Country music power couple George Jones and Tammy Wynette had one of the most complicated and storied relationships in entertainment. Between their highs and lows, their marriage, which lasted from 1969 to 1975, inspired some of country music’s most famous songs.
Showtime chronicled the couple’s love affair in its Emmy-nominated television series “George & Tammy.” The costumes, which spanned four decades from the late ’60s to mid ’90s, became a key element in telling the story of two of country music’s biggest legends. Jessica Chastain starred as Wynette opposite Michael Shannon as Jones.
To help bring the fashion to life in this biographical docudrama, the miniseries enlisted costume designer Mitchell Travers, whose credits include “Hustlers,” “Shotgun Wedding” and “In the Heights.” Travers and his colleagues Mitchel Wolf, Laurel Rose, Aileen Abercrombie, Susan Russell and Charles Carter are nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Period Costumes for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
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Travers previously worked with Chastain to costume her for her Oscar-winning role in “Through the Eyes of Tammy Faye,” where she played the title character.
Despite Wynette’s perseverance as a music icon and her songs like “Stand by Your Man,” Travers was actually more familiar with Jones, played by Shannon, before he dived into work for the film. Jones was known for his bold approach to color and pattern, making Travers a longtime fan.
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“George’s fashion ensembles and the way he dressed himself always caught my attention, especially as a costume designer,” Travers said. “While I was more familiar with George, I loved getting to learn more about Tammy Wynette and her style while working on this project.”
Travers’ process for costuming this project began with him and his assistant taking a road trip through the South. They hit all the major cities and went vintage clothing shopping at thrift stores, yard sales, private collector sales and Goodwill. They amassed a large collection of clothing they planned to use for shooting in Wilmington, N.C.
While they were on the road trip, word got out about him costuming the show, and many people they met would share stories about Jones and Wynette. This became part of Travers’ treasure trove of research that would aid him in understanding the characters.
One of Travers’ challenges was figuring out what looks he wanted to completely recreate and which ones he just wanted to have inspired by their style.
“There were moments in the film that were recreations of certain specific performances of George and Tammy’s, and there was the question of what was their exact look for that,” Travers said. “There were certain milestones in their career we wanted costumed to exactly recreate those moments and there were other moments where we created looks that were heavily inspired by what they wore. It became a balancing act of what needed to be exact and what could be embellished or just hinted at in some way.”
When it came to the album covers, the looks were completely recreated so they’d be virtually the same. Certain things, like a statement red hat Wynette wore for a finale performance, were actually paired down from the original so as not to distract from the performance.
Throughout his process of costuming the series, Travers happened to receive donations and find collectors who were willing to give some of Wynette’s original dresses for the film. Peanutt Montgomery, a singer, songwriter and friend of Jones and Wynette’s, had one of Wynette’s original dresses that had her makeup stains and cigarette burns on it.
According to Travers, one of the toughest episodes to costume in the series was episode three, where Jones and Wynette have a fitting room scene, which are very meta scenes for costume designers to work on. It required each character to have enough options, and even selecting things that intentionally weren’t supposed to work or end up in a performance.
A major challenge was that the series spanned four decades, from the ’60s to the ’90s.
“There were days before we’d break for lunch where the cast and crew were shooting a scene in 1968, I could come back from lunch and we’d have to move in 1975, by the end of day, we could be in the ’80s,” Travers said. “It took the costume team creating all sorts of crazy charts and graphics just so we could chart the evolution. The moodboard couldn’t just really live in one place, it was a collective mindhive of the whole costume team.”
When asked what his favorite part of costuming “George & Tammy” was, Travers responded, “Tammy Wynette’s shoes. Working on film and TV projects, so much of the action is shot from the waist up. Any chance to shoe shop is exciting for me as a costume designer because it’s such a special moment when the director agrees that shoes can really help tell this story.”
“George & Tammy” is now available for streaming on the Showtime app.