Think of Tammy Faye Bakker, and the first thing that comes to mind is likely the signature look she honed over five decades in the spotlight. Fake eyelashes with thickly applied mascara laid over the top, framed by iridescent eyeshadow; a crop of reddish-blonde hair featuring a towering, tousled bouffant and cropped diagonal bangs; and, finally, her shapeshifting style, united only by her enduring love for everything loud. Animal prints, sequins, ruffles, fur, and, of course, big, brash gold jewelry—you name it, Tammy Faye wore it.
So when it was announced back in 2019 that Jessica Chastain would be producing and starring in a biopic of the legendary televangelist, there was plenty of speculation as to just how one of Hollywood’s most effortlessly sleek dressers, both on and off the screen, would transform into this paragon of glitzy, gaudy excess. Thankfully, when it came to shooting the film, she had costume designer Mitchell Travers on hand to help her fully inhabit Bakker’s spirit, both in terms of embodying the character emotionally—Chastain is already receiving rave reviews and awards buzz for her chameleonic performance—and, most importantly for our interests, sartorially.
“Jess was so heavily involved in the process too,” says Travers. “We had a very genuine love for Tammy Faye.” It’s no surprise: The Eyes of Tammy Faye is something of a costume designer’s dream, given the opportunity to pull out all the stops. Yet despite being the mastermind behind some of the most creatively costumed films in recent memory—from the seedy, eye-popping mid-aughts glamour of Hustlers to the 2,500-plus looks he assembled for In the Heights—Travers admits that The Eyes of Tammy Faye presented a unique set of challenges.
First, there was the film’s lengthy time span, covering everything from the early days of Bakker’s romance with her fraudster husband Jim (played here by Andrew Garfield in an array of gloriously sleazy tailoring) in the early 1960s all the way up to the 1990s, during which Bakker’s campy mannerisms and inclusive attitude toward the LGBT+ community made her the unlikeliest of gay icons. “Despite the obstacles of working with different bodysuits and time periods, it became a wonderful character study, because you get to fully flesh out a person across five decades of their life,” says Travers.
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