How do you set about outfitting a crazy and existential journey into the multiverse, without having the innumerable costume changes feel like a case of quantity over quality?
How do you create an aesthetic that is steeped with detail and visual Easter eggs, without distracting from a cast of Hollywood heavyweights delivering performances that show totally unseen sides of their talent?
How do you delight in the absurd, without dulling the impact of genuinely touching human moments?
For the team behind the buzzworthy film Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, the answer was relatively simple. You hire Shirley Kurata.
The Los Angeles-based costume designer and wardrobe stylist is known for working with a host of visually vivid brands and artists - think Billie Eilish, Shirley Manson and Rodarte - and most recently, styled everyone's favourite grrrl band The Linda Lindas.
"We knew we needed someone incredible to do the costumes and we met Shirley Kurata and we found the perfect collaborator," explains co-director Daniel Scheinert, half of the directing and writing collaboration The Daniels. "She worked her butt off with her team and made the characters look iconic."
Stephanie Hsu, who plays frustrated millennial Joy (and also the villain Jobu), says Kurata was the only person for the job.
"Shirley is absolutely brilliant. The Daniels have such a knack for bringing forth artists to the collaborative process that are as wild and fearless as they are."
The characters Kurata was bringing to life too, are fearless. Scheinert's co-director Daniel Kwan describes Joy's alternate character Jobu as "a representation of a generation who've grown up on the internet and seen too much and are a little too aware and a little too bored, so they're trying to have fun with the way they dress".
How did the creative team manifest that restlessness into Jobu's costumes? "Incredible, strange, bizarre, elevated looks,” says Kwan.
It's true that Hsu gets to wear some of the film's more theatrical pieces, but she says that meant she had to exercise restraint in her performance in order to let the bold clothes speak and not have the costumes instead wear her.
"A really powerful person doesn't ever have to raise their voice," explains Hsu. "The key with Jobu was, as crazy as the costumes were, to never play into that. I had to do a push and pull dance with the wardrobe."
Such a high octane multidisciplinary plot necessitated an equally multilayered approach to sourcing pieces. For super authentic items to dress the harried Evelyn, played by Michelle Yeoh, Kurata took wardrobe cues from her own mother’s wardrobe.
She found homely items, like a floral print button-up and utilitarian vest, in the very place the character likely would shop - Los Angeles' Chinatown. An unassuming looking bum bag that takes on a life of its own got sourced, in bulk, from an equally unassuming place: Amazon.
While everyone from the production rightly waxes lyrical about Kurata's costuming nous, the Angeleno didn't come into the project with a single vision regarding the costuming.
Some costumes, such as Jobu's Elvis look, were written into the script by the Daniels. Other looks incorporated influence from pieces that inspired the actors when bringing their characters to life.
Jamie Lee Curtis, particularly, had a very clear vision of what her IRS inspector character Deidre should look like.
Scheinert says amongst a bevy of reference photos that Jamie brought in was an archive picture of a bureaucrat that she just fell in love with. “She would send us text messages that said ‘please Daniels, please, please, I want to be her,’” Scheinert says.
"Really this movie was an opportunity for everyone to show a different side to themselves and Jamie really took that assignment and really went all out on it," adds Kwan.
“She brought a little bag of props from her house and before we started shooting, she would bring them out and start populating her desk with them. She even went as far as to go to a department store and buy a very potent perfume to wear because she said 'this is what Deirdre would smell like’.”
Kurata seems to have delighted in bringing Curtis' vision to life, with Deidre's costuming a symphony of ochre, punctuated by a carpel tunnel wristband and sensible wristwatch. She simultaneously stands out from and blends into the nondescript tax office that she inhabits.
For the film's more meta scenes, Kurata collaborated with established fashion designers to outfit Yeoh and Hsu.
Two of Jobu Tupaki's fantastical outfits - the ominous tartan reveal cape replete with matching tartan visor, and the cult influenced all white ensemble from the bagel universe - were custom-made by New Zealand Chinese designer Claudia Li.
For the Wong Kar-wai-esque universe in which Evelyn's life parallels that of Yeoh's, Kurata called on Elie Saab, who regularly outfits the movie star for the red carpet, to provide a gown that could have been plucked straight from Yeoh's archive.
It's a clever tactic to deploy within a story line that interweaves real red carpet footage of Yeoh from the Crazy Rich Asians press tour.
At times Everything Everywhere All At Once feels like an assault on the senses, but the clever outfits sing through. The performances, particularly Yeoh's, will sit with you for a while. Kwan is hoping the outfits do too.
“I'm hoping there are some Halloween costumes this year!”
