In March 2019 my longtime collaborator Wes Hurley approached me to design costumes for his film Potato Dreams of America, an autobiographical narrative feature chronicling Wes’s childhood as a gay kid in the disintegrating USSR and his adventurous journey to the United States with his mother, a prison doctor turned mail-order bride. This feature would expand upon and follow the success of Wes’s award-winning short documentary “Little Potato” which I also designed.
The story weaves elements of magical realism, fantasy, and camp through an immigrant’s take on the American Dream and the difficulty of finding where you belong. It’s a thoughtful, sweet, and surprising story – all true to Wes’s amazing life.
Knowing the filmmaker personally added to my experience of designing for this film (and this story at different stages in its creative evolution). What a treasure to develop long, intimate collaborations with creatives over time!! Wes has such a unique perspective in his storytelling, one that I always want to be a part of and give voice to.
Potato Dreams of America was filmed in Seattle in 2019 and premiered at SXSW in 2021.
