Costume Designer Allison Choi Braun had to have lots of multiples on hand for her costumes in “Zits,” an upcoming body horror short from David Bornstein. That’s because they often got covered in goo from the main character’s exploding pimples.
The short follows Sandy (Keilah Harris), who meets a mysterious older woman (Bai Ling) and gets cursed with being suddenly covered in huge, grotesque zits.
Luckily, Braun isn’t squeamish.
“We actually got such a kick out of it,” she says of the puss-filled props that were affixed to Harris, the lead actress, which she was tasked with costuming around.
“I mean, it’s just so funny, right? Like, she has all of these bulges on her forehead and there’s pus inside. Like, they were functioning. They were functional. So when you pushed, it actually pussed,” she said.
For that reason, Braun couldn’t get too precious about the costumes for her main character, considering they were just going to end up in “a puddle of puss and blood,” she says.
“I think we were amused by the realism that the makeup artist was able to actually execute,” she recalled. “She was disgusting. She’s this beautiful girl, and it’s just so comical that she’s just like, horrifying. And it was just, we just were so amused every time we’re like, Okay, another you know, another growth, another growth, and another zit. It was just, and they sat in the chair really close to my costume room. So I got to kind of see it live. And it was so satisfying.”
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To account for shooting the same scene multiple times and having to reset the costumes back to a clean slate, Braun sourced many multiples of the same outfit, which meant the pieces can’t be unique. For Harris’ character Sandy, she chose an artsy t-shirt and jeans combo.
“I would still say that probably is one of the biggest challenges whenever I do anything with stunts or horror
where you need lots of multiples,” she says.
“You’re always under a time constraint and budget. I think for her shirt, I had to go to like five different stores, like, I literally just kept buying one in each store. It was from Urban Outfitters. It was just — to find a small, or they’re out of stock, or they sold out. I mean, I was driving around everywhere just to get that shirt,” she says. “And I think that’s challenge because there’s no one really helping find all those things and source them. So the multiples, I think, is always is always one of the biggest challenges.”
Braun has experience with horror — she worked on American Horror Story 1984 in addition to her other past projects like Crazy Ex Girlfriend, I’m Dying Up Here and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. She and Bornstein previously worked together on his 2018 short Perfect Breakfast.
All that experience served her well when it came to navigating the logistics of Sandy popping zits through her costume.
“The director and I, David, have to really consider, obviously, her aesthetic and her style, but I have to always think about how is the blood going to seep into these clothes? It needs to like pool well, because she also starts popping them [the zits] through her clothes because they’re like really like large, like baseball size,” she says.
While dressing Harris, she adds, “I was like, okay, she’s wearing a short sleeve t-shirt, so you’re gonna have to have the growth here… logistically, have to always plan to put the top on before you do the makeup. Usually, they put on the costume and then they do the makeup so they don’t have to rub anything off and nothing gets wrecked. And then when they do the popping — since this was a pimple popping story — we’re always, like, on standby with towels and robes, because she would just be gushing and dripping all the time. So we had robes for her ready to go.”
More About Zits Costume Designer Allison Choi Braun
Before she became a costume designer for television, commercials and film, Braun studied at Maryland Institute College of Art. After school, she started designing clothing for brands like Vera Wang, Martha Stewart, Calvin Klein and Lucky Brand.
“I grew up in Wisconsin. I’m Korean American. My neighbor, she was an art teacher, she introduced me to one of her students, and she was Chinese American and she lived in New York and was a designer. That blew my mind. I was like, wait, I could be a designer in New York? Like, I can do that? I can leave Wisconsin? So I ended up going to art school in Baltimore. And then through that connection, I ended up doing an internship in New York with her,” she says.
She started costuming for live theater in New York before moving to Los Angeles and diving head first into the world of film and television.
“It was definitely sink or swim,” she says. “Doing costume is like for me it’s like full circle. I already know how to make the fabric and drape, draft it, and design it. Now, you’re putting it on a body and telling a story.”
You can learn more about Braun’s work on her website here.
Main Image: Allison Choi Braun working on a costume, courtesy of Allison Choi Braun