By Carol Badaracco Padgett
When the art of costume design hit Atlanta over the weekend, even the weather turned cooler. Georgia Entertainment attended SCAD TVfest: Costume Design on the university’s Midtown campus on Friday, Oct. 11, and sat down with Stephani Lewis, costume designer on a famed hit series shot right down the road on lakes Lanier and Allatoona – “Ozark.”
When Georgia Entertainment asked Lewis about creating the costume aesthetic for “Ozark” — and keeping true to the evolution of the series’ characters (actress Julia Garner’s Ruth, for instance) – she described the challenge and the fun of her work. “It’s tricky with episodics because you don’t [often]have a beginning, middle, and end when you start the project … sometimes you don’t even know what’s happening in the next episode, much less the end of the show.”
Lewis continued, “To be flexible and create these kinds of character arcs, you really have to pay attention and you really have to be intentional. So in ‘Ozark’ I couldn’t take big swings too early to develop these characters or make big changes. They slowly had to happen over the season and progress as the characters progressed. But being able to have such wonderful scripts helped. [Because] we had such a good showrunner and such a wonderful writing team to give each character their journey that was obvious on the scripts, [and that gave me]great direction.”
Costume design for feature film was on full display leading into the weekend, as well — at a reception honoring 3x Academy Award-winning costume designer Sandy Powell. The reception was held at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film on the Midtown campus, and it included an exhibition called “Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film,” showcasing Powell’s iconic costumes for films like “Shakespeare in Love,” “The Other Boleyn Girl,” “The Aviator,” “Velvet Goldmine,” “Young Victoria,” “The Departed,” and scores more.
Some of Powell’s most intriguing and inspiring words about her personal journey through the art of fashion design are as follows …
About her first film: “I didn’t really know what I was doing and we muddled through.”
On being a storyteller through dress: “I try to get inside the director’s head when designing costumes for a film.”
When designing for an actual person, like Howard Hughes in “Aviator”: “You just do a representation [of that period]. It’s storytelling. Not a documentary.”
On keeping the audience focused on the story, and not the clothes: “If you’re too busy looking at a costume, it’s distracting. It’s almost better if you don’t notice them.”
About her approach to working with limited resources on certain projects: “If there’s not the budget for richness, I strip back to basics and monochromatics.”
On her method for making costumes appear authentic and lived in: “I use paint on costumes to give depth and make them appear worn.”
And on what it sometimes takes to create costumes for a feature film project: “I like to construct costumes on set if I’m feeling kind of stuck.”
“Dressing the Part: Costume Design for Film” will remain on exhibit at SCAD FASH through March 16, 2025.
