While I love musicals, I’m a little iffy on the whole movie-turned-musical-turned-back-into-a-movie-again thing. Hairspray, The Producers, and even Mean Girls did it, and I don’t think these really added to the originals — meaning, I loved the source movies and I’m OK with the musicals but that’s it, let’s call it done. But none the less, I gave the latest The Color Purple (2023) a shot, perhaps because the musical is based on both the original book and the 1985 movie. There’s enough differences (beyond the songs) that this latest version feels like a different adaption of the story.
I was surprised to see that the earlier movie actually runs 14 minutes longer than the new flick because I felt like the musical covers more ground and expands on more of the characters’ inner lives. Maybe that’s the power of the musical numbers? I did enjoy it and appreciated that the movie focuses on Black perseverance and Black joy in the face of trauma. Some of the musical set pieces have a fantasy escapist feel (including visuals that could only be done on film, not in a theater), but others are undercut with reminders of the harsh daily life for African Americans in the Jim Crow South. It’s a tricky balance that I think this movie threads nicely, at least for viewing pleasure. This adaption of Alice Walker’s novel isn’t breaking new ground, but the film brings out certain aspects of her story that weren’t emphasized in the earlier movie, so this does stand on its own.
Given that this was a big-budget production backed by now-megastar Oprah Winfrey and others (unlike the newbie she was at the time of the first filmed version), the production and costumes are top-notch. Costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck has a long resume but only a couple period productions like The Birth of a Nation (2016) and Glory (1989). However, she did work as the women’s costume supervisor on the 1985 Color Purple, so that’s pretty cool!
Jamison-Tanchuck needed to do historical research for this film because the story spans 40 years, even showing title cards to indicate the passage of time. Unlike my pet peeve of flicks that use title cards but don’t costume accordingly, this movie appropriately changes fashions as the years pass. As the costume designer told Deadline: “When we started with Color Purple, starting in 1910, all the way to 1946, all of those periods have their own different silhouette, and you just can’t get around that.”
The film opens with two young girls, Celie and her sister Nettie, who’s pregnant for the second time, having been raped by their father. Despite that dark premise, the songs are buoyant and the costumes are light.
I don’t know if it was intentional, but these scenes of the two girls in white dresses on the Georgia beach, sitting among the moss-covered trees reminded me of the visuals in the seminal art-house film Daughters of the Dust (1991). That film is about the Gullah community of African-Americans in Georgia and South Carolina around the turn of the last century.
Celie is married off to an older, abusive man referred to as “Mister,” and Nettie is sent away, removing joy from Celie’s life and closing the world around her. Adult Celie is played by Fantasia Barrino who has PIPES gawd damn! And Mister is played by Colman Domingo who has a hell of an acting range; I’d just watched him as a delightful person in Rustin and here he’s a horrible jerk, just as convincing. Mister’s oldest son marries a vivacious, bossy woman named Sofia (Danielle Brooks), who befriends Celie briefly. This part of the story is set around 1917, as both the title card and the costumes show.
In a Harpers Bazaar interview, costume designer Francine Jamison-Tanchuck was asked what details she was proud of, and she said:
“For me, it’s the hats. We’re going through so many different eras, from the 1900s to the 1940s, and they tell a story. People wore a lot of hats and gloves in those days, and I think a hat says something. When Shug comes into town, she wears hats, and those hats inspire Celie. It was important to get a lot of those particular details correct.”
Because, that’s right, hats aren’t just for losers!
Then it’s 1922 when Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) comes to town. She’s a jazz singer who Mister has been having an affair with since before he married Celie. Shug’s juke-joint performance from the 1985 movie is iconic, and this version took direct inspiration. In an A.Frame interview, Francine Jamison-Tanchuck admitted that she looked to the original movie’s costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers:
“I said to Aggie, my mentor, I said, ‘Aggie, I’m going to borrow your design of the pearls around that headdress.’ And she said, ‘Oh, go for it, honey!’ We started with a base of a headdress and adding more ostrich, and more pearls, and more everything so it can just splash. When Shug entered on the barge, when she was coming in on the boat with those guys, she had to really stand out.
I wanted to lengthen the slit up the side. I mean, I’m going for it a little bit, but I also had research to show the entertainers of the early and mid ’20s, they were nearly nude! So, if I was putting slits up almost to her hip, who cared! It gave her enough room and movement to do the choreography.
And I wanted the dress to have beading as fringe. It wasn’t cotton fringe. It was really small seed beads that acted as the fringe, so they could move even more with her.”
While it’s spectacular onscreen, I did think this dress looked a little modern in fit, not the straight up-and-down of typical ’20s beaded gowns. Which it was, and consciously so! Francine Jamison-Tanchuck told The Hollywood Reporter:
“In the very beginning, something that I was trying out was another concept that was a little bit more sack-y, for the ’20s. But the sack-iness of the ’20s really doesn’t work for Shug. It had to be a bit more fitted. She had to be able to dance — she was on top of the tables. The costume had to really be able to move with the choreography and with her body.
Everything was tripled, because once she is moving, you really do not want to interrupt the direction, the choreography. If anything happens, and there’s a snag on one of those beads, there’s no way you’re going to be able to put that back together.”
After the juke joint scene, there’s a fantasy sequence where Celie and Shug appear as if they’re in a 1920s movie with a big band, and both are wearing elegant ’20s beaded gowns that have a more period shape overall. This is part of the romantic relationship that develops between Celie and Shug, which is still pretty subtle in this movie, just a smidge more open than the faint allusion in the 1985 one.
The glam clothes are fun, but this isn’t a high-glam movie. In this daytime scene, still around 1922, Shug is wearing a fashionable fluttery drop-waist dress, but Celie and Mary “Squeak” Agnes (H.E.R.) are still wearing late 1910s-style dresses with slightly raised waistlines. Because they’re poor and practical, so they’re going to wear everyday clothes as long as possible.
In 1930, Sofia gets into a fight with the white mayor’s wife and is thrown in jail. Celie is the only one to visit her, wearing this dress, again with proper accessories and lovely details:
In the A.Frame interview, Francine Jamison-Tanchuck noted that this is about when things begin to turn in Celie’s wardrobe:
“It was going through all the eras, and in 1935, showing how Celie was finally coming into herself. She was gaining her strength, and that was the time to introduce purple in some of her clothing. That’s another really great thing that [director] Blitz [Bazawule] and I decided to do there.”
The costume designer was happy to put period details into each era of the film, telling Harpers Bazaar:
“We had these beautiful buttons on the 1930s and 1940s garments. I wanted to make sure that it was something that not necessarily stood out, but felt complete. Those are the things that complete period costumes. You just have to be careful about when did zippers come in, what kind of stitching was happening in those periods’ outfits. For me, in period films, you would be surprised how the audience really sees and focuses on those things — and how they can really interrupt a scene if they’re not right.”
It’s like she knows us :D
There’s also a fun sequence in 1945 where Celie opens her own pants shop, and you know how much we love sewing (even just talking about it) in a movie!
Have you seen the musical The Color Purple?
I went to see this movie and even though the opening shot told us it was 1910, it wasn’t until the first musical number when the townsfolk come out in their Edwardian Sunday best that I realized “oh wait, this is a frock flick!”
I was disappointed that this didn’t get at least a nomination for best costume design at the Oscars because the costumes were just fantastic. They were glamorous eye candy when the story calls for it, but also the film nails the fine details of using the right costumes throughout to show the passing of time and character development.
(Also, I almost died when THOSE shiny pants showed up on screen. You KNOW the director picked out that fabric and the costume designer gave a heavy sigh. I used to work in designing/making uniforms for color guard, and I can tell you exactly where that fish scale foil lycra was sourced 😆)
I agree, this was criminally overlooked at the Oscars!