In I Love Boosters, the Clothes Are the Chaos

Spoilers ahead for I Love Boosters

When you want to dress a surrealist world in outrageous color, call up Shirley Kurata. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (affectionately referred to as “the Daniels”) did it for their Oscar-winning film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and W followed suit for the 2022 Directors Issue. When Boots Riley was planning his latest film, I Love Boosters, enlisting Kurata to do the costumes was likely a no-brainer.

It turns out the admiration was mutual. “I’ve always been a big fan of his work,” Kurata tells W. “Even without reading the script, I told him, ‘Yes, I would love to work with you.’” When the Los Angeles-based stylist and costume designer learned more about the film, her enthusiasm only grew. “I knew we would have so much fun creating some crazy looks for all the characters.”

I Love Boosters, which arrives in theaters May 22, follows a clique of Oakland women who regularly shoplift from the fictional clothing store Metro Design and resell the goods to their local community at discounted prices. The group’s ringleader, aspiring designer Corvette (Keke Palmer), reveres Metro Design’s despotic creative director, Christie Smith (Demi Moore), but not enough to keep her from robbing the woman dry. When her crew, the Velvet Gang (including Taylour Paige, Naomi Ackie, and eventually Poppy Liu), gets their hands on a teleportation device, it takes their Robin Hood-esque operation to the next level.

Anyone who is a fan of Riley (and Kurata) knows better than to expect anything conventional from this film. Like Riley’s other works, Sorry to Bother You and I’m a Virgo, Boosters is both a brightly-colored commentary on societal issues. This time, Riley tackles unethical labor practices, fake news, and fast fashion. His use of practical effects leaves the viewer uncomfortable at points, but don’t you dare shield your eyes and miss a moment of Kurata’s over-the-top wardrobe. From a velour tracksuit exaggeratedly over-stuffed with boosted goods to a plaid dress that erupts in streams of fabric, below, Kurata breaks down every wild ensemble from I Love Boosters.

Corvette’s Spiked Jumpsuit

At one point during the film, Metro Design starts selling a spiked jumpsuit that Corvette claims was her original design—one of the few pieces in the film directly attributed to her, and a window into how she actually thinks.

“[Boots] just wrote a description of the jumpsuit in the script, so I made some sketches to make sure I understood him correctly,” Kurata says of creating the piece. When Riley approved the design, Kurata reached out to Philip Seastrom and Lacey Micallef of the Los Angeles-based brand Big Bud Press. “They do colorful overalls, and I asked them to help me conceive it,” Kurata says. “Thankfully, they were able to make all the colorways of the jumpsuit.”

The Stuffed Pink Tracksuit

One of the first physical gags in Boosters comes after a shoplifting expedition to Metro Design. Corvette crams merchandise into her pink velour tracksuit and emerges from the store looking like an overstuffed version of Paris Hilton. Initially, Kurata didn’t think she’d be able to find a set roomy enough to be stuffed, and she was prepared to make it herself. Luckily, Juicy Couture comes in extended sizes, so she was able to purchase a suit from the velour masters.

“We built padding underneath and then actually started stuffing clothes in it,” Kurata recalls. “But we needed to make sure Keke would be able to walk, so I had to test it out. There is a silly picture of me trying on the jumpsuit and stuffing pillows inside.” With that, Kurata confirmed the tracksuit was usable and secured Riley’s approval.

Corvette’s Turquoise Dress

When Corvette sneaks into Christie’s comically slanted apartment, she does so in a turquoise dress of her own design, one that immediately catches Christie’s eye. Riley initially gave Kurata the brief that the dress was to be inspired by Corvette’s parents’ Oldsmobile, which turned Kurata’s attention to cars. “I actually sourced vinyl upholstery and mimicked quilting from car seats,” she says. “There are also some chrome elements in the belt and in her shoes.”

The dress had to be unconventional, as it's established with her spiked jumpsuits that Corvette is hardly a traditional designer. At the same time, there were logistical considerations, like the design’s durability. “She’s running in place in Christie’s apartment, so the dress had to be practical, allow movement, and get attached to a harness. There were a lot of factors, but I had so much fun creating something that I felt like came out of Corvette's mind.”

The Heist Looks

Midway through the film, the Velvet Gang embarks on a robbery spree of every Metro Design store in the East Bay. Rather than trying to blend in, the group dresses in an array of over-the-top looks. “The whole point was that they couldn’t get recognized, so they had to have disguises,” Kurata says. “But we wanted to make sure every outfit was heightened.”

Riley didn’t specify any specific themes he wanted to convey in the script, which gave Kurata the creative freedom to dress up the group however she desired. One such set of ensembles, which Kurata describes as “raver anime,” finds the group in day-glo fur jackets, mini skirts, and Kawaii-adjacent accessories. Another covers the girls in florals, with Palmer in a vintage Moschino dress. Kurata gathered the wardrobe through a combination of brand outreach, vintage shopping, and some good old DIYing. The bag Palmer is carrying, for example, in the floral clip, was hot-glued with flowers. “There was a lot of arts and crafts,” Kurata says.

The Transforming Garments

It's during this montage that the women discover their teleportation device has another trick: it’s also a “situational accelerator,” which turns anything it's pointed at into its most surreal version. This leads to a scene in which the quartet experiments with the gadget’s settings, transforming their clothing into Dalí-esque versions of the original designs.

First up is Corvette, whose plaid dress erupts in streamers that encompass the room. “I thought it would be cool to go more punk with that look,” Kurata says of Palmer’s long-sleeved dress. Kurata reached out to French designer Solène Lescouët to create the piece. “She’d previously done a collection of spiky, punk-inspired dresses.” Riley wanted to create the effect of lines coming off the dress, so Kurata sourced plaid fabric for Lescouët, who made two versions, one plaid and one black. From there, Kurata collaborated with the film’s production designer, Christopher Glass, to develop the practical-effects approach. In the end, she sewed colored ribbons to the black dress so they could emerge from all angles.

Sade’s dress, meanwhile, came from Rodarte. “They’re good friends,” Kurata says of sister designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy. “I knew Sade’s dress was going to expand and there would be a fabric explosion, and I knew tulle would be a great fabric for that, because it's pretty inexpensive and you could buy bolts and bolts and bolts of it.”

To create Poppy Liu’s dress of dirt, twigs, and leaves, Kurata took a trip to Michael’s and the now-defunct JoAnn Fabrics to buy up panels of grass. “I got leaves and twigs from the yard and just glued them on top of a camo corset,” she says with a laugh. “The glue gun was definitely used a lot because we had a limited budget.”

The most striking look in this scene comes when Taylour Paige’s brown silk Collina Strada dress turns into a fuzzy, anatomically correct bodysuit complete with comically large areolas. “Boots wanted it to look like a Muppet,” Kurata says. “We didn't want it to look too realistic because that would just be creepy.”

Christie Smith’s Black and White Wardrobe

And while the main group of women is shrouded in an immense amount of color throughout the film, Demi Moore’s tyrannical designer stands in stark contrast, wearing an almost exclusively black-and-white wardrobe. Her looks are also in direct opposition to her designs, which are monochrome but colorful, with each Metro Design location dedicated to a different solid colorway.

“Because all of Christie’s stores are based on color, I thought it would be funny if she never wore it,” Kurata says. When dressing Christie, Kurata looked to designers like Rei Kawakubo and Phoebe Philo, who dress almost exclusively in black and neutrals. “I talked to Demi and offered that idea, ‘To set you apart from this world, you’re going to be in non-colored outfits.’ She totally loved it.”

Moore actually helped with sourcing her character’s wardrobe. When she went to London prior to production, she picked up a few structural pieces from Comme des Garçons. Kurata got other pieces from a friend who has an impressive vintage archive. The costume designer wanted Christie’s clothing to also invoke the “wonkiness” of her tilted apartment. “I sought out pieces that were asymmetrical and avant-garde.” She also commissioned work from designers like Victoria Yujin Kwon, who created a pair of 3D architectural gray shorts for Moore. “I just loved how cool and unique they are,” Kurata says. “It works so well in her slanted apartment.”