Costume design of "The Testament of Ann Lee" by Małgorzata Karpiuk

Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and episodic productions, it is my delight to welcome Małgorzata Karpiuk. In this interview, she talks about her journey into the world of costume design, the changes in the costume department in the last decade, key ingredients to longevity in the industry, and her thoughts on generative AI. Between all these and more, Małgorzata dives deep into her work on “The Testament of Ann Lee”, a wonderful reminder of the sublime magic of this delightful art form.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Małgorzata: My name is Małgorzata Karpiuk, and for the last 15 years I’ve been a costume designer on films, TV series, theater and commercials. I have been in the world of art since I was young. I loved to paint, I was deep into photography, I was singing a lot. I always had an artistic sensitivity, but I never thought that I would end up in the world of fashion and costume design.

My college degree was in linguistics, which is quite far from where I am now. After college I thought of becoming a journalist, and I started to write about fashion. I was also assisting another journalist with interviews with politicians, and that looked to be my path. But then I met a man, who became my boyfriend, and at that time he was – and still is today – one of the greatest stylists in Poland. He showed me his work, and it clicked. He asked me if I wanted to assist him on commercials and films he was working on, and it was a great fit for me.

I did a film with him as an assistant, or the second costume designer according to the local hierarchy. After a few productions I told myself that I was ready to be a costume designer, and a month later it happened. If you want to be a head of department, you have to feel that you are ready for it, because it’s such a huge responsibility. It was a special moment for me.

A sneak peek into the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: Looking back at these 15 years, what are the bigger changes in the costume department that you have seen happening?

Małgorzata: Timing would be the first one. We used to have more time back then. Technology would be the other. I remember those first productions with my boyfriend, and how we were doing moodboards by cutting images from newspapers and magazines, and making these patchwork arrangements. Now it’s all digital, and it’s easier. You have less prep time and less budget today, but the expectations are as high as they’ve ever been. You have to be both faster and better at the same time. You have to adjust to the shrinking timelines.

For the costume department specifically, the quality of fabrics and costumes is worse. You see the same things everywhere. When I’m doing a contemporary film, it’s hard to be unique, because everything is so commercialized and somehow the same. Maybe it’s because of how popular Instagram is, and how quickly trends get around the world. It’s not easy to do a stand-out contemporary film, and I hear it from my friends as well. I’m making costumes, or I’m renting them, or I’m searching for them in the shops – depending on the project – and it’s becoming more difficult each year to find something unique. Ten-fifteen years ago you were able to find good quality and unique fabrics, especially for period films. Now you see the cheapest versions of everything everywhere.

One good thing that I’m seeing recently is that we are starting to use more craftspeople. Maybe it’s my own experience, but I have moved from renting costumes to finding craftspeople to make costumes for me. If you want something unique, you really want a good craftsperson. They are precious.

A sneak peek into the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: What do you feel are the misconceptions or the misunderstandings of what costume design is?

Małgorzata: My experience has been that people think it’s an easy job. Maybe it’s because we all know where to get our clothes and how to wear them. But as a costume designer, you have to immerse yourself in the story to understand the characters. It’s a long, sometimes painful, process, and there’s a lot that goes into the final costume. You have to understand the story, understand the actor, understand the director, follow the producer’s idea, stay on budget, and many other things.

Kirill: One of my favorite parts of costume design is to see the initial explorations and sketches of ideas on paper. Was it difficult for you to move to a world that requires this specific artistic ability?

Małgorzata: Some people are good at designing from the head, and some are inspired by something external. I fall into this second category. I start by searching for the fabric and the color. It’s one of the beautiful parts of our job that we get to create something, and there are many ways to do that.

Kirill: Are you in the pen-and-paper world these days, or do you use digital tools?

Małgorzata: Pen and paper. I love pastel paints. I had an assistant recently who was doing all the drawings on a tablet, and I said that I can’t do that. I’m an analog person. I have my notebooks, and I bring them with me everywhere. I feel that it has to flow through my hands.

A sneak peek into the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: In one of your interviews I read that you always put on the costumes that you make on yourself to see how they look and feel. Can you walk me through your process?

Małgorzata: It started when my friend asked me to take photos of the costumes that I was working on. I put them on me and I made a whole video out of it.

I didn’t study fashion. I didn’t study costume design. This is my way of learning. I realized that I was the best model if I wanted to understand the cut and the size and how the costume would move. When I put them on, I can see immediately if it’s going to work or not. Sometimes you have the opportunity to do fittings on actors, but mostly it’s in your head – or in my case, on me. I put them all on – men’s, women’s, children’s – and I see if it’s working. It’s a way for me to understand that character. And it’s been working for me so far.

Behind scenes at the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: Getting to “The Testament of Ann Lee”, how did you get to join it?

Małgorzata: I just finished another project, and my plan was to take a break and get some rest. I was with my friends at this weekend EDM festival, and on the way back home I got a call from the Polish producer Klaudia Smieja with an offer. It sounded great – a musical set in the 18th century, directed by Mona Fastvold with this great cast. I remember it was raining that day, and two days later I was on a Zoom call with Mona, and three days later I was already in Madrid to start looking at costumes – and then in Budapest where we shot it.

It was completely unexpected, and it was a dream job for a costume designer. It’s a great adventure to be working on a period film that is heavy on costumes. It’s a musical, and I loved that challenge. Mona Fastvold is a great storyteller, and I loved the script that she wrote with Brady Corbet that I met earlier when he was trying to make “The Brutalist” in Poland. Everything came together at the right time and at the right place. I only had six weeks in prep, and that was a little crazy [laughs].

Kirill: There’s a certain fairytale aspect to this movie, and there’s also the historical accuracy to where and when these events take place. How do you find the balance between elevating the experience while also staying true to what was available and affordable to people to wear at that time?

Małgorzata: The film is based on a true story, and we wanted to help the audience to understand that period. I always start with research to gather knowledge about the period, and use that as a tool to build our story. I read books about the Shakers, and Mona shared her notes and moodboards with me. As we started to build that whole world together, we talked about colors and shapes. We wanted it to have a documentary feel, for scenes where she’s giving birth and where people are working in the field. It is a bit of a fairytale, but it doesn’t look like a traditional fairytale. It is also a musical, and you have that space to break or bend rules.

Selecting the fabrics at the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: For research, do you do it online, or do you go to libraries and museums?

Małgorzata: Nowadays it’s mostly the Internet, and you have to be careful there. I also love older books and albums. On this movie we had the opportunity to go to Hancock Village in Massachusetts, a bit after we already started shooting it. I always prefer to use the original sources.

Kirill: The story follows about 40 years of Ann Lee’s life and the different parts of it. How did you approach these transitions across the story arc?

Małgorzata: Celibacy became one of the centerpieces in her world, and it is one of the more important things in the Shaker community. We centered our attention around that to help the audience along the way, and to help Amanda to become this person.

In the beginning, she has this beautiful long hair. She’s wild, open, and curious. She’s a rebel, and her hair is so strong. Then, with hair, make-up and costume, we started to hide it. First it was a scarf, and at the end it became a collar. As the story progresses, she starts to cover herself – and that applies to the other Shakers as well.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: How does the color evolve from her early days in Manchester to her later days in Niskayuna, New York?

Małgorzata: We divided it into three stages – Manchester, the travel to New York, and the new world in New York and the Hudson River.

The beginning of the film is much darker. We were using darker colors, and a larger variety of colors – red, green, brown, black – to build that Manchester feel. At that time there were a lot of companies producing fabrics in England, and we decided that it could be a bit chaotic and mixed. Then we have the transition phase on the ship.

When we are in New York, we’re using more pastel colors, inspired by the New York painters of the time. And at the end, we wanted to elevate that world to feel almost divine, and our colors are taken from nature, the earth and the sky. They’re building a harmonious world, and the palette follows that.

There’s an interesting thing that I realized a couple of weeks ago when I was in Greece. I went to a local orthodox church, and I saw that the colors that I used in this film have been subconsciously taken from the colors of the icons. There’s such a strong connection between those icons and the palette of the film. You absorb so many things in your life, and then you build something, and then you realize where it comes from.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: How many actors did you end up dressing for this film?

Małgorzata: The main cast was close to 30, and including stunts the total list was around 60. Then maybe around 200 primary extras in the background, with a total that went over 1,500. We rented a lot of costumes to build the story. We have a couple of scenes closer to the end of the film – the dancing scene in the village and the funeral of Ann Lee – that required building more than 200 costumes each.

Kirill: How heavy do these costumes get?

Małgorzata: You have so many layers. You have the outer layer, and then two underdresses, and then a special small underdress beneath that – to build the overall shape. Maybe 7 kilos [15 pounds] for some of them. And if you have scenes in the rain, they become much heavier.

We had sequences in all the seasons – spring, summer, autumn, winter. You know ahead of time when each sequence is going to be shot, and you prepare everything for that day. The storm sequences on the ship required double costumes.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: Is there such a thing as your favorite sequence that you worked on for this production, or are they all your little babies?

Małgorzata: They all are my little babies. I do love the sequence closer to the end where William enters a small community, has a discussion with the priest and converts him. Lewis Pullman performs this beautiful song, and I love how it was all choreographed. Another one is the whole Beautiful Treasures sequence when Amanda was expecting the child and then losing. It is heartbreaking.

Kirill: Do you want me as a viewer to look at the costumes, or do you want them to stay almost invisible in the sense that they don’t draw attention to themselves?

Małgorzata: In general, it always depends on the project. Sometimes the project has strong set design, and you want everything to fit together, and that results in stronger costumes.

I like to build costumes which are not visible. On this production I definitely wanted them to be a part of the world. There are a few moments where I added small touches that I’m proud of. But it’s always the story first. The main goal is to tell a good story and to make a good film, and I prefer to step back. I want to be on the same level with the rest of the creative team. I want my costumes to feel organic to the story, the characters and the set design.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: Did you get to keep any of the costume pieces after the production was over?

Małgorzata: I kept the deacon’s hat. Daniel Blumberg played that character, and he was also the composer on the film. I also keep one of the straw hats that we made for the Shakers. You have this beautiful frame when two rows of the Shakers go to pray wearing those hats.

The costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: Stepping outside of the production for the last few questions, what are your thoughts today on generative AI?

Małgorzata: As I said earlier, I am an analog person. I love craftspeople, and I love craft in general. I am a bit afraid that people are starting to use AI to make their life easier by taking too many shortcuts. Having a new tool is good. Our professional lives are better with the Internet than without it. My concern is – are we able to build something from our own imagination and creativity, or are we going to use AI to take easy shortcuts to create something.

If you skip your own deep research and rely on AI to do that for you, you don’t develop that important skill. Now you’re going to depend on AI to create something for you without learning how to do the whole process yourself.

In many ways, AI makes our lives easier. But I still think that we as artists need to spend that time and go through that process to achieve something that is unique, something that came from within ourselves. Right now, I am trying to avoid AI as much as I can, even though I’m surrounded by people who are using it all the time. And they’re absolutely impressed and fascinated by what AI can do.

It’s fine if you’re using AI as a tool that helps. But if you’re using AI as a tool that does the whole thing and gives you the final answer, I feel that the answer is going to be too predictable – and that we become too lazy.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: We’re in 2026, about six years after Covid hit the world. Is it fully behind the industry, or do you see the lingering effects of that pandemic in your professional life?

Małgorzata: It was nice to have the time to step back for a bit. I spent half a year at home, living a normal life. I was still preparing a TV show, doing a bunch of Zoom meetings. An interesting thing about it is that Zoom meetings felt more productive than the traditional in-person meetings that sometimes went for hours. This certainly changed how we communicate.

Streaming gained so much momentum, at the expense of going to movie theaters. There’s a lot of films and shows that go directly to streaming nowadays. There’s something beautiful about the magic of the cinema experience. It’s a special place to watch a film with other people around you. It feels like it’s slipping away, because it’s so easy to watch everything at home on the TV or on a computer.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: What are the key ingredients to longevity in this industry?

Małgorzata: First of all, in order to work in this industry, you need to love it. If your heart is not in it, you will suffer a lot. It is such an unpredictable world, and you need special skills to survive in it.

When somebody tells me they want to be a costume designer for film, the first thing I say to them is to think it through. It’s great that you get to travel for work, to meet all these new people, to do the research and to develop yourself in this fantastic way. But there is the dark side to this business as well, especially for a woman. It is hard to have a successful career and to also have a family. You constantly find yourself choosing between the two. There are some great conversations happening around how to explain this situation across all the departments.

You also need to be able to deal with not knowing what is going to happen next. It can be a great job if you accept all of these. And if you do not, it can ruin your brain [laughs].

Behind the scenes of the costume department of “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: What would be a piece of advice you would want to give your younger self? Would you want to change anything that you did back then?

Małgorzata: There’s nothing I would want to change. I am grateful for the journey I’ve had so far, to become who I am today, and to have worked on such amazing productions.

If there is a piece of advice I’d give to younger people, it would be to be patient and to learn how to wait. It’s really important in this industry to be able to wait without feeling exhausted by the wait.

Designing the costumes for “The Testament of Ann Lee”, courtesy of Małgorzata Karpiuk.

Kirill: My last two questions are about your favorite things. Out of all the travels you’ve done for work, what is your favorite cuisine or your favorite dish so far?

Małgorzata: I love the taste of ćevapčići from Bosnia. I was there a few years ago shooting “Quo Vadis, Aida?” and we would go to local markets quite often. Among all the gypsy people selling clothes there was always a small random bar selling ćevapčići with mustard. I usually don’t eat meat, but it was such a special smell and atmosphere. You add some fresh tomatoes and onions, and it’s amazing.

Kirill: My last question is on your favorite film or films, something that you go back to, something that you were particularly impressed with.

Małgorzata: I became a costume designer because I loved the period films. When I was growing up we had a program on Polish TV dedicated to the best films, and I was always looking forward to the next installment, especially if it was a film set in the 17th or 18th century. From that time, and to the present day, my favorite is “Queen Margot” from 1994. There’s a lot of great costume designers working on films today, but that is the one that is still my all time favorite.

And here I want to thank Małgorzata Karpiuk for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of costume design, and for sharing the supporting materials for the interview. “The Testament of Ann Lee” is out now streaming on Apple, YouTube and Amazon. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.