Pretty Much Pop #38: Costuming w/ Whitney Anne Adams

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How does clothing mesh with set design, cinematography, sound design, etc. to create the mood in a film? Whitney designed for and dressed leads and crowds on The Great Gatsby, the Happy Death Day films and several indie flicks. She joins Erica, Mark and Brian to discuss how clothes on screen relate to clothes in life, designing vs. curating, historic vs. modern vs. genre, when costumes get distracting, her current TV and film picks for notable costuming, and how an interest in (or total obliviousness to) clothes affects the watching experience.

Read a few interviews with Whitney about her process:

• “Happy Death Day 2U Costume Designer Whitney Anne Adams Enters Time Loop” by Ruben Diaz
• “How the Costumes Stay Fresh in the Time Loop Horror Sequel Happy Death Day 2U” by Emma Fraser
• “Costumes Tell Stories: Happy Death Day 2U’s Whitney Anne Adams” by Luke Lucas

More articles to make you think about costumes:

• “The 15 Most Fashionable Films of the Decade” by Lindsay Weinberg
• “The 20 Best TV and Film Genre Costume Moments of the Decade” by Emma Fraser
• “The 10 Best-Dressed Film and TV Genre Characters of 2019” by Emma Fraser
• “What This Year’s Costume Design Nods Say About the Oscars in 2020” by Liam Hess
• “Top 50 Movies with Ingenious Costume Design” by Rebecca Clough
• Articles about costuming in Little Women, The Irishman, The Rise of Skywalker

Follow Whitney on Instagram @waacostumedesign. She’s also the stylist for Brian Tyree Henry (i.e. Paper Boi on Atlanta). Some of the indie films she’s worked on that we bring up include Piercing, The Eyes of My Mother, and Irreplaceable You.

This episode includes bonus discussion that you can hear now by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network and is curated by openculture.com.