From Wings to Stars: Costume Designer Gersha Phillips on Redesigning Captain America
Gersha Phillips is no stranger to the kind of immediately recognizable costumes that tell a viewer immediately what world she’s in, like the intergalactic looks and Starfleet designs she crafted for the recent Star Trek feature Section 31 and the Star Trek series Discovery and Strange New Worlds. Skewing to the realism side of the closet, Phillips has designed the duds for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic The Woman King. However, for her first Marvel project, Phillips entered an entirely different kind of sartorial world for director Julius Onah’s Captain America: Brave New World. Not a world, in fact, but a universe—the MCU.
The latest chapter in the Captain America series features Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) wielding the iconic red, white, and blue shield and a suit capable of more than just flight. As the new Cap, he’s dropped into a political conspiracy that reaches the highest echelons of power, involving President Ross (Harrison Ford) and a villain working in the shadows and working out some longstanding beefs. Adding an emotional element to the high-stakes, Sam is also dealing with the framing of his friend and a former super soldier, Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly).
Phillips recently spoke with The Credits about the challenges and joys of entering the MCU for Sam Wilson’s for stand-alone feature as Captain America.
What was it like entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe on a film that is a bit more grounded than some of the spacier, wilder installments?
With the way Julius was approaching it, he wanted it grounded. We knew that we wanted to push the look a little because it’s set in 2026, so it’s a year ahead. When we were shooting it, it was two or three years ahead, which made us think about how to approach it. What that makes you do, especially in the world of government, is keep things cleaner. One thing I do remember from my first meeting with Julius was that the movie he referenced from my work was Narc, which is from the beginning of my career. Once he said that, I knew he wanted something real and a sense of immediacy.
This is your first Marvel production, so what was new about the experience?
Being my first time with Marvel, the pressure was on to deliver and make something great. Most designers do not make the suits themselves, but because I come from Star Trek, we took on the journey of learning how to make them and trying to make them more comfortable for the actors. I really wanted to take that on and do it ourselves.
The movie is largely set in Washington, D.C., which is a city that is buttoned up and business-suited. You got Harrison Ford almost always in a dapper suit as President Ross. How did the political world influence your choices for the President?
I did a half-season of House of Cards, so I had a bit of a pre-journey through that world. You look at everything. For Harrison as the president, we had a lot of conversations about his look. He didn’t want to appear like an “old president.” He wanted to look clean and hip, but he’s particular and precise about his costumes. Our first fitting was a journey. At the beginning, I thought, “Oh no,” but by the end, we had found common ground.
What common ground did you find?
Harrison loves Paul Smith suits. They make a very thin suit with a thin leg. I felt his leg should have been a little fuller and his whole silhouette a bit wider. What we ended up doing was using two suits to make one suit style. We took pants from a smaller size and paired them with a jacket from a bigger size to achieve the look I wanted. That was our little journey and the hack we used to make it work for him. We also had a whole color palette for the movie where we didn’t want to show much red. We included little hints of it, mostly in the president’s costume. When we first see him, he has a stripe in his tie.
Since it’s pivotal to the story, what did you hope to achieve with Isaiah Bradley’s wedding suit?
We aimed for a tactile feel, but one element that falls slightly outside that world is Isaiah Bradley’s wedding suit. I wanted it to feel very old, as though he had kept it very carefully because it was precious to him. They didn’t want it to look too broken down or aged, but technically, it could have been in pieces by now. So, we kept it relatively fresh, which is my only little angst in the movie.
He looks beautiful in it.
Carl is such a wonderful man, and I loved that look. It was special to do that with him. I got over it sooner or later [Laughs]. I’ve only seen the movie once, and when you watch it, you see all your issues and problems. It also brings back all the journeys of those problems.
Such as?
One day, when we were building our suits, it was the first time they were going on camera. Anthony and Danny [Ramriez] were in them, and we were so behind in building them, that we were up for over 20 hours trying to finish the suits that day. It was a crazy ordeal to get them ready for the cameras on the first day. We managed to fix everything, but the problem with building these suits is that there’s a lot of experimentation, and sometimes, you don’t get enough time to work it through.
How do you solve that problem?
In the first couple of weeks of shooting, Anthony was not available to us. Danny wasn’t available to us as much as we needed. You need a good body double. We ended up finding somebody and padded them out to make that work so we could have more fittings. You could do a fitting twice a day, literally as you’re building, which is what you need. We had these bodies for Anthony’s body, things they had made for other iterations in Cap movies, but neither of them were the size he is today. They were in very awkward positions, which also prevented the costume from sitting the same way on the body.
No matter the size of the production, costume designers are always under immense pressure. How do you stretch every dollar?
When budgeting, especially with labor, we were tight. We had to figure it out. You form the budget. You read the script, break it down, and set priorities. Marvel has a big warehouse full of costumes that we could pull from for background characters, especially in the White House scenes. I wanted to spend more money there, but we couldn’t and put more of the budget into the lead characters’ costumes. The suits alone are around $250,000 each. We barter with our producers about how many multiples of each suit were needed. Anthony had five to six of his, plus two to three for the stunt performer.
What did you learn from the early fittings?
In fittings, we pull tons of options and try different looks to see what works best for the characters and actors. We also have to consider how their bodies change. Danny was getting very fit and losing weight. Anthony was doing what Anthony does. Harrison stays the same. Shira [Haas] lost some weight due to stunt training. Carl dropped a bit, too.
So many variables, right?
When you’re doing a film like this, the multiples are crazy. Anthony’s costume section on the truck took up two bays. There were multiples of all these suits – a flying suit, a hero suit that we didn’t want to touch for when he looks good, a dirty version of the hero suit, and so on and so forth. It’s a massive undertaking, even though, when I think about the other Marvel movies, this one is smaller because there aren’t as many characters. It’s a more concise movie, but still, it has a big footprint.
Captain America: Brave New World is in theaters now.
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“Captain America: Brave New World” Composer Laura Karpman Crews a New Beat for a New Cap
Featured image: Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Captain America in Marvel Studios’ CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD. Photo by Eli Adé. © 2024 MARVEL.
