In this insightful interview, Spencer Williams chats with Amy Higdon, the costume designer behind the new film Fancy Dance. They discuss Amy’s journey from working on the Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon to designing the costumes for her first feature film, Fancy Dance. Amy shares the collaborative experience of working on this project, her inspirations for the characters’ costumes, and her journey as a costume designer. She also reflects on her experiences with talented actors Lily Gladstone and Isabel Deroy-Olson, the significance of community in indigenous storytelling, and the heartfelt moments that made this project so special. Get an inside look at how the Fancy Dance costumes came together, blending authenticity and creativity to create a powerful cinematic experience.
Spencer Williams: I am so happy to welcome Fancy Dance costume designer, Amy Higdon. Hey, Amy. How’s it going?
Amy Higdon: I’m good. How are you?
Spencer Williams: Good. It’s so good to meet you finally. I’m such a fan already, and this is your first feature, and I’m already such a fan. I just love Fancy Dance and the costumes. The performances were spectacular. Lily Gladstone was a triumph, as usual. But this wasn’t your first time working with Lily, at least in the same space as Lily, because you worked with costume designer Jacqueline West and consultant Julie O’Keefe on Killers of the Flower Moon, which was nominated for an Academy Award in costume design. So, what was that experience like, and how did it prepare you for Fancy Dance?
Amy Higdon: Killers of the Flower Moon was an experience like no other. Jacqueline West is a costume designer I’ve admired for a long time. I first learned who she was when she did The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio. I was blown away by the detail and research that went into that film. It was a pinch-me moment to be part of that team. I was a background fitter, so my main concern was doing men’s background costumes. Julie O’Keefe came by early in the fitting process and did a workshop on Osage dress. What I loved about Julie was that she didn’t just teach us the rules of dressing; she explained the reasons for certain style choices and contextualized Osage people in that period. This was really helpful when dressing them.
When you’re a background fitter, you work under a supervisor. Joe Cigliano was mine, and he’s worked with Jacqueline West many times. He took a lot of time to teach us the period and allowed us to create characters for the background actors we were fitting, which was like a design master class. I learned a lot by watching Jacqueline work on set and seeing the kind of leader she was. It definitely prepared me for Fancy Dance.
Spencer Williams: I can’t think of a more perfect preparation. But let’s get into Fancy Dance and the costumes because it is such a worthwhile film, and I hope everyone runs to see it as soon as possible. It’s set in a contemporary period on the Seneca-Cayuga Nation reservation in Oklahoma. How did you approach designing costumes for life on a reservation with an authentic portrayal?
Amy Higdon: It helps because the script that Erica Tremblay and Miciana Alise wrote felt real, like everything was on the page. I’m Indigenous, from Oklahoma and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and as I was reading it, I felt like I knew people like Jax and Roki in my life. I instinctively pictured them in a few different outfits as the story progressed. I had a pretty strong idea of what they would look like, and then Erica and I collaborated to reach the final look. We knew Lily was attached to the project, so I was already imagining what they would look like in clothes I’ve seen my whole life, like cut-off T-shirts and athletic pants. It felt very instinctual.
Spencer Williams: This film is about real people and real experiences. The best research is the kind you’ve had growing up around this. I’d love to hear more about your collaboration with director Erica Tremblay and the vision for the Fancy Dance costumes . This was also her first feature narrative directorial debut, right? Lots of firsts happening here.
Amy Higdon: Yes, and that’s what was so exciting about it. It was such a joy to work with Erica because she was always receptive to my ideas, and more often than not, we had the same image in our heads. She did an excellent job keeping me true to the path we forged in our first meetings. Sometimes, the truth isn’t always super cute, and people repeatedly wear older clothes or the same clothes. For Lily’s character, Jax, everything she does goes into surviving, so she probably only has a couple of pairs of pants. She will wear those for a week because they fit and are comfortable. Erica reined me in whenever I wanted to stray from that, ensuring we stayed true to the character. Her guidance was invaluable and a big part of the design’s success. It was wonderful.
Spencer Williams: It sounds like a great collaboration, which I assume even carried into working with the actors. Lily Gladstone plays Jax, who is also Roki’s aunt. Jax is such a strong character; your heart breaks for her throughout this film. She’s so tough and real, and you can tell that life hasn’t been easy for her leading up to this point. So, what was it like designing costumes for this character and working with Lily on Fancy Dance?
Amy Higdon: Yeah, Jax reminded me of a couple of girls I went to high school with, and we were on the basketball team together. There’s a certain style they’re drawn to. It was also important to express a certain level of queerness through her clothes because that’s part of Jax’s character. It was about keeping it functional and tough, but she also carries a kokum scarf, the floral scarf you see on her blue pants in the upper left picture. Kokum scarves are used in powwow regalia, and they’ve become popular in fashion. Lily brought that to her first fitting and said she wanted Jax to always have it on her as a tie into Jax’s past as a powwow dancer and her mother, who is no longer there. That brought a level of softness to all her changes.
You have the more athletic, a bit more masculine style, but there’s also that matriarchal, intergenerational bond foundational to who she is. The athletic clothes came from those girls I went to high school with, and the cutoff T-shirts are often seen on reservations. Those were my influences for Lily’s character.
Spencer Williams: What was it like working with Lily Gladstone?
Amy Higdon: Oh my gosh, Lily’s a dream. Lily’s amazing. I can’t say enough about Lily. This could just be an interview where I talk about how great Lily is. They’re so kind and creative, thinking about the story holistically. They have a foundation in theater, and actors who start in theater often have a different rapport with their costume designers and customers. In theater, you’re backstage with a dresser most nights, or in smaller productions, you look after your costumes. Lily’s always aware of herself, what she’s wearing, and how she’s wearing it.
One thing I loved was during fittings; she wouldn’t look in the mirror when we first put clothes on. She would first walk around and feel them, understanding how the clothes felt on her body and how she could move in them. That helped me understand who Jax was for me, watching her move around the room as Jax and discover Jax. There were times when a shirt didn’t feel right and times when it felt perfect, like, “Oh yeah, this is Jax. Let’s go in this direction.” It was just great working with her.
Spencer Williams: Speaking of those shirts, I must say that she wears a vertical striped shirt for most of the second half. It’s a great shirt. I want that shirt. I know that’s not the point, but I want it. It’s one of my favorite costumes in Fancy Dance.
Amy Higdon: Thank you! I think I bought it at the Tulsa mall. One of Erica’s notes was that Jax is cool, has a sense of style and a bit of swagger, and is strong and secure in herself. Playing that up in her clothes was a lot of fun.
Spencer Williams: That’s so funny. It was so intentional. I want to move on now to talk about Isabel DeRoy-Olsen, who plays Roki. Phenomenal. Roki is a teenager going through a very tough time. All she wants is to have her family together and to be at the powwow to celebrate culture and community. We see Roki take after her aunt a bit, but also being inspired by her mother. I love the jacket she wears throughout the film. It brought such softness and kindness.
Amy Higdon: Oh my gosh, Isabelle was great. She was seventeen when we filmed this movie, so her mom was with her all the time, her sibling would come to set, and her dad was there a couple of times. We all got to know her and her family. It goes back to that feeling of collaboration and community. Erica did a good job fostering this sense of community on set. In indigenous storytelling, how we tell the story and how we come together to do it is important. In Isabelle’s case, it became a family thing. Her family came down to Oklahoma with her. She’s a professional and wonderful person to watch and chat with during fittings.
Having Lily guide her through leading a movie for the first time was beneficial. Isabelle was great.
Spencer Williams: Yeah. You could feel the professionalism and true love between the two of them. I wanted to ask you about Roki’s jacket. It’s a purplish color.
Amy Higdon: Yeah. Erica and Miciana wrote into the script that it’s a purple jacket with long shiny fringe, part of a cowboy dancing set her mom would have worn while working as a stripper. When Roki first puts it on, she’s also wearing pleaser heels, missing her mom, and playing dress-up. That’s the origin of the jacket in the story. Reading the script for the first time, I imagined a purple jacket with a long fringe. It changed in my mind as the script evolved. By the end of the powwow, I realized it was a dancing shawl, part of fancy dance powwow regalia. The shawls usually have long ribbon fringe. This jacket needed to be a cowboy dancing costume but transform into a dancing shawl for the final powwow scene. That was the main motivator for its shape and fringe.
The color purple became a symbol of love and family in our movie. Charlotte Royer and Tafv Sampson incorporated it into the sets. It needed to be a youthful shade of purple, fitting for Roki, who is meant to be 13 in the film. It had to be youthful with a bit of levity, rooted in her mom’s past as a stripper but ending as a dancing shawl for the powwow. The jacket had to do a lot, and I’m glad it worked.
Spencer Williams: The piece had much to carry, from a stripper’s costume to regalia. I mean, it made it. This wasn’t an original question of mine, but are we to believe that Roki’s been staying with Jax for a while now? Is Roki borrowing some of Jax’s clothes?
Amy Higdon: Yes, that’s that first shirt she wears, the wolf shirt in the opening scene. That whole first scene is Jax passing on knowledge about plant gathering, survival, and negotiating prices for what they bring. Roki mimics her body language. We bought that shirt at a thrift store in Tulsa, intending it for Lily Gladstone. But I think it might have been Erica’s suggestion to see how it looked on Roki. When we put it on her, it was like a lightning strike. We realized she was wearing Jax’s old T-shirt.
Spencer Williams: That’s so cool. I love that shirt.
Amy Higdon: Yeah, it’s a good shirt.
Spencer Williams: Let’s talk about the powwow, which takes place at the very end of the film. It was absolutely beautiful. It takes place at a very sad part of the film, but when you see Jax and Roki dancing among the beautiful regalia surrounding them, you can’t help but smile and be proud despite the sadness. In that moment, nothing else matters. How did the scene come together? I must imagine it was a huge feat to get this all together.
Amy Higdon: Yeah. If it hadn’t been so soon after COVID, we probably would have gone to a powwow somewhere. But we had to throw our own. It goes back to the community aspect I touched on. Tafv Sampson, our set decorator, is originally from Oklahoma and has worked here for a long time. Erica, too. We could call the community and tell them what we were doing, and they would come and have our back. That’s what’s beautiful about that scene—all the people in it are actual powwow dancers.
If you invite people to come and put on a powwow, they’ll do it and bring so much of themselves to it. They’re enthusiastic to participate. Native people don’t often get representation on screen, and when they do, it’s not usually a Native person controlling the narrative. People were excited by the opportunity to be in a movie starring Lily, directed and written by indigenous women. It comes across in the scene. The regalia is deeply personal, often made by loved ones or other tribe members. They’re essentially couture pieces. We wouldn’t have been able to recreate them as richly or in such detail with the time we had. Seeing all those people surrounding Lily and Isabelle adds another layer of emotion. They’re community members who came out to help us tell this story. I always cry during that scene. I’ve seen the movie three times, and I always cry.
Spencer Williams: I mean, I was crying too. I could feel that sense of community throughout the film. I wasn’t positive, but that’s what I assumed, and it just makes the ending much more powerful. Wow. Amy, Fancy Dance was such an incredible film and I loved the costumes. I’m so glad I got to talk to you, but I have to ask: this is your first feature. What has this project meant to you? I can’t even imagine.
Amy Higdon: I’ve wanted to be a costume designer since I was sixteen. It’s always been a goal of mine. It can take a while to work up to that point, and there’s a lot you need to learn and a lot of years you need to put in. I’m kind of surprised the opportunity came to me when it did. I wasn’t expecting it. It almost feels like it fell in my lap in many ways.
When I read the script, I thought, there’s no way this is real, that this is the first script I get offered. It’s more than a dream come true because I don’t think I could have imagined this if I tried. I admire Erica as an artist, as well as Lily and Isabel. My team, who I got to hire for this film, are all indigenous women from Oklahoma, and we’re all really good friends to this day. It brought so many of us together. I might tear up thinking about it, but it’s meant a lot. It’s been a wonderful experience.
Spencer Williams: Well, you and your team should be so proud because this was a fantastic film. I’m excited to see what comes next for you. If this is the first, it’s only going up from here. Costume designer Amy Higdon this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for talking with us about Fancy Dance and the costumes.
Amy Higdon: Thank you so much. It’s been great.
