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Costume Design for Potato Dreams of America

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.