The Power of Costuming in Film: Pretty Much Pop #38 with Whitney Anne Adams (Happy Death Day, Great Gatsby)

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.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.