Whitney Anne Adams on costuming 'The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat'

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat, directed by Tina Mabry and based on the book by Edward Kelsey Moore, follows three best friends through decades of life's ups and downs. Filmed on location in North Carolina for Searchlight Pictures, costume designer Whitney Anne Adams had the daunting task of creating a cohesive, vintage wardrobe across many decades and many actors.  

“Between the six lead actors, they had over 70 costumes,” says Adams. “And then over 1,000 background costumes. It's just a lot of clothes,” she laughs.  

Developing cohesive costumes for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Odette and Kyanna Simone as Young Odette, Sanaa Lathan as Barbara Jean and Tati Gabrielle as Young Barbara Jean, and Uzo Aduba as Clarice and Abigail Achiri as Young Clarice was a “collaboration, with controls,” she says, and a lot of working across departments to make sure there were no unintentional clashes.  

Speaking to Screen Global Production, Adams reveals how thrift hunting in Raleigh, one-of-a-kind finds on Etsy, and purposefully crooked stitching made it all come together.

In dealing with a show that spans lots of different decades, where what is trendy or usable is not available now, how did figure out what material you could use on costumes you had to build? 

It's a lot of testing. I try to get as much vintage fabrics as possible, but we're filming on location in Wilmington, North Carolina so there's like one fabric store there that's [not a big chain] so it was a struggle. I found a lot of my vintage fabrics online. For Odette's orange dress I had, I think, seven different fabrics I bought dead stock of, because I wanted to see it in person and feel it, see how it draped. You can't get that from a picture. 

Source: Searchlight Pictures/Hulu

When Doris gives birth in the tree, I needed two of those dresses, one for her, one for her stunt double, so I couldn't go the vintage route - we had to make something. I found these two beautiful calicos that were newly made, but they felt very 40s to me and I wanted her outfit to feel 40s. Even though it takes place in 1950s, she would have had that dress for a minute. 

How do you balance what is logistically doable with what the storytelling requires? 

It's a really tightrope walk. Especially because I have so many characters, telling so many different pieces of their story. You want it to feel cohesive.  

I do a tonne of paperwork, and I do boards of every single scene, every single costume I'm thinking about putting together in each scene, and then I have an individual board for each actor of what their progression is too.  

I'm constantly referencing all the different paperwork to make sure that everything's on track, especially because I use very specific colours so you have to make sure they fit together.  

We filmed the 60s first and then the 90s, starting with the youngest. As a result, I was fitting my adult cast while we're filming the younger cast. It was crazy, having these three hour fittings, while I'm also trying to establish all these big things on set. I had to rely on my crew a lot to help me in in those moments.  

Courtesy Whitney Anne Adams

North Carolina can be really hot and muggy, so in terms of period fabrics how did you balance working with your actors to make sure they’re comfortable but that the costumes are authentic and also, protecting those vintage garments. 

You’re walking again, this tightrope of are [the actors] going to be comfortable enough but still feel like the character, especially when it comes to shoes. 

Most people these days do not fit into period shoes. I got more modern shoes that looked period because I feel like if you're wearing painful shoes, you cannot think about anything. 

The number one thing was making sure that their feet were comfortable and then we could work on everything else. In terms of maintaining the clothes, you protect things with slips and the right period undergarments. 

How different was filming on location in North Carolina compared to other shoots you’ve done? 

Totally different.  

[Before shooting] I flew to LA, New York, and Atlanta - those are where the three big rental houses that I rent from are, to get as much as I could.  

The rest of the time I was in Wilmington, so I really relied heavily on the vintage stores in town. There's a couple of amazing ones, like Jess James + Co, and it was so helpful to have them there. 

I lived in Virginia at the time, and I had to go home one weekend, and on the way back to Wilmington I stopped in Raleigh, North Carolina and shopped at all the vintage stores there. 

What was your process to create cohesion across the actors and years? 

Source: Searchlight Pictures/Hulu

Collaboration was so important for this [specifically] because you have two different actors playing the same character. I wanted to allow the adult actors to put their own mark on who the character was, but we were establishing their colour palettes and their shapes in the 60s first.  

So what I did is I pulled photos of my adult actors and figured out what colours feel like the character and also look good on them. Once I paired that down, that became the colour palette I worked with for their younger parts. Then it was, ‘which of these colours also look good on the younger cast.’  

With a dress like Odette’s orange one, made by her blind grandmother, what is the actual build process of that like for your team? 

Ideally, I would have had my tailor sew it by hand, with hand stitches. But we didn't have that kind of time, so I asked my amazing tailor Alice [Blake Powell] to sew it kind of crooked. Not perfectly. It was hard for her because she's so brilliant. 

What was the collaboration like with production design and cinematography in prep? 

The first day I got to Wilmington, I had a meeting with our director of photography, Sean [McElwee] and our production designer Kara [Lindstrom]. They were so communicative and we were always bouncing ideas off each other.  

Kara built the interior of Earls from scratch, so I needed to make sure that my costumes balanced with the blue of the of the seating area and the other colours she was working with. 

Courtesy Whitney Anne Adams

Were there ever instances when despite all the preparation, something on the day wound up totally different? 

We did a photo shoot with young Minnie, because there were photos of her all over Minnie and Earl's house. We talked about the photos being black and white, so I had gotten these showgirl pieces in a weird turquoise and weird off red. I thought ‘Oh, it'll be black and white. It's no problem.’ Well, Kara loved the colour combination so much that she made the photos colour instead. 

When I walked into location the day, I was like ‘Oh my god.’ But she thought the colour combination was perfect for the characters.  

It took me a beat to change that in my brain to it being okay, because it was too late. They had printed 20 photos, it's done! That was not what I expected, but it ended up being a great choice.