In conversation with costume designer Ane Crabtree

AC: You know, accidental could be another euphemism for fraudulent, as artists always feel. I call it the ghetto superstar style of costume design. I never studied it; I never worked for anybody as an assistant. My trajectory was landing in a puddle and deciding I liked it there.

The accidental part was being born in this concoction of a person, with so many different influences and cultures that it didn't quite make sense on paper. But it has been an absolute gift because it shapes my approach to everything.

Being born in this body, in a very race-torn south, in a very poor place, I realise that being this mixed person makes me approach scripts and characters in a certain way. I want the whole world and the entire audience to relate, and I'm so many different types of people.

Maybe that's the through-line to your work, that approach. Because I wouldn't say there's an "Ane Crabtree look". It's more about multiplying perspectives… I come at things so strangely. I don't think it's strange anymore, but if you've never worked with me, it might appear very strange on the surface.

The truth is that I don't know any other way. I don't know what other people have done. I don't watch TV, and I only see films when I'm dying to be inspired because I don't want to be influenced.

Thirty years ago in New York, this woman who had been in the business for a while said, "Where the hell did you come from? No one's heard of you." And that's kind of been my thing. I didn't realise people were supposed to hear of me first.

AC: I tried to move to New York when I was 17, and my parents were like, "Really? How long do you think you'll last?" So I went to England first – they let me do that.

So '85, I moved to New York with maybe $600 in my pocket. I moved with my best friend, and we lived in a crack hotel with no phone and a shared bathroom down the hall. It was a really cute place, but it was literally six foot wide.

We lived quite close to Penn Station, and we would go, two kids from Kentucky, up to the roof just to be entertained because there were so many fights. But it's such an education to grow up on the street when life is like that because you've got to start moving faster, talking faster, thinking faster.

I really was very poor, but I was excelling at such a rapid pace. I was learning, I was cramming so much visual in. Street fashion was huge, and I was in with a lot of fashionable kids.

I was seeing Andy Warhol, I was seeing Keith Haring, I was seeing Bianca Jagger in the club scene. Deborah Harry and Basquiat. And I'm like, these are real people. They're gritty people with a point of view that the wealthy want to hang out with. That was New York, that was the 80s. Fuelled with lots of clubs and parties and mayhem.

It's hard to square that New York with the city I've been to…

Where did it go? I really want to know where they fucking put it.

AC: I suck at organising my photos. I'm always like, "Wait a minute. I have it here somewhere." It's awful because I do have it, because I never stop taking photos for myself, for the job, for life. I've always been that girl since I can't even remember. I was always taking pictures of the most mundane things and recording the craziest things. I read once that before 5am, birds sing for themselves, and then as the sun comes up, it gets weaker. So I would get up in the dark with my bad cassette player and record them.

This is where I work every day, and every surface is covered with sketches and photos. It's kind of nutty if you don't know what you're looking for.

AC: I don't think of a character in terms of what they're wearing. I want to know who this person is before we meet them.

I throw out these crazy things to lovely producers and directors who don't think I'm mad, thank God. And they're excited because they've seen sketches and costume boards before, but directors and DPs get it.

AC: I go in, and I tell stories. I think a lot of that it's being Southern. We tell stories, we don't even mean to. Ask me how my day is, and you're like, "Oh, shit, she's gonna tell me something terrible about her day." But it's inherent in my DNA.

And also being indigenous Okinawan, I can't get away from it. But it seems to work. So when I'm talking about it, with an actor especially, or a director, or my team, I'm saying, "Here's how this feels." I'm saying the feeling first.

AC: ​I'm actually not a confident person. I'm really shy, and I'm always stuttering and questioning myself. I'm so oddly put together that I forget how to do the job every single time. I'm like, how do I get started?

About 30 years ago, I started making these movies about how each episode of a show should look. This is my version of the costumes. It may look like a million other things, but you can read the script and watch this, and you're going to see the same thing.

These movies are a way for me to get the point across, and I infuse them with so much emotion and psychology that they're like, "Oh my god, she's got it. I don't ever need to talk to her again. Or say no to her, because the vision is so clear and indisputable," right? That's my ego as an artist.

But I actually can't stand talking. I'm so shy, so having to repeat things all the time is exhausting. But if I hand somebody a movie of my plan, I'm done. I don't have to talk.

And so secretly, I'm going to show the actors too. Part of me is like, is the DP going to get mad because I'm making my version of what it should look like visually? Is a director going to get mad because I'm telling my own story?

I cared about that because I think women often overthink things and then stop themselves creatively. But my 2020 is – what would a white straight man think? They wouldn't even go there! They would just be proud of their work. And so my 2020 is, don't overthink it.

I haven't really asked actors, but I know that they miss those things when I'm gone because I get a lot of emails like, "We miss you putting on a certain song." They're enveloped in a warm space, to do their thing without fear. Whatever it takes, right?

AC: On The Handmaid's Tale, I thought about all the things that had been taken away from women. And I wanted to give the women a poetry, visually, that nobody could take away. Also for women who are seemingly angry, bitter, dark characters on the surface, like a Serena Joy or Naomi, nobody is painted that way through and through.

I wanted them to have many layers so they wouldn't just feel angry. They're not allowed to have sex, and they have to watch their husbands having sex with someone else, so I lined their pockets with the very softest cashmere so that they would have something tactile on the inside of their clothes that only they would see, feel or touch. It's my way of being responsible to the actors, but really, in the bigger picture, I want to control that frame. And if someone has a little extra, they will use it.

Another thing, there were braces on the commanders, and I would go in every morning and tighten them so that they would be so taught against the actor's chest that he would be slightly uncomfortable. I find ways of throwing in secrets because who doesn't like a secret?

AC: It's crazy-making. I'm not kidding. I'm not ashamed to say that I had to take time off right after that show. Had I known what I was going to get into personally by taking that job, I probably would have said no. It was torturous, because of my own trajectory with sexual abuse and violence and not being able to have a baby – all those things that happen to women on that show. It triggered so much.

But I literally went right to work because of it; it was like conquering something. There were moments where I wasn't strong. But when you have to build a world, you have no time for self-pity or self-indulgence. Everything gets triggered and goes into an act of creation. It's really kind of sacred.

And then after a year-long press tour with Hulu, I started getting my work in museums. Plural! I wanted that as an artist. I never got it, but I got it for this iconic thing. I still get emotional talking about it, but to have something transcend what it started as, it's really mind-blowing. You realise how small you are in the universe; you get knocked off your ego pedestal because it's not about you. And that's the most beautiful thing.

If your art speaks to others, then you've done your job. I still get people writing to me, showing me what they've made or the protests, the Women's Marches. I don't know if it'll ever go away, because women's situations everywhere are still in peril. And, urgh, it kills me.

AC: ​Well, The Sopranos was full-on, real immersive stuff. David Chase and I wanted to have real things on James Gandolfini. I didn't know that I was going to a real made men store which wasn't a store but a front, right? Like only five shirts and stuff in the back. And it was the best education actually because I fell in love with those mafia guys.

Whether it's historical and real or building a dystopian world based on somewhat fictitious mores, I still base everything in reality. I come from a hardscrabble Midwest Southern place, so reality is what I always saw. Now, it led me to want fiction and fashion in New York, to get away from that.

But what I always want is for the audience to believe what they're seeing. And you cannot have that unless you have absolute reality or an absolute reality that is constructed in a sense that it's near reality.

There might be other people who know how to do "fantasy, fantasy," but I never really enjoy that.

I can't lie, and so I can't make something which I don't believe in. And I don't want anyone to ever be dubious and say that the costumes didn't further an amazing story, or an amazing performance, or a frame where you're so lost in the world that you're not looking for the lighting package or the tape holding the clothes together.