Film School Rejects: Extreme Earrings and Radical Tees: Designing the Look of ‘Sorry to Bother You’

The most immediate thing viewers will feel while watching Boots Riley’s trippy Sorry To Bother You is that they’re in a different world, not quite the slick Jetsons future or the past of a thrift store but another place, somewhere real and unreal. Mothball sweaters in woolly colors not fashionable since Mr. Rodgers and the old Kanye confront the sleek panache and costume of the future. The movie is about a telemarketer named Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) whose life is flipped by sudden professional success but it feels larger than that, Riley’s wraps itself around you and disquiets easy ways out. Much of this comes from that sheer visual effect, much of which is the creation of Deirdra Elizabeth Govan, Riley’s costume designer whose work on the movie has been praised as anchoring a “distinctive style” and a “revelation.”