In the immersive and intricate world of costume design, few projects present as many challenges and rewards as recreating historical periods with authenticity and flair. In a captivating conversation with Katie Irish, the talented costume designer behind the acclaimed series Manhunt, we delve into the painstaking process and creative vision that brought the show’s 19th-century setting to life. From managing a massive costume operation to balancing historical accuracy with contemporary storytelling, Katie shares insight into designing the Manhunt costumes. She also discusses the critical roles of key historical figures like Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, providing insight into how their unique stories were visually realized.
Spencer Williams: Let’s get into Manhunt. We were talking a little behind the scenes, but this represents a part of American history that we all think we know but don’t. I remember when I was a kid, I took a trip to DC and went to Ford’s Theater, and I slept through the whole thing. I don’t remember a single second of it. But what I love about the show is that after just two episodes, I’m learning so much about the controversy and the times, including what people were wearing and thinking about.
So, have you worked with the 1860s before? Was this your first jump into the era?
Katie Irish: It was. I’ve done Victorian, but it’s usually been later, like the 1880s and 1890s. So this was my first foray into pre-crinoline and hoop skirts and all of that goodness.
Spencer Williams: The good stuff. Tell me about your research process then. What does that look like? You didn’t just open up a textbook.
Katie Irish: No, and this was back in early 2022. I started prepping in late January. Everything was still fairly locked down, and many of these characters are historical figures with portraits in the National Portrait Gallery and other collections. One of the few good things about the COVID lockdowns is that many museums and educational institutions put their catalogs online. So, I could sit in the comfort of my guest room, where I was working, and start scouring the world for appropriate images.
The Library of Congress had a lot of fantastic photographs. Mathew Brady photographed all of the Civil War. The National Portrait Gallery had portraits of Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and many others. But I really geeked out over places like the Costume Institute at the Met, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Kyoto Institute, which have put their collections online. I could just enter “1865 gown” and then click through front, side, back, and even opened-up views to see the construction. That was phenomenal. It was my first time researching that way, and it was mind-blowing. It wasn’t easy, but it was much easier than it could have been then.
Spencer Williams: That’s exciting. I’m a history nerd, so this sounds so much fun. But when you look at the show, you will see a lot of costumes in Manhunt. I have a note here that says 422 different costume looks for the principal cast, 300 custom-built pieces, and also 4,800 looks for the background. That’s a considerable amount, and there are so many different pieces for all these looks. So, my question is, how? You must’ve had the most extensive crew ever, I imagine. How did this happen?
Katie Irish: I did. I had the largest crew I’ve ever had. It was like an army. We shot in Savannah, and our production office was an old elementary school. To give you an idea of scale, the menswear was in the gymnasium, and the women’s wear took over the cafeteria. Those were our two storage and fitting areas for the background.
Spencer Williams: It’s just a closet.
Katie Irish: Yeah, the gym and the cafeteria were the closets for this period. I had three fantastic assistant costume designers. Sara Tosetti was in charge of my made-to-orders. Initially, Moria Sine Clinton pulled together many of our rentals worldwide and started as the background ACD. Then Jennifer Caprio took over as the background ACD. Emma Connelly was my right hand, being me in all the places when I couldn’t be in two, three, or four places at once. We had a team of background fitters and a team for aging and distressing. We built stuff in New York, but I also had a fantastic in-house shop. It was the largest-scale project I’ve ever done. I’ll never forget after our final round of rentals arrived and were categorized and fully stocked, standing in the middle and just looking around, thinking, “Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?”
Spencer Williams: Oh, what have we done?
Katie Irish: Exactly. Can I do this? When will they come in and realize that I don’t know?
Spencer Williams: So much. I’m trying to imagine myself standing in that gymnasium. I’m jealous. The 1860s marked a progressive period in American fashion history. How did you leverage advancements like the addition of the sewing machine and new dye techniques to bring the costumes of Manhunt to life? Little things that we don’t think about like we have sewing machines now.
Katie Irish: I love that you bring this up. The Singer sewing machine had become commonplace by this period, April 1865. People were taking clothes in one fashion and refashioning them, literally taking them apart and recutting a sleeve to make it look more modern. Then, the aniline dyes brought color to the masses in a way that hadn’t been available before. You had insane colors like magenta and chartreuse—bold, wild colors.
I was fortunate that my showrunner was on board with this. I told her, “I realize that we often see this period, and it’s pretty subdued. You have your darker greens and pastels, but you don’t see a dress that looks like it could be a circus tent.” I showed her an example from the Victoria and Albert Museum of a dress resembling a circus tent, and she was on board. The production designer, Chloe Arbiture, did the same thing. She noted that in the White House, the carpet was pink and green—like a watermelon. We leaned into all of these colors in an exciting and fun way, bringing these people to life for me.
Spencer Williams: I love pulling back the curtain on these fun pieces of history that people might not have noticed. When I think of Abraham Lincoln, I think of him as the president, but also of kids playing with fake beards and paper hats. Recreating historical figures authentically can be tricky, especially with someone like Lincoln. How did you balance historical accuracy and portraying these figures as real people to a contemporary audience without it looking campy or over the top? Lincoln could go south real quickly.
Katie Irish: To your point, he’s an icon. How do you take someone you’ve learned about and made cut-out silhouettes of for the corkboard in elementary school and turn him into a real person? One of the things I did was try to find photographs and portraits of him that were more informal. One I found was a pencil sketch, and he had windswept, mussed-up hair, and it was before he had a beard. That, to me, showed a different side of him.
It’s not a photograph capturing a moment; he sat for this sketch, and his hair looked like that. Another interesting detail is that he had a pair of goat slippers. I mentioned this on Instagram, but he had a pair of slippers embroidered with goats. They weren’t goat skin; they had embroidered goats. There’s such whimsy to that. I don’t know if they were a gift from one of his children or from Mary Todd Lincoln or if he picked them out himself. But the fact that this man, who had the weight of the world on his shoulders, wore a pair of goat slippers was deeply humanizing to me.
Spencer Williams: So relatable.
Katie Irish: It is! Those little details made it easier for me to empathize with and understand him as a human, not just as “Honest Abe.”
Spencer Williams: Right. I’m going to look for some goat slippers after this. I imagine Lincoln putting on his joggers and slippers after a long day of legislating. That’s how we make these characters feel like real people, which they were. So that’s interesting.
In Manhunt, we see a lot of menswear and uniforms. Can you elaborate on how you approached designing these elements considering the historical context and the different personalities? There is a lot of menswear, so I’m guessing suits on suits on suits.
Katie Irish: There are so many men and multiples for people like Booth and Herold, who are wearing essentially the same thing throughout all seven episodes. Then there’s Stanton, who alternates between three frock coats. There are many good historical patterns, and I tried to look at each person individually. Who has the money for new clothes? Whose suits are older and more outdated? Who cares about clothes?
One fun character was Andrew Johnson, whose father was a tailor. If someone has yet to see it, I won’t spoil it, but we are introduced to him, and he is not in the best shape. He gets dressed in the scene, and that transformation—from not great to looking presidential by the end—was significant for me. People who understand the power of clothes… The story is so massive in scale that we see all different types of humanity. I loved that. I loved seeing the wide-reaching scope of this story and how it affects everyday people and the influential people in charge. They all wear different clothes depending on socioeconomic status, where in the country they are, and what is important to them.
Spencer Williams: Right. Lots of consideration. Even though you see lots of menswear and suits, it still tells you where they are and where they live. Many people don’t get that with suits, so it’s fascinating. One costume that stood out to me was Mary Todd Lincoln’s dress at Ford’s Theater when the assassination occurred. Can you share more about the inspiration behind this design? Because as I started prepping for this, I read about it, and there isn’t any reference to what she wore that night. So, you have to take creative liberty, which sounds weird.
Katie Irish: Yes. It’s wild because we still have the coat that Abraham Lincoln was wearing. It was actually on display at the Met in late 2022.
Spencer Williams: That’s shocking.
Katie Irish: We still have that coat, and we know what John Wilkes Booth was wearing. It was very clearly detailed, but no one recorded what Mary wore that evening.
One of the characters in our story is Elizabeth Keckley, the dressmaker and seamstress for Mary Todd Lincoln and many fashionable socialite ladies in DC at the time. Her dresses still exist, so I looked at what she had designed for Mary Todd Lincoln to see recurring themes. This helped me understand what Mary liked and Elizabeth’s dressmaking style. I found a dress that combined both stripes and floral patterns. This was a period where more was more. Why just pick a floral when you could have a stripe? And why stop at a stripe and a floral if you could throw in a plaid or a paisley?
You see a lot of this mix in the men’s vests of the period. Combining the floral and the stripe was not uncommon at all. I dug into the Victorians’ love of hidden meanings—in flower language and acrostic jewelry, for example. I knew we needed to build two versions of this dress, one to get dirty and bloody and one to stay pristine. So, I designed the fabric using some beautiful vintage black velvet ribbon with enough yardage. I looked at Victorian flower dictionaries and picked roses, symbolizing beauty and love, and olive branches for peace and reconciliation because the night was five days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. The war had just ended. It was spring, but Mary also spent much of her life in mourning. The balance between hope, reconciliation, grief, and mourning seemed appropriate for the nation and her personal story.
Spencer Williams: That’s amazing that you could get so much into that one dress. Like you said, more is more. When I saw it, it looked familiar, like that’s what she wore. I was shocked to read that it wasn’t.
Katie Irish: Thank you so much.
Spencer Williams: I thought, “Oh yeah, that’s what she wore for sure.”
Katie Irish: At the end of the day, you can throw all these things into it, but you want it to feel real. That’s the most important thing.
Spencer Williams: It certainly felt authentic. It was immersive, especially since everyone knew what was about to happen. You want the costumes to bring you there without doing too much at the same time. I love that.
Another thing I loved, which you just touched on, was focusing on Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Simms. They are pivotal characters in Manhunt, each with remarkable stories and contributions to history. Can you discuss how you approached designing costumes for these characters to reflect their individuality and convey their roles as trailblazers in post-Civil War America? Particularly considering their experiences as Black women during that time, only five days after the end of the Civil War. I feel like there’s a lot of pressure on these two characters, especially since one was a seamstress.
Katie Irish: Yes! Mary Simms was a phenomenal woman. The character in our story is based on a few different women, but Mary Simms herself did exist. She was the first Black American to testify in a United States court of law, and her testimony was pivotal in convicting these men and sentencing many of them to be hanged. The courage she displayed is just phenomenal to me.
When we meet Mary, she was formerly enslaved and is now free but still works for Dr. Mudd. It’s that balance of technically being free but having no other way to earn a livelihood. She needs to have a very limited wardrobe throughout the whole series. She has two skirts, two blouses, and two jackets, which have to be able to mix and match and serve multiple purposes.
One of her main outfits is made from a blue indigo-dyed cloth. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, indigo was a huge cash crop in Virginia and North Carolina, with enslaved people doing all the labor-intensive work. With the advent of aniline dyes, indigo became less common because the new dyes were much cheaper. The fact that Mary is wearing indigo is a way for her to reclaim that part of her history. It also ties her to the Union Army and the good people in our story.
We see her later in the story, and there’s a bit of hope for her, which is fantastic because her hopes are dashed repeatedly throughout the series. Elizabeth Keckley, on the other hand, should have her miniseries. She was a phenomenal seamstress who purchased her own freedom and her son’s freedom. She met Mary Todd Lincoln at a party in Washington D.C. and eventually had her own shop, employing around 20 sewists to accommodate all her orders.
Designing for Elizabeth Keckley was a different challenge. How do you design for the designer?
Spencer Williams: One of the first designers in American history.
Katie Irish: Exactly. Looking at the dresses she made for others and the few portraits we have of her, mostly from later in her life, we tried to extrapolate what she would have designed for herself. She was a walking advertisement for her work.
Spencer Williams: Katie, this has been so fun. I’m getting such a history lesson right now. I am inspired to go back and read more about this era. People often skip over it after learning about the Civil War and Lincoln. There’s so much more to discover.
So, looking back on your experience as costume designer for Manhunt, what were some of the most rewarding aspects of the project? And what lessons did you learn that you’ll carry into your future work?
Katie Irish: The most magical moment is during a final fitting with an actor. Watching them transform in front of the mirror, seeing their posture change, and how they begin to embody the character based on the costume you’ve created is truly unique. It’s that moment when it becomes real, not just for you but for the actor, and because it’s fundamental for them, it will also be accurate for the audience. That is the highlight for me.
As for lessons learned, costuming is a team sport. It’s never a solo endeavor. You need all the people, and it’s phenomenal when everyone works together towards the same goal.
Spencer Williams: And just to cap off, you and I have talked about this a bit before, but we are having extensive conversation about pay equity for costume designers. I know this is something very important to you. Could you share your thoughts on the ongoing conversation about this issue and what you hope for the future?
Katie Irish: I am hopeful. Pay equity is near and dear to my heart because we are outfitting the people telling these stories, whether 1865 or 2265. We are essential visual storytellers. What gives me hope is that every time I talk about what we do and the disparity in pay, people are shocked at how much it exists. The immediate next question is always, “How do we change this? What can we do to fix this?”
It brings me hope to think that perhaps it is just about education. Once people know, they will do what they need to do and pay us as the essential visual storytellers we are. You can’t make a movie without a production designer, a director of photography, or a costume designer.
Spencer Williams: Costume designer Katie Irish, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a pleasure. I hope you return whenever you have something new because this was a treat.
Katie Irish: Thank you so much for having me. I loved this!
