Amanda Seyfried Danced in 45 Pounds of Wool for The Testament of Ann Lee

As the star of The Testament of Ann Lee, now in theaters, Amanda Seyfried faithfully threw herself into the role of the film’s titular founder of the 18th-century Shakers movement—and into her cumbersome, period-accurate costumes, by designer Malgorzata “Gosia” Karpiuk.

“[Amanda] had to wear so many layers: special socks, a special small underskirt, a special corset…” Karpiuk tells W. “The shirt, a jacket, a long dress, vests, and sometimes a cloak.”

In the film, writer-director Mona Fastvold depicts the riveting life of one of history’s most significant (but lesser known) religious leaders across three chapters, beginning in mid-18th-century Manchester, England, and ending with Lee’s death at age 48 in upstate New York. The story unfolds as an unorthodox musical, with traditional Shaker hymns and ecstatic movement reimagined as expressive song-and-dance numbers that convey spirituality and cleansing, with Seyfried in her copious, restrictive layers as the central figure.

The costumes Seyfried wore as Lee were “really heavy, honestly, and she never complained,” Karpiuk says. “She was dancing beautifully.”

Singing in the Rain

With little documentation from Ann Lee’s earliest years, Karpiuk, Fastvold, co-writer and producer Brady Corbet, and production designer Sam Bader studied Caravaggio’s Baroque paintings and religious art, plus the work of English painter William Hogarth, known for his satirical studies of morality and hypocrisy. Karpiuk collaborated with her tailor, who mined past opera and dance theater experience to design a special elastic corset for Seyfried to accomplish the strenuous and expansively kinetic choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall.

“There was one moment on the ship, though…” says Karpiuk, referring to a harrowing segue into the film’s final chapter. In 1774, Ann, her brother William (Lewis Pullman), and some fellow ardent believers sailed from Manchester to New York. In the film, they endure the grueling seasonal changes and threats from the ship’s crew of nonbelievers as they harmoniously chant, dance, and persevere through a punishing rainstorm.

“That sequence is so beautiful, almost haunting. The weather kept changing, and we kept changing our costumes, going back, and adding layers,” Seyfried said in the production notes. “And then I got drenched with torrential rain as if we were on the ocean.”

To brave the elements, Ann dons a hooded brown wool cloak, which Karpiuk says weighed upwards of 45 pounds. “I think I ended up weighing twice my weight because of my clothing being soaked,” added Seyfried.

After the arduous two-day shoot, Seyfried joked to Karpiuk about her unintended weighted-cape workout. “I totally understood that,” says the costume designer. “Amanda, sorry!”

Charting Ann’s Journey Through Color

Karpiuk and her team custom-designed Seyfried’s 18th-century layers to illustrate how Ann and her followers would have handmade their own clothing. “Imperfect, like how life looked at that time,” Karpiuk says of the garments. During the shoot, she also regularly wandered the set—meticulously hand-stitching, like a good Shaker—buttons, bonnet seams, and other fixes on the leads and extras. “I pay attention to these details.”

In economically depressed and religiously repressed Manchester, Ann begins her journey in bolder colors. “Because she was born in the darkness, and the whole story is about going from dark into the light,” says Karpiuk.

The use of color also reflects the reality of harsh working conditions in Manchester’s textile mills, where even children, including Ann, toiled. “They had access to different fabrics, so we thought, ‘OK, let's play with it and be more chaotic,” says Karpiuk. Ann’s reds, blues, and dark browns track her early arc, as she marries Abraham (Christopher Abbott), suffers the devastating loss of four children in infancy, and declares celibacy as a tenet of the Shaker faith.

Ann led her followers in pursuit of a utopian society founded on spiritual and social equality, which she envisioned in an America on the cusp of freedom from the British. “In New York, the color palette changed into more pastels,” says Karpiuk.

Turning Red in New York

Upon arrival in New York City, Ann and the Shakers search for their rooming house and yell “shame” upon the sight of a slave auction on the streets of lower Manhattan. Ann, still clad in her dark blue-grey Manchester layers, is accompanied by her niece Nancy (Viola Prettjohn) in a faded lilac-blue and basque-waist dress ensemble.

During the long voyage, Nancy and Richard (Jamie Bogyo), the son of benefactor John Hocknell (David Cale), become attracted to each other, as young people do. The two are ultimately discovered in the outhouse, flouting the Shakers’ celibacy statute, and are exiled from the group. Notably, Nancy leaves Ann and the Shakers in a crimson overbodice layered over a white dress, conveying more than a trope-y scarlet letter.

“There are lots of meanings in this red-burgundy color,” says Karpiuk, who discussed the symbolism with Fastvold. “She said, ‘Let’s show Nancy a bit differently. The color is so great for the scene.’ Finally, she's visible, because she was always in the shadow. She's starting her new journey.”

Finding Utopia and Building Community

Later, Ann, William, and the Shakers establish a communal settlement in upstate New York, which they christen Niskayuna. As their pacifist, utopian vision takes shape, Ann and the Shakers’ color palette lightens into sky and earth tones. To achieve the coral palette, Karpiuk dyed the characters’ white cotton.

Ann, William, and the Shaker elders grow their flock through missionary work throughout the state, while enduring mob violence with a final devastating attack. In Ann’s final days, she connects with loyal believer and longtime ally Mary (Thomasin McKenzie) in rich browns.

“At the end, she's in this heaven that she designed in her mind,” says Karpiuk.

During Ann’s emotional funeral and finale dance sequence, the women of Niskayuna appear in uniform and aligned with their savior, crisp, white, and modest tucker collars layered over their dresses. At the time of Ann Lee’s death, the Shakers wouldn’t have been organized or advanced enough for such sartorial uniformity. But Karpiuk and Fastvold drew inspiration from a painting of similarly clothed believers in ecstatic spiritual movement—and a bit of creative license—to pay “tribute to the Shakers.”

“We wanted to show them as a really friendly, open community where equality is really important,” says Karpiuk, who, during the final chapter, “slowly, slowly, slowly” evolved all the Shaker women’s dresses and bonnets to match Ann’s. “To make them look nice and kind and to really design this calm, divine harmony.”