Instead of the usual list of brands and designers he’s collaborated with in the past, costume designer Mitchell Travers went straight to the source and shopped in Washington Heights.
opening number, they “live with just enough.”So often movies feature the astronomically wealthy, “so you try to cram as many costume changes as possible,” Travers says. “But this movie is not about that, it’s about ordinary working people in New York City.
Set in a back alley, the scene shows a crowd of Washington Heights residents gathered under flags from Caribbean and Latin American countries. “There is this intensity to the color of the flags that we wanted to pull into the costumes,” says Travers. “By the time we start that crescendo at the end, it’s a really powerful image of all of these people celebrating where they’re from.
With such a big cast, the production challenged the costume designer to think on a large scale. “It’s not every day that you work on a movie that shuts down entire blocks to fill with 100 extras,” he says. In crowd scenes, Travers would “paint with a big brush,” establishing an overall look that felt true to the story, but also take the extra step of creating distinct characters of the neighborhood.
Travers also referred to costume designer Courtney Flores’s original Broadway costumes, eager to pay tribute to original Usnavi, once played by Miranda. From the first meeting with the Puerto Rican creator, Travers brought up the possibility of using the golf hat that Usnavi wore on the Broadway stage.
“I wanted them to know that this was still Usnavi,” Travers says. “It was always about acknowledging the work that came before me.”
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