Great Gowns, Beautiful Gowns: Jennifer Bryan and the Costume Design Behind ‘Genius: Aretha’

Aretha Franklin had a once-in-a-generation voice. And a life-long love affair with fashion. Armed with archival photos, knowledge of fashion history, and her imagination, costume designer Jennifer Bryan helped transform Cynthia Erivo into the Queen of Soul.

Now, on a break from her work on the final season of AMC’s Better Call Saul, Bryan joined Awards Daily‘s Shadan Larki to discuss the third iteration of the National Geographic anthrogogy series, Genius chronicling the trials and tribulations of Franklin’s life and career. Read on to learn how Bryan used color and an impeccable eye for detail to bring five decades of changing styles to the screen.

Awards Daily: I read that your research process for Genius: Aretha involved studying over 1,000+ photos.

Jennifer Bryan: Yes. The whole research aspect is such a tremendous tool, especially when you’re doing an icon like Aretha Franklin. It’s a combination of historical references and my imagination. In the beginning, I went through so many photographs to try to find the ones that were full-frame, head-to-toe so that I could see everything that she might’ve worn to a particular occasion or press photo. Old magazines were my source for the first part of our story timeline—the 40s, up through the 60s and 70s because that’s really all you had access to back then. And then, as we went further into the 80s and beyond, you had television shows and filmed interviews that she had done. I tried to collect every single thing that Aretha Franklin did in the public eye to get a sense of her style throughout the years. In the beginning, I think I had about six weeks to prep; I wish I had 12. But I had six weeks. And, I tell you Shadan, I just had to put on roller skates and go for it.

AD: The show features many of Aretha’s iconic moments with dresses that fans of hers will recognize. But, how did you handle scenes of her at home or moments where you didn’t have a frame of reference?

JB: Well, that’s where I was able to really expand on my imagination. So, you know, it’s not about the performance gowns, it’s about how people live—she wasn’t on stage all the time; she was home, she loved to cook. I actually found some photos of her in her kitchen cooking. It was pretty cool to get a sense of how she lived her home life and some of the things that interested her off-stage. It’s really about knowledge of costume history, fashion, and the period that you’re covering. You really have to take it through all the phases of somebody’s life, especially if they’re celebrities because they’re not ‘on’ time. What did they wear in the kitchen? Or in the bedroom? Or in the living room watching TV? I had to piece together what her life was like off the stage in terms of her style.

AD: I came across some of the sketches that you did in preparation for the show. I’m curious about taking an idea for a design from its inception to ultimately what we saw on screen.

JB: Initially, I did sketches of some of the high points that I knew about. You don’t get all eight episodes all at once. So I knew, what was coming up in the first couple of episodes, and I also knew about some of these historical references that I had to duplicate. Some of my sketches, as you may have seen, were not all only of Cynthia Erivo; but also her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin (Courtney B. Vance), Little Re (Shaian Jordan), her husbands (Malcolm Barrett, Luke James), and others.

And I also had a color palette set by [director] Anthony Hemingway, so I started to incorporate those colors and tones in the first batch of sketches that I did for the show. It was a collaboration between myself, the showrunner (Suzan-Lori Parks), and the director—using their vision and my imagination to come together and come up with something. And also the historical references that we have to adhere to. Because pretty much everybody on the planet knows Aretha and has seen images of Aretha, she is one of the most recognized public figures. So you have to adhere to what is out there.

AD: Does having such a recognizable subject like Aretha Franklin make a project like this more fun? Or is it intimidating?

JB: It depends on which part. If it’s a part where we’re retelling actual events that happened where we have a visual record of it, and they would want me to replicate that dress, that can get to be challenging because you’re looking at fabrics that don’t exist anymore. You’re looking at images that show up a different color. One of the famous ones I refer to is the lime green and ostrich feather dress.

AD: One of my favorites! I gasped when Cynthia came on screen in that dress.

JB: [Laughs]. There were just a handful of photos of that dress. There was a black and white one, and I was like, ‘Darn, that’s not going to help me!’ So between the production designer (Tim Galvin) and myself, we found the colored images, but the colors of the magazine print had changed over the years. Sometimes the colors of the dress looked light green, medium green, yellowish-green, and I had to finally say, ‘Okay, this is what I think is best. I used my imagination, what colors were popular, what tones were popular back then. So we did that. And then I discovered that the fabric had a blue line in it that I didn’t see in the photos, so I had to make that happen. And then we had all yards and yards of white ostrich feathers that I dyed that green color to match the fabric. It was a journey!

AD: Another one of my favorite dresses from the show that I have to ask you about is the blue velvet dress with the feathers around her neck. It’s just stunning.

JB: Well, I came up with that one the evening that I had my first interview with Suzan-Lori Parks about the project. And the meeting was great, and I was just like crossing my fingers and hoping that I would get to design the show because I wanted it so much, I could just feel it, you know? And that evening, I sketched that dress before I knew whether I was going to be doing the show or not. I sketched it literally as you see it and I said to myself, ‘Well if I get this show, I’m going to find a place to use this gown. And that’s exactly what happened. That design happened before I got the scripts and before I got hired for the show. So, I think it was my lucky piece.

AD: I love that! You mentioned earlier that you had a color palette and specific tones that you were working with in the costuming for Genius: Aretha. Can you tell me more about that?

JB: Yes, it was developed by Anthony Hemingway throughout the storyline, which is great for me because, personally, using color to tell a story is in my design toolbox. It’s something that I do, and I’m very comfortable with it because I think people subliminally pick up the message of what that color or that tone means. So he developed a color palette that lined up with the story, the episodes, and the high points and the low point of Aretha’s life as we tell it. He explained to me that he wanted cool gray here when this happens and yellow tones here and so on. So, once I got a hold of that and knowing that the production designer would be working from the same palette, I made sure that anything I designed was in keeping with the cadence that Anthony intended for the story. Basically, color became a part-time narrator of Aretha’s life.

AD: And I have to ask you about the costuming for the men because the intricate detailing and the color coordination with the suits is just stunning.

JB: Yes. When you’re doing a period piece, it’s great for women’s clothing because women save their clothes, and you can find beautifully curated vintage pieces of women’s clothing. For children, not so much because children outgrow clothes and aren’t saved as much. Same thing for menswear. Finding vintage menswear is really tough because a suit isn’t going to look glamorous like a gown does. So, if you’re hunting in a vintage store, the men’s section is going to be tiny compared to the women’s. So I built most of the pieces and then I did find some pieces; there’s a great sweater that Courtney B. Vance wears. But I did the suits from scratch with the correct lapel width and shaping.

When you think of men’s suits, you think it hasn’t changed much over the years, but it does shift— in fabrics and pocket details and little things like that. We don’t get to bling it up as we do with women’s clothing, but in menswear, it’s the shaping that changes, you know, the collar sizes. It’s all of those little design points that kind of tell you where you are in the timeline in terms of men’s wear. I did my best to adhere to that. I think a beautiful suit is just as important as a beautiful gown.

AD: Are there any other looks from Genius: Aretha that you wanted to highlight?

JB: Yes. And this one also comes from a historical reference. It was the 1977 Grammys, and Aretha was nominated. She did not win. She lost to Natalie Cole. We showed that event where she goes to the Grammys, in actuality because she didn’t win, there are very few press photos and they wanted me to copy the gown that she wore. I saw one three-quarter length photo and another one where she’s sitting at a table with Michael Jackson. I couldn’t find a full-length picture. I literally had the fabric made because I couldn’t tell if it was beading or crystals. You know, the old photographs, it’s not like digital, wasn’t accurate. We literally had to kind of approach it like I was building a building. We took it apart, laid it out, and looked at the patterns and the beading on the sleeve. And I’m telling you that you only see that dress for a short time in Genius: Aretha, it just looks like liquid, silver and gold. And I’m very, very proud of that.

AD: It’s so fun to have a show that just lets you have fun with fashion. I feel like that’s, I don’t know, missing in TV and film. Genius: Aretha felt like a fashion show every episode.

Yeah, I agree with you. It is missing. Especially in modern-day, contemporary TV, which you see the most of, it doesn’t leave you much room for imagination because it’s like the same clothes you’re putting on every day. So that fascination is lost. But when you get to do a period piece and get to do something with a little bit of an edge, I think viewers love that because it brings another level of creative storytelling into the things that they’re watching.

Genius: Aretha is available to stream now via National Geographic and Hulu.