How the costume designer of 'I Love Boosters' brought color back to Hollywood

A group of boosters-shoplifters resells stolen clothes in a surreal, color-blocked San Francisco. The story centers on Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer leading the crew. Department stores are portrayed as monochrome spaces, each location defined by a specific signature color applied to walls, merchandise, and employees. A fashion brand tied to villain Christie Smith includes a Chinese factory where workers face brutal conditions for minimal pay. The boosters use eccentric disguises drawn from different eras and aesthetics to avoid detection. Costume designer Shirley Kurata emphasizes that color is essential for building worlds and distinguishing them clearly, even without dimension-hopping.

"Color is so key, because it helps create worlds. The Oscar-nominated costume designer keeps finding herself depicting the multiverse: For the Best Picture-winning 2022 movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, she costumed characters across dimensions, from the muted realism of everyday life on Earth to a chaotic mishmash of colors and patterns for the film's mind-bending finale."

"Though there's no dimension-hopping in I Love Boosters, the movie still has clear-cut worlds. There's the vibrant but corporate monochrome of the Metro Designers department stores, each with its own signature color applied to the walls, the wares, and even the employees. There's the behind-the-scenes world of villain Christie Smith's fashion brand, including a Chinese factory where workers are subjected to brutal conditions for next to no pay."

"There's multiple worlds in both Everything Everywhere All at Once and I Love Boosters. To separate that, I think color is the first thing that really shows that. And so it was probably one of the most important things for me in terms of costume design."

"The eccentric disguises of the movie's titular boosters embrace different eras and aesthetics to avoid detection. The crew resells their stolen clothes, led by aspiring fashion designer Corvette (Keke Palmer), as they wreak havoc on a chain of department stores where each location is entirely monochrome."

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