🎧 Capote to Cocaine: TV's Top Costume Designers Tell All
Emmy nominees Lou Eyrich ('Feud: Capote vs. the Swans') and Safowa Bright Bitzelberger ('Griselda: Paradise Lost') talk with Mona May
Welcome to the latest episode of Art & Crafts, The Ankler’s podcast series dedicated to bringing audiences behind the scenes to examine the careers and contributions of the talented artisans who create and craft the movies and TV series that we love. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
While she was curating and designing the looks for FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, costume designer Lou Eyrich frequently found herself reaching out to the same vendors as Safowa Bright Bitzelberger, the costume designer behind Netflix’s Griselda.
Both limited series feature looks from the 1970s and early ’80s (Capote’s action begins even earlier, in the ’50s), and both are centered on real-life figures — but from two very different milieus: Eyrich’s remit was to capture the elegant style of New York’s social and media elite, while Bitzelberger was conjuring the glitzy and gritty Miami drug underworld.
“We did cross over in our decades and our years, but we were pulling completely different things because [Safowa] was pulling the prints and the color, and we were pulling the subdued pinks and blushes and high society,” says Eyrich. “So it was fun to walk in and go, ‘I know whose rack that is.’”
She and Bitzelberger once again find themselves working the same rooms this Emmys season, as both are nominated for outstanding period costume design for a limited or anthology series or movie. In the third of four special podcasts The Ankler recorded August 1 during our Emmy nominees event at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse, the pair sat down with Mona May, the costume designer behind such iconic films as Clueless, Enchanted and The Wedding Singer. (Previous episodes explored cinematography and production design.)
Eyrich and Bitzelberger share the treasure hunts and roadblocks along the way to outfitting their shows’ iconic stars. Capote features Tom Hollander in the title role, with Diane Lane and Naomi Watts as two of the Swans, and in Griselda, Sofia Vergara plays a ruthless godmother of the 1980s cocaine trade. “I had rack upon rack upon rack of these amazing, beautiful, pristine designer pieces from that era, edgy and embellished — and what we really ended up leaning into were the simpler, more streamlined pieces,” Bitzelberger says of Vergara’s costumes. “Although Griselda was shifting into this position of power with so much money, it wasn’t about fashion for her. It is about female empowerment, even though it’s within this alternative universe.”
Transcript here.
