The ‘Landman’ Costumes Stay True to West Texas — Scorching Temps Included
Contemporary costume design is always a tricky prospect; we all have opinions about clothes we see regularly. But Emma Potter’s work on “Landman” came with an even higher degree of difficulty: She has to recreate the look of a Texan who spends his days in oil fields.
There’s a fine line between accuracy and caricature, but Potter’s clothes err on the right side. Sometimes to the possible chagrin of the actors, because co-creator Taylor Sheridan was adamant that the costumes be true to what the men on the patch wear. Even if that meant no respite from the West Texas sun.
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”It was actually a conversation point with Taylor that everybody needs to feel what it would feel like to be there,” Potter told IndieWire. “So we were doing essentially what guys out in the field would be doing. Like, they were wearing a straw hat and a thin, long-sleeved shirt, but they’re still out there in the heat. They’re still wearing boots. They’re still wearing jeans. And the guys playing all of our roughnecks were the same. They’re wearing sweat-wicking shirts underneath, but they’re in all the fire-retardant clothing. It wasn’t regular clothing made to look like that; it had all the layers of like protection on it, and it wasn’t breathable.”
The costumes and the clothes served a very specific purpose, though: For men who spend their work days in the relentless sun, protection becomes paramount. “As I started digging around, you realize they’re wearing the pale colors because it’s protecting them from the sun,” Potter said. “They don’t roll their sleeves because they want the sleeves down as protection. It’s amazing to see how dressed up these people still are in this heat, but how you also kind of need it for protection.”
And as with any subculture, nuances must be obeyed. And there is nothing more telling for a man in Texas than what brand and style of jeans he wears. For Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy, Sheridan had one directive: Levi’s 527s. “It was another thing where I was like, really?” Potter said. “And then I put them on him, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, these are perfect.'”
Photo research, conversations with Sheridan, and on-the-ground observation in Fort Worth built up an image bank for Potter, but nothing could help with aging denim except time. Ask any costume designer, and they’ll tell you the same thing: There is never enough time to age garments.
”I had the biggest aging team on this show that I’ve had,” Potter said. “When we started, I said, ‘Let’s go over to West Texas. Let’s get the samples of the soils and the materials, and then let’s start prepping.’ We were working on things as early as eight weeks out from even beginning to film and doing it continuously through the whole show. Just these cement mixers and machines running constantly the entire time, and people very delicately painting all of these little tiny details.”
Luckily, Ali Larter’s Angela served as a break from the crumpled denim — for both Potter and the audience. A brash Texan with a personality as big as an oil field, Angela is the kind of tough-talking woman Sheridan excels at creating. And dressing her was as much fun as watching her.
Finding Angela’s look took longer, partly because she’s relegated to FaceTime appearances for the first three episodes. But as she became more defined, her look became easier to determine.
”She became a real person,” Potter said of reading the later scripts. “And I had this moment of talking to [Larter] and realizing, like, yeah, she’s probably very into her clothing and her fashion and loves to shop. And we started digging around for vintage designer clothing. There’s this beautiful vintage Ala?a leopard print moto jacket that she wears with her double leopard outfit, which is my favorite. It was one of the first outfits we put together, and it was like, this is Angela right here. She wears vintage Levi’s 517s, and then she’s pairing it with Louboutins. I loved where she came together. She felt very unique and individual, but also very fashion forward and indicative of that area.”
“Landman” Season 1 is streaming on Paramount+.
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