The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat: A Journey Through Decades of Friendship and Fashion

Published on in Exclusive Interviews

Now streaming on Hulu, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat brings Edward Kelsey Moore’s best-selling novel to life with a rich narrative spanning four decades of friendship, love, and resilience. The film’s costume designer, Whitney Anne Adams, masterfully transports viewers from the 1950s to the 90s, outfitting characters like Odette (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), Barbara Jean (Sanaa Lathan), and Clarice (Uzo Aduba) in era-specific wardrobes that reflect the novel’s vibrant textures. In this exclusive interview, Adams dives into her creative process and the collaboration that made the film’s nostalgic fashion so powerful. 

PH: The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat spans four decades, each with its own distinct fashion trends. How did you approach the research for creating historically accurate costumes for the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s, and what were some of the key fashion elements you focused on for each era?

Whitney Anne Adams: The research that goes into every film that I do is one of my favorite steps in the process, because I truly try to get information and images from everywhere I can to build a solid foundation of historical knowledge to use when forming these characters. The story takes place in the town of Plainview, Indiana in four specific years: 1950, 1968, 1977 and 1999. Since we are in a smaller town in middle America, before the advent of the internet and social media, fashion trends in this town are going to lag a few years behind major cities on the coasts and fashion trends of each year. So, I tried to keep that in mind when looking for references for each time period. Inspiration and references came from all over: family photos, yearbooks, clothing catalogs, magazines, books and libraries, photography, films and tv shows, even sewing patterns! I especially love going down the rabbit hole on Flickr and Reddit where many people post their personal family photos — it’s one of the best forms of research because they are real people living their lives in these places and years. Another one of my favorite resources is yearbooks, as it also shows real people of the time and place. And you never know what juicy personal drama is going to be written on the inside covers! 

PH: The characters of Odette, Barbara Jean, and Clarice are central to the story, each with unique personalities and backgrounds. How did the novel influence your choices in textures, patterns, and colors for their wardrobes, and how did you use costume design to reflect their individual journeys throughout the decades?

Whitney Anne Adams: My first step was to re-read the script and then the original novel. As I read, I filled out a spreadsheet pulling the text of every visual character detail mentioned in both the script and the novel so I could start with a solid foundation from as a jumping-off point. I was the Costume Design Assistant to Catherine Martin on The Great Gatsby [Baz Luhrmann, 2013] and I did the same thing when we were beginning that prep process — I must have read the novel countless times! So, I used the same exact spreadsheet format I had made for Gatsby to organize every description and detail. Even if I wasn’t going to use all the references from the novel in the film, I wanted to get the sense of the characters that Edward Kelsey Moore first created. So many things evolve and shift during the adaptation process, and then again throughout production when the actors arrive with their process and point-of-view and physical bodies, but I wanted to make sure the characters felt true to their origins in the novel. 

One of my favorite character details in the book as well as the script that I used was about Odette. The biggest touchstone for her costume development came from a pair of passages — one from the script and one from the book:

Script, Page 6: “CLARICE: Doesn’t matter how many different ways you look at it, it’s still the ugliest dress in the world. I swear your clothes are like virginity insurance” 

Novel, Chapter 10: “Clarice rummaged through her best friend’s chest of drawers searching for something to liven up, or cover up, those dreadful dresses Odette always wore. The blind grandmother who had made her clothes back when she was a little girl was dead, but her grandma’s style and taste lived on in Odette’s sorry closet.”

One of my favorite things about Odette is that she is unapologetically herself, no matter what. She likes what she likes, and she cares about family and friends over everything else. I honed in on the idea that she loves bright patterns and colors that don’t necessarily go together and this was born out of her wearing all the clothes her blind grandmother made for her. Her style was born from love of family and respect for her grandmother. Is it fashionable? To her it doesn’t really matter if it is or isn’t. Her clothes make her happy and there’s no other factors that come into play besides that. 

In terms of color palette, young Odette starts off with mainly earth tone and natural colors to reflect her status as the grounded, foundation friend of the trio. She has deep roots, and puts family and friends first. She wears her blind grandmother’s creations without hesitation no matter what they look like. This influences how she picks her future outfits as she gets used to wearing things that are not part of fashion trends.  I spent a long time searching for the right vintage fabric that would fit the bill and this orange one popped up on Etsy. It’s a 1960s polyester crepe, which is great that it wasn’t an expensive fabric in the 1960s and matches what Odette and her family could afford. Polyester fabric became popular for clothing beginning in the 1950s and 1960s as it was inexpensive and didn’t have to be ironed or cared for to still look fresh and presentable. The so-called “miracle fabric” felt perfect to bring this dress to life. Our in-house tailor, Alice Blake Powell, made the dress for Kyanna out of this vintage fabric that came from Texas via the Etsy Shop Retro Style Mercantile. The style and shape of the dress had to feel a bit old fashioned and a little too matronly for Odette, and therefore, off-trend as it was made by her seemingly elderly blind grandmother. It also had to have a zipper in back so she could step out of it to threaten to fight Curtis. The dress style ended up being a combination of details of several real-life vintage dresses. 

As Odette gets older, her colors and patterns get brighter and more off the wall. She also dresses for practicality and comfort – she mostly only wears one pair of clogs the entire film as an adult besides Lester’s funeral. She also wears a few accessories that her younger 1968 self did – the green neck scarf and the red dot earrings being two of the main pieces. As the story unfolds in 1999 and she begins getting sick, her colors lose their brilliance and become more muted and sickly until she reaches her lowest point in the hospital. Fortunately, she recovers and at the end of the film she’s rocking her Happy Millennium sweater and novelty “2000” themed brooch. She’s still her same self, but healthier and stronger than ever. 

One of my favorite descriptions of Barbara Jean comes from the book, Chapter 5: “Truth was, Barbara Jean looked lovely in whatever she wore. She’d been the prettiest girl in our high school and she became the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. In middle age, it’s still difficult to look away from her. Every single feature of her face is striking and exotic.” – that was my foundation for her looks. 

Barbara Jean has many specific clothing pieces and outfits mentioned in the book and the screenplay, and while we kept the vibe of those outfits similar to their text descriptions, we changed the specifics. For example, when we first meet Barbara Jean, she is dressed for her mother’s funeral in her mother’s cheap clothes. In the book they were described as “sexy…too-tight black skirt and a clinging, shiny black blouse” which wasn’t quite what we were going for in our film. I took the idea and evolved the outfit to one that still belonged to her mother, but was more old fashioned than shiny and cheap. Here is where the nuance of book descriptions does not translate to the screen. If we would have met young Barbara Jean in a sexy too-tight skirt without the text description that it was her mother’s and she couldn’t afford a new outfit for her funeral, all the audience would see is a trashy outfit without the backstory. It’s important to know when to change things from the novel to suit the film medium.  

Sometimes we had to change things from the book description because it didn’t suit the actor’s portrayal. One of BJ’s signature clothing items in the novel were “white go-go boots that had three-inch heels.” I rented and purchased multiple options to try on Tati and none of them really worked with the direction we were headed with her dresses and other ensembles. We both agreed the boots would have overtaken the outfits and been too much on screen! And because Young Barabara Jean never wore them in our film version, I didn’t feel the need to try any with Sanaa. 

So much of what Clarice wears is due to a strong and lasting influence from her mother Beatrice: classic, straight lines with every accessory, piece of jewelry and button perfectly in place. I especially focused on two passages from the novel:

Novel, Chapter 3: “​​She was hidden, neck to kneecaps, beneath a modest, well-tailored beige linen dress.”

Novel, Chapter 18: “Beatrice wore dark red lipstick that left a vivid imprint on the white mug from which she sipped Earl Grey tea. She always came to breakfast in full makeup. Because it involved a rare excursion into the use of coarse language, Clarice never forgot her mother’s opinion about being seen, even in your own home, without your face done. “Honey, it’s the equivalent of dropping your pants and taking a dump in the fountain outside of Town Hall.” As a goodwill gesture toward her mother and to avoid aggravation, Clarice had been sure to apply lipstick herself that morning.”

She dresses more modestly than her fellow friends. Her patterns are stripes and geometrics with straight lines: prim and proper, organized, and in line. This reflects her personality and work ethic: she’s the best pianist at the recital, she’s dating the football star. She’s a planner and that’s reflected in her clothing choices. 

PH: What were some of the most challenging aspects of recreating the fashion of each era, particularly in ensuring that the costumes were not only period-accurate but also resonated with contemporary audiences?

Whitney Anne Adams: As time moves on and we get further and further away from these time periods, most clothing begins to become quite fragile and tends to fall apart and rip more easily, so we are able to use less and less real clothing from the period every year. Much of clothing from these areas are 100% natural fibers, like cotton and linen, and those break down much more quickly than many synthetic fibers.

Another challenge that also gets exponentially more difficult as time passes is the size of these vintage clothing pieces. As a species, we humans have generally gotten taller and therefore bigger over the decades mostly due to having better and more widely available food and nutrition. Which is a good thing! We now have bigger busts, bigger waists, bigger feet -- bigger everything. The average size of a person in 1950 and 1968 is very different from what the average size of a 2024 person is. Or in my case, a 2022 person, since that’s where we made this film. I snagged all the larger sizes I could in every costume rental house in Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta, but a few other productions sharing my same eras beat me to the rental houses first, so I still didn’t have nearly enough clothes to fit the hundreds of background actors and principals that I had. We had 162 principal costume changes and over 1,000 background changes, so we need a ton of clothing! In addition to those rental houses, it took a lot of sourcing locally in Wilmington and nearby Raleigh, as well as online vintage stores, Etsy and Ebay, among others, to fill our racks. I had a slightly easier time with clothing for the 1999 section, but we could still see the difference over the past twenty years: none of the sizes on the clothing labels remotely matched what numerical sizes are these days! That’s why knowing my actors actual measurements is so important. 

The one thing I had to do almost entirely modern was the shoes: almost no one fits into those tiny narrow shoes anymore! And even if they did, the leather tends to be very stiff and painful and not a comfortable thing to wear over 12+ hour filming days, even if you do what you can to bring the leather back to life. And since we didn’t have the budget for custom shoes, we purchased new things. Thank goodness for the variety of shoe designs available out there! I was able to come close with almost everything. Especially grateful for the classic Converse and Keds that have been in style for decades! 

I often strive to do whatever I can to make a period piece feel historically accurate, especially with all the research I gather, but at the end of the day we are telling a story to a modern audience and we want them to come on the journey with us. We have to take certain liberties for a variety of logistics: timeline, costume sourcing, shipping issues, actor needs, safety needs, location problems and so much more. Storytelling and execution of that storytelling is our main objective. Perhaps some of my colors and patterns aren’t perfectly accurate in say my 1977 segment – but that’s because I needed multiples of everything since our three ladies end up in the dirt in a dusty field. We didn’t have the budget to make them, so I had to purchase modern pieces and tailor them to get them as close to accurate as possible within our means. I also felt confident to manipulate the color palette for each character to help tie those throughlines together even if it wasn’t exactly accurate – it might feel more cinematic to a modern audience than perfectly historically authentic, but that was the point: to let the audience focus on the story and the character above anything else. 

PH: How did you collaborate with the director and cast to ensure that the costumes not only reflected the time periods but also helped bring out the nuances of each character's personality and development?

Whitney Anne Adams: Tina and I were in constant communication throughout the entire process – I rely on my extensive visual paperwork to download my brain to both Tina and my fellow collaborators and team so they know what I’m doing and where I’m headed and what’s coming. My weekly emails allowed conversations of possible conflicts to arise, so we could sort them out before the filming day arrived. I sometimes feel like one of the eyes of a storm in the hurricane of a production. I’m working closely with the actors, collaborating with the rest of the crew and my team to make sure we all cross the finish line together. 

PH: Given your previous work on films like We Have a Ghost and FREAKY, how did working on a period piece like The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat differ from your experience on more contemporary or genre-specific projects?

Whitney Anne Adams: What I love about being a costume designer is that every project I do can be so different from the one that came before.  There are unlimited possibilities. But the really neat thing is that my process begins the exact same way each time. Read the script, write down the character descriptions, and start the research. Now, the type of research varies widely depending on the time period and genre, but the process is the same. For Freaky and We Have a Ghost, those were both contemporary set films with fantastical elements: a body swap and a ghost. In order for you to go on that journey, you need those characters to feel whole and real. So, I dig into each character: where did they get each clothing piece? Do they love and respect their clothes? Do they think about what their personal style is? Do they have a favorite color…the list of questions is endless. And I do that for each and every character. Even if you only answer a handful of those questions, it sets you down the right design path. I gather images and references that help answer those questions.  

I am aided by the fact that I am a lover of cinema. I have been in awe of film since I was two years old when I was learning to talk from watching 1964’s Mary Poppins on repeat. I love all genres – I hope I eventually get to design a film from every genre that exists. I do try to watch a film a day when I am between jobs. The more I watch, the more I understand what has come before, what is happening now, what makes a genre what it is, and how I can either enforce or defy expectations and stereotypes. Not only am I a designer: I am also a psychologist; I am a historian; I am a therapist. I am so much more than a visual designer. Each garment a character wears has to make sense within the world we are creating and rules we create inside this world. My job in partnership with the actor is to make the character feel like a real person or being. They need to feel grounded, even if the story is fantastical or set on another world. It all circles back to the research and establishing rules and backstory for each piece, even if the audience will never know those details. They will still feel that everything makes sense together. And that’s what matters most. You can’t go on an emotional journey with a character if they look or feel off.  

This was the first time I was diving into a period piece of this size as a department head. Every single project I have done before helped prepare me to tackle this challenge: like assisting on The Great Gatsby, and designing a larger scale film like We Have a Ghost. Some of the parts that looked new to me on this one were the large amount of rentals from different costume houses, and the amount of background we fit in advance. But at the end of the day, I just stuck to my trusty design process and it served me well! 

PH: In a film that covers such a broad timeline, continuity is crucial. How did you manage the transition of the characters’ wardrobes across the decades while maintaining a consistent thread that ties their stories together?

Whitney Anne Adams: The logistics of this one were perhaps the biggest challenge of it all. I knew we were filming the 1968 younger cast first, so we’d be establishing them before the cast of our adult versions of the characters even arrived in Wilmington. I needed the throughline to be solid, but I also wanted to make sure I didn’t set something in stone for the young versions that then didn’t work once we moved on to the adults. I, fortunately, knew my three 1999 leads before any other casting was set, so I started my character work there with Aunjanue, Sanaa, and Uzo. I researched every photo of them I could under the sun. What colors and patterns looked great on their skin, but also felt right for Odette, Barbara Jean and Clarice? I started paring down to a smaller group of colors that felt right for each of them and then matched that to the 1999 research I had gathered and my notes from the script and the book. I then worked backwards yet again and compared that color palette to all my 1977 and 1968 research. What would their colors be if I looked at them through the lens of their younger selves and what was fashionable in ’68 and ’77? Then, once I got my casting for our younger trio, I then pared down again to which of those colors would look good on them. But, I also wanted to also make sure to showcase the women where they are in their lives: young, optimistic joy and love. These colors and textures had to be happy and full of joy. Once I got to this stage, it was actually time to start the doing: sourcing, shopping, building, gathering of every possible real-life piece that fits into all those stipulations. 

Then we filter down even more with my fittings with my amazing actors and we solidify our younger characters and start to establish them on camera. Every other principal character has to fit into the world that this trio creates. So, I have extensive paperwork where I do boards of every single scene in the film with the fitting photo of every character next to each other to make sure every single scene will gel and there’s not too much of one color or pattern in any particular scene. Then, I am also building color and texture relationships between each couple in the film: Clarice and Richmond have to look amazing as a pair, so do Odette and James and Ray and Barbara Jean. It’s almost like I’m building science equations or solving a puzzle. 

Once the younger cast is set, I then move forward in time again. But this time, I know exactly what their younger selves are wearing, so I have an even more solid foundation to build the adult looks. But, I still have wiggle room to pivot or shift, because I also want to give space for my adult actors to have their thoughts and opinions heard and incorporated. I am still telling the story through color: the adults have aged out of their bright optimistic pops of color from the 60s. They have experienced more of the trials and tribulations of life. They’ve matured. Their colors and textures have evolved to be more elegant and graceful. Except, perhaps Odette, who is always going to do her own thing! She’s on a color story of her own: still bright and punchy in our first 1999 scene, not giving a damn what anyone else thinks. But as the story continues and she gets her cancer diagnosis and begins treatment, the life and liveliness of her colors and patterns start to fade and change into sad lifeless neutrals until she’s finally in a hospital gown in a coma. Thankfully, she gets a new lease on life and she’s back to her usual self in the closing of the film.  I also made sure to reuse a few things her younger self wears - like her green scarf and red button earrings – as Odette feels like the one to hold on to things that mean something to her. Young Clarice ties that green scarf around Young Odette’s neck to make her feel pretty and that’s the day she gets together with James, so I think she has a lot of nostalgia embedded in that scarf. 

And despite all of this planning, I could only tell the story through clothes and pieces that actually existed – we only had the budget to build a select number of garments, so most of their costume pieces had to be sourced. Then each one had to be fit and then tailored. Between the six actresses playing the three Supremes, they had 67 total costume changes between them. That’s a lot of work! 

PH: Were there any specific garments or costume pieces in the film that hold particular significance for you, either because of the design process, the historical accuracy, or the way they contributed to a character’s story arc?

Whitney Anne Adams: Odette’s orange dress that I mentioned before, especially! 

Also, adult Barbara Jean’s necklace. She wears the same “Eye of the Sun” necklace in every scene in 1999. This necklace is a version of an “evil eye” pendant – the evil eye is tied to a thousands of years old supernatural belief in being cursed, usually by envy or jealousy. It is believed by many that when someone is jealous of you, they can curse you with an 'evil glare' and send bad luck your way. So, protection from the evil eye is something that a lot of people looked for. That's why, today, people often wear evil eye jewelry as a symbol of protection. I don’t know if Barbara Jean believes in all that, but with all the tough hands life has dealt her, I think she’s grasping on to any form of protection that exists. I liked the idea that she wore this necklace every day as a touchstone for herself for protection from the world around her. It’s her rock and something to hold on to. It’s also comforting – I am a person who owns thousands of jewelry pieces, but I wear the same signet ring on my left hand every single day. It’s a comfort to me and I feel naked without it. I think this necklace is that to Barabara Jean — a bit of comfort in this tough cruel world. This necklace was designed by jewelry designer Peggy Li, who I collaborated with before in the past. She has such beautiful pieces. I carry many of them in my jewelry kit and when we selected this necklace, I had her make duplicates for me, so we’d always have it on set. We always have multiples of jewelry on standby for every single character, as much as possible as these little pieces are often lost or broken.  

Some other significant jewelry to me was actually most of the pieces that Aunjanue wears as Odette. I have a large collection of vintage jewelry, but I recently came into possession of a family friend’s wonderful collection of costume jewelry after she passed away. Her name was Judy Aufhauser and her husband Marty was kind enough to pass them along to me and much of what Aunjanue wears as Odette in this film came from her collection. Each piece is so incredible and unique, and felt like the perfect fit. It was a lovely way to honor her and her life. 

PH: Looking back at your work on The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, what are you most proud of in terms of costume design, and how do you hope the costumes contribute to the overall narrative and emotional impact of the film?

Whitney Anne Adams: It is really hard to pick a favorite thing to be proud of because this entire film was such a massive undertaking! I do absolutely love the visual threads connecting the younger and older versions of each character to one another. All that planning and work really paid off. If these older and younger versions didn’t feel connected and rooted in reality, I think it would have affected the audience’s ability to go on the emotional journey of this story. 

I think perhaps the other thing I am most proud of is my incredible crew and all the work they put in to make my vision and all of it happen! I want to take the space to thank them for all their incredible work: Costume Supervisor Kristin Morlino, Assistant Costume Designer Marcella Caudill, Costume Coordinator Natalie Smith, Key Truck Costumer Alesha D. Mitchell, Set Costumer Caitlin McCraw, Set Costumer Chip Martin, Ager/Dyer and Lead Background Costumer Caitlin Rhyne, Tailor Alice Blake Powell, BG Costumer Sheila Smith, Costume PA Cydnee Rainey, Intern Maria Chandler, Additional ACD Ariyela Wald-Cohain and honorary set costumer Winnie the dog!  

PH: What do you hope audiences take away from the visual storytelling in The Supremes At Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, particularly in how the costumes help to convey the characters’ growth and the cultural shifts over the four decades?

Whitney Anne Adams: I hope the audience takes away the idea that the number one person you dress for is yourself. Wear what makes you happy and makes you feel joy, wear what makes you feel you. Just like Odette — her style is very much her own thing, but all that matters is that it pleases her and makes her feel true to herself. Whatever your reasons are for dressing the way you do, make sure it’s for yourself. And maybe your best friends too! There’s nothing like rocking matching headscarves at the local dance together.

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