This interview with “George & Tammy” costume designer Mitchell Travers first appeared in the Below-the-Line issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
According to country legend Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette was “a country girl’s idea of glamour.” Throughout her stormy courtship and marriage to George Jones, a few things went wrong: her health, her patience, and finally her marriage. But never hers hers her sense of her fashion, God love her.
“When you look back and look at the way these musicians dressed, it was an incredibly progressive period in history, and I would say the country world is a little more conservative now than it was,” said “George & Tammy” the costume designer Mitchell Travers. The limited series reunited him with Jessica Chastain, for whom he designed another Tammy in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” which earned Chastain a best actress Oscar last year, as well as a reunion with the “Take Shelter” actress. co-star Michael Shannon.
George and Tammy’s attire on the hilarious Showtime series is downright spectacular at times: plunging necklines, body-hugging suits, beading, tassels, and cleavage-revealing dresses, all in shimmering colors RuPaul might envy. “There was this sex appeal in their relationship and in them as individuals that I really wanted to wear a costume to help convey it,” Travers said. “There was a genuine passion. It was about finding ways to flatter them, show a little skin, find some connection between the two of them.”
And when Travers’ research unearthed clothing that had actually belonged to the stars, he was always eager to share. “Tammy’s royal wardrobe items kept finding me, and each time, I would come across Jes’s trailer to show her my latest acquisition,” he said. “At one of our first meetings, I showed her the first piece she had of hers and she just had to try it on. I thought, ‘It’s a bit flimsy, but maybe we can use it for a still or montage or something.’ But to her credit, she just stepped in and shut down. Absolutely no alterations needed.”
For Shannon’s playful Western attire (including a very attractive avocado outfit she wears during Tammy’s birth scene), Travers had the George Jones Museum as a valuable reference. “I’m not just interested in what an outfit looks like,” said the “Hustlers” and “In the Heights” veteran. “I also want to know what the lining is like. At first, it was a really wonderful resource for me to learn who George was.”
As the miniseries depicts, the legendary duo lived a hard life on and off the stage, and the clothes that fell into Travers’ possession were proof. “There’s a dress that we found that had a little cigarette burn on it,” he said. “These small details tell a bigger story. One of the other dresses was still based on the inside, because people were doing a lot more TV makeup at the time.”
Chastain and Shannon are taller than the megastars they represent, and Travers said the two couldn’t have been more cooperative. (“Michael was very patient with me, trying on suit after suit after suit.”) But Shannon, at 6-foot-4, is a foot taller than Chastain, while Jones, at five-foot-five, was just five inches. taller than Wynette. “My costume designer heart was begging our director John Hillcoat not to put his shoes in the frame of performances just so we could get the same visual chemistry. And of course, Jes is a trooper: 7-inch platform high heels, just for the shots to work. Fortunately, both actors were willing to play me on it.”
Read more of the issue below the line here.
