are used to illustrate the worries and troubles of the characters.
“Even though the audience doesn't see a whole lot of that thought, they’ll sense if it's the appropriate character selection, even in the event that they can't say exactly why,” Adams said in an interview. “It was all these little details that went into the design that made it feel like a fancy dress that was really a centerpiece of the (plot) within the book.”
After the studio hired Adams as costume designer for the film – her first major historical drama – in August 2022, the 38-year-old had just two months to complete costume designs for the film, which was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina.
First, Adams said, she read the script to understand the world the film was trying to create, then revisited the novel, charting numerous visual references from the source texts, old yearbooks, magazines, books and films, and later reducing these into “research charts” that would help inform how “The Supremes” should look on screen.
By combining all of these stylistic elements and historical sources of inspiration, Adams says she tailors each costume to be unique for each actor, character, setting and plot point.
“On paper, it's just words, and after I bring the visual element to those words, I can shine and tell my a part of the story,” Adams said. “I need to be scared, I need to be challenged. I like all this work because while you finally explain it, it in some way clicks.”
Adams repeated this process over and over again – creating a total of 162 main costumes and around 1,000 supporting outfits, including 67 costumes for the six main actors who played the Supremes at various stages of their lives.
The costume designer cites her childhood in Moraga as a source of practical creativity.
She has fond memories of taking sewing classes in second grade at Hacienda de las Flores Community Center, sewing small quilt squares in fourth grade at Donald L. Rheem Elementary School, her time at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School studying drama, and the love of theater offered at Campolindo High School.
“All of those things together helped construct a foundation, and my parents were supportive, too,” she said, explaining how her mother made sure Adams and her twin brother were involved and learning, both in sports and the arts. “Three weeks later, after I showed them a PowerPoint presentation about how I had modified my major in college from medicine to theater, they didn't even bat an eyelid.”
But Adams said her creative childhood in the Contra Costa County town of just 17,000 people didn't prepare her for the amount of brainstorming and retooling that would be required on a daily basis in the costume design industry. She estimates that design accounts for 15 percent of her work on any project, between juggling actor rehearsals, directing decisions, establishing costume continuity in each new scene and sorting out various logistical issues – all while easily walking 24,000 steps on a shoot day.
“Every single day is a mini premiere, similar to within the theater,” said Adams, explaining the exhausting stress of night shoots, 4 a.m. wake-up calls and 20-hour work days. “As artists, we're all the time attempting to do one of the best we will, but in some unspecified time in the future you simply need to stop. It's never going to be precisely the image I even have in my head, but you will have to create that premiere.”
Adams, who currently lives in Richmond, Virginia, but plans to move to Los Angeles in February to be closer to her immediate family, who still live in Moraga and Oakland, has worked to keep the film's work environments rewarding and healthy, even off the sets.
As one of the co-chairs of the Costume Designers Guild Pay Equity Steering CommitteeAdams has fought for wage equity, respect and understanding for the craft. As she puts it, “Without us, everyone seems to be naked.”
“The thing about working on film is that you simply're working with other people and creating something together – that's once we do our greatest work,” said Adams, thanking her colleagues in the creative department and about 200 other crew members who worked to make “The Supremes” a reality. “This film was made with a whole lot of love and heart. The audience can see how well we communicated with one another since it just seems like a good looking picture in every scene.”
Originally published:
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