Asian A.V. Club newsletter #11
From the hit indie comedy 'Bottoms', we talk to costume designer Eunice Jera Lee on her 'serendipitous' career path, collaborating with Justin Chon & how working on 'Bottoms' was personally healing.
Eunice Jera Lee has spent the past decade expressing her creative eye through costuming. Whether on fashion shoots or music videos, Eunice brought a certain kind of flair to her work, which in the past few years has transitioned onto the big screen. With her collaborative partnership over the years with director Justin Chon (Gook, Blue Bayou) and now on the unapologetic queer fight-club teen comedy Bottoms (dir: Emma Seligman), Lee is fast becoming a go-to costume designer with an exciting point of view.
We recently chatted with Lee about her interesting career path and how she’s been able to insert her distinct identity on all the projects she’s worked on.
Asian A.V. Club: I’m always curious about creatives who live in a world of fashion and clothing. Do you remember what was your first memory that made you realize that you had this interest in clothes as a possible career?
Eunice Jera Lee: You know, it's really funny. I feel like my life is just filled with serendipity. In middle school, I wore uniforms. And then in high school, it was the golden era of Abercrombie and Hollister. I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I was very much sucked into that world being from Orange County. (laughs) But because I was raised in the suburbs, the town felt really small. It was just more about acclimating and trying not to be individualistic.
I then went to Parsons [School of Design] for advertising and photography. And at the time, it was all about Project Runway so, every opportunity was fashion based. I remember getting my first internship at Vivienne Tam, this Chinese New York designer, and that was really eye opening for me. But my next internship was at [media company] Conde Nast and that's when I saw the styling world. And it was my ‘aha’ moment. I realized that loved being able to tell stories through clothing and I think that's where the adventure started for me.
Asian A.V. Club: I love how you went to both Parsons and Central Saint Martins, which are breeding grounds for ‘super’ fashion types and yet you went for a practical responsible education in advertising. Was that the deal you made with your parents in order to go to these schools?
Eunice Jera Lee: It's funny, my sister is a doctor, she got an early decision at Johns Hopkins [University], and she’s kind of this Christian Korean perfect child. (laughs) And I was a bit rebellious. I remember only doing well in the classes that I liked, and everything else just kind of fell away to the wayside. I was forced into these AP classes that, looking back, I probably could have been very successful with, but I had no desire to learn any of it. So, when I got into Parsons, I think my family just went wow, that's a really good school, let's just see where it takes her.
Growing up, all the way through college and even at Central Saint Martins, my mom would say, “You know, you can always fall back, and you can become a teacher.” And I went, “Wow, not even a lawyer. Thanks, Mom.” (laughs) There was almost that desire to kind of prove them wrong. But I also had a dad who was just such a feminist. He always told me that I was capable of so much more. I don't think that there was ever any resistance to my going into the arts because I don't think that my parents had enough of an understanding of what I could do with that kind of degree. And frankly, I neither did I. I didn't even know about shoots or styling until I moved to New York.
Asian A.V. Club: You said your career has been very serendipitous, how did the Conde Nast internship become your gateway into styling and then costume?
Eunice Jera Lee: During my second year at Parsons, a woman named Bridget Foley came to speak to a very small group of us. At the time, she was the executive editor of W and Woman’s Wear Daily and I remember just striking up a conversation after her lecture. She kind of took a liking to me and gave me an internship at the Women's Wear Daily office in Los Angeles. Because I was the only one there day in and day out, I assisted the editors out in LA and really got to be part of the process of pulling clothing to the actual production of the shoots. And that's where I really fell in love with it.
When I said that about serendipity, I feel like things that aren't meant for me never seem to work out with 100% effort. But the opportunities that, I don't want to say they fall into my lap, but doors just seem to be open in a way that you can kind of just walk through as opposed to finding your way in.
As much as I loved it, I found styling to be so challenging, because there's very little money in that industry, unless you're in the top 1%. And so just being a stylist and moving from New York to London, it wasn't possible financially because, I didn't have the connections. With styling, I don't even think I really saw that part of my career come into fruition, midway through, I found costume design and doors did start opening there.
Asian A.V. Club: You started working with actor/writer/director Justin Chon. How did that collaboration come about and what has it been like to basically grow your careers together over the years?
Eunice Jera Lee: I don't know if I can shorten this story, but when I was living in London, I went to Seoul for a holiday. And I was introduced to a Korean American director (Benson Lee) who was doing research for his film Seoul Searching. I remember in our meeting, he said, I've already hired a costume designer, but I think that you could bring something to this. Would you mind going to Los Angeles and meeting with her. And it was, the incredible Shirley Kurata (Everything Everywhere All at Once). And after meeting with her I was back in Seoul helping on this film.
It was there that I met Justin Chon, who was playing the lead role. We hit it off and he told me he had aspirations of being a director. And a year later, he sent me a script for Gook. That film was our first collaboration as a costume designer and director. And that kind of ended up being this perfect marriage because it was a learning and teaching experience for the both of us. With someone like Justin, I feel so privileged to have started my career with him because he feels more like a brother to me than anything else. He's so educated and well versed in film, and he has such an interest in costumes. Actually, his father owned a few shoe stores in Los Angeles that were a part of the LA riots, which is where the idea of Gook came in to play. Watching him just kind of hit this new stratosphere of success and do all this amazing work, I just feel incredibly proud to have collaborated with him so many times.
Asian A.V. Club: How did you connect with Bottoms director Emma Seligman?
Eunice Jera Lee: I think the less exciting truth is that I got the script, and I honestly devoured it. I read it twice back-to-back because I was howling, and I just wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything. It was so fun and so camp, and I just fell in love with them. I knew I could bring a different type of perspective and I really wanted to work on something that highlighted the LGBTQIA community.
Personally, I felt like I had done a lot of storytelling from the Asian perspective, especially with Justin. But I hadn't really done that much exploration into the gay perspective, or my deep perspective. In a lot of ways, it was really healing to be able to steer the way these gay women are seen on film. I really wanted to carry the authenticity of youth. I wanted to show how some gay youths are portrayed while figuring out their sexual identity, because it was also a part of my growing up as well. And this film is stylized, and it's exaggerated at times, but it shows a spectrum that's usually reserved for mainstream, heterosexual characters.
Asian A.V. Club: How did you develop the look for our two main characters PJ (Rachel Sennot) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri)?
Eunice Jera Lee: I really wanted to make sure that we showed Josie’s individuality. She’s at the intersectionality of being black, female and lesbian. She is also much more secure of who she is. Josie is much more actualized and wears black designers. She's got her style that doesn't really shift through the entire film.
Whereas PJ is the epitome of this high school student who's very unsure of who she is. When you see her a lot of times, she's dressed like Josie. And sometimes after she hangs out with Britney (Kaia Gerber), or she sees Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) in something, she's kind of dressed like them. PJ is kind of a style chameleon. She copies and takes from random characters, and I think that was really important because that shows what state a high school insecure girl is feeling at the time.
Asian A.V. Club: Do colors come into play when you’re creating the looks for each character?
Eunice Jera Lee: The color palette was really important because the colors of the school were so vibrant. In the beginning of the film, when you see them wanting to fit in a bit more, they're in the rugby shirts, and they're very much representing the school colors. But when the Fight Club becomes really popularized at the school, you see a shift, and the colors start straying away from blues and reds. I wanted to make sure that you knew exactly where the character stood at each moment, and not just those two, but every character in the film.
Asian A.V. Club: When I’ve visited the costume departments on film sets before, you always get to see this wall of characters with outfits and inspiration images. How did you map out all the looks for ALL the characters in this film, and did the looks change as the characters stories progress?
Eunice Jera Lee: Thank you for recognizing that. I feel like with each character in Bottoms, because of the passage of time, there were so many different changes. Essentially, the way that I work is they each have a closet. And so, like most high school students, there's pieces that you have to repeat throughout the school year, because you don't just have a new outfit every single day of the year.
We do multiple fittings where we put things together. And the first one is primarily just to really identify what their style is who they are as a person and as a character. But as you get into the hundreds of changes during the fittings, that's when you start putting things together. And you’re right, we had this huge wall and each character had their own row, and it would just go by changes.
For example, Josie is feeling this in the moment, and she needs to be covered up in a hoodie, because she's feeling low and down. And then as you go, you start recognizing, okay, there's too much green here, this it's a pattern frenzy and we need to move things around. So, you have to get into this perfect place where everyone is positioned, and everything feels congruous and dynamic. You’re really telling the story you want to tell through their costumes.
Asian A.V. Club: How does one be cost effective when you’ve got a huge cast like you do in Bottoms.
Eunice Jera Lee: Oh my gosh, we had to tap into every resource to make sure we got the right pieces. I shopped quite a bit at Wasteland, we also scoured Goodwill's, all the local thrift stores and Savers. I think I've dropped so much money at Savers. (laughs) But there's also an amazing resource called Thrilling that we use. They reach out to thousands of different vendors across the states to see if anyone has anything. Then they'll reach out with images and prices, and you kind of have to purchase it outright. But it's really worth it when you're looking for a specific piece.
Asian A.V. Club: Were there any outfits that had a no blood allowed rule on it?
Eunice Jera Lee: Oh yeah. For example, in the very start of the film at the fair, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) is in a Jacquemus fuzzy little short sleeve sweatshirt. I mean, we can’t afford to buy seven of those, so that had to be placed very intentionally. But anything that was put into these montage categories, or something that they would be fighting in, where blood was a possibility, we had to utilize changes to get the most use basically.
Asian A.V. Club: I gotta ask, can you even watch a movie now without thinking about the costume decisions that you see on the screen?
Eunice Jera Lee: Well, the short answer is no. (laughs) I think the last film that I saw, where I didn't pay attention to costumes at all until the very end was Mid 90s (dir: Jonah Hill). And it's the incredible Heidi Bivens who did the costume design. So, one of my favorite films is Kids (dir: Larry Clark) and Mid 90s kind of evokes that same feeling where it felt like you were getting a glimpse into someone's life. It wasn't so stylized, and it didn't really feel curated. And I think that shows a lot of success when it comes to costumes in a film.
Asian A.V. Club: OMG I can geek out with you for hours, but I have to go! Thank you for chatting with us.
Eunice Jera Lee: (laughs) Of course and thank you.