Ari Aster’s “Eddington” is a haunting portrait of a community fractured by mistrust and lingering scars of the pandemic. In the New Mexico setting, costume design plays a pivotal role in grounding the film’s surreal unease in lived reality. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, the film unfolds in a town that doesn’t technically exist, yet feels familiar in its textures, rhythms, fears, and face masks.
That delicate balance is where costume designer Anna Terrazas found her canvas. Known for her work on “Roma” and HBO’s “The Deuce”, Terrazas approached “Eddington” with an eye toward subtle storytelling, finding ways for clothing to capture both the desert environment and the psychological weight of Ari Aster’s script.
“I knew immediately that I wanted to do this film,” shares Terrazas. “It brought me right back into the world of COVID and everything we went through. Ari’s script was mesmerizing, not just because of the pandemic, but because it speaks to the humanity of where we are right now in the world.”
“Eddington” follows Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), an anti-mask lawman, who clashes with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), after safety mandates and data-center plans divide the town. Tensions rise when Joe’s wife, Louise (Emma Stone) becomes a point of interpersonal conflict as the community unravels in crisis.
From her earliest conversations with Aster and producers Lars Knudsen and Ann Ruark, Terrazas knew “Eddington” required a cohesive language across design departments. Together, they examined how costuming could reflect a society reshaped by isolation and misinformation, while still capturing the intimate journeys of individual characters. “As soon as we sat down and started talking, we were on the same page,” she recalls. “We understood exactly what we wanted to say.”
That meant finding the right palette to reflect the film’s setting in the New Mexico desert, where the sun bleaches fabrics and the landscape infuses clothing with texture. It meant subtle choices, like eliminating black from costumes and exploring how characters like Joe (Phoenix) and Louisa (Stone) reveal themselves through shifts in wardrobe.
Anna Terrazas spoke with Awards Focus about crafting a lived-in world, the influence of the pandemic on her design choices, and the subtle transformations that trace the emotional progression of Joaquin Phoenix’s and Emma Stone’s characters.
Awards Focus: Can you talk about reading the script for the first time and realizing the film was set during COVID? What were your immediate impressions of Ari Aster’s screenplay?
Anna Terrazas: I read the script when Ari came to Mexico City for scouting, and I actually read it three times in a row. I knew immediately that I wanted to do this film. It brought me right back into the world of COVID and everything we all went through. I thought it was such a great challenge, not just because of the pandemic, but because it speaks to the humanity of where we are right now in the world. Ari’s script was mesmerizing in the way he put it together.
They eventually moved the film to New Mexico, and that’s when I got the call to join. It was my first time working there, and the film centers on a community that doesn’t technically exist but is very much rooted in New Mexico. Even though the story speaks to the world at large, there were so many layers of local detail to discover.
AF: What were those initial conversations about the community, and what surprised you in your early talks with Ari about what he wanted to achieve through costuming?
Terrazas: Ari, Lars Knudsen, Ann Ruark, and I sat down for a meeting, and from the start, we were completely aligned. We were speaking the same language about portraying reality as authentically as possible. We kept circling back to the impact of COVID, studying society, translating what we all experienced, and how that shaped behavior.
I remember one conversation with Ari and Lars that focused on teenagers and what they’d been through. I’m a parent myself, so the discussion shifted to what we’re showing kids and how to guide them. We talked about the overwhelming influence of cell phones, TikTok, and misinformation, and also the fear we all felt about what was happening. It was a really comfortable, honest exchange.
From there, I created a presentation and mood boards for Ari. Once I arrived in New Mexico, I had to adjust things to reflect the reality of the desert — the sun, the dirt, the way people live there. It became a blend of our early ideas with the actual environment.
AF: How did those conversations and the setting influence the color palette, especially in terms of clothing?
Terrazas: It influenced everything. I love working with a color palette, and I always collaborate closely with the production designer. In Albuquerque, I realized the sun bleaches out colors, and even the desert air creates this static in fabrics. I’d never experienced that before. So we adjusted the palette to reflect how clothes actually behave in the desert.
We also made choices about when characters should blend into the environment and when they should stand out. For instance, we eliminated black from everyone’s wardrobe, reserving it only for the protest scenes with the young people. Little choices like that give each space its own atmosphere. Even the community watching Vernon Jefferson Peak’s speech had a different palette than the workers in the data center. Every layer of the film had its own visual world.
AF: How did those decisions even affect the type of mask that you would incorporate into the scene? I remember during COVID, there were so many face covering options that would spring up. Were there different designs that you were using?
Terrazas: That was a very fantastic thing that we did in this film. I think the entire team put together a fantastic crew and heads of departments. We were all working together. So, with the prop department, we were remembering what happened when COVID started.
In the beginning, everybody was like just running out and getting the blue mask or the K-9. But then I remembered at some point we started creating our own masks, either for your grandma, or your friends, with all these fabrics that you would find and say, “Okay, I’m gonna do my cool mask.” So we started doing that. The prop master also had her grandma make us masks, and then we put them in the film. We decided who was going to get which mask, and it was really thoughtful back then how we were going to buy those masks. But it was really fun as well, just to make them and to create this world of what happened to us back in the day.
AF: How did you approach Joe’s (Joaquin Phoenix) progression through costume, especially with him being such a central character?
Terrazas: With Joe, we really wanted to chart his inner journey through clothes. We researched a lot of the sheriffs all around New Mexico and in different counties because they dress differently. Basically, there’s not one uniform that goes all around. It depends on the county, and they decide their own uniform. When I got there, I already knew that Joaquin and the team had already scouted some of these counties. He was starting to talk to one sheriff in particular, who was very much dressed as we dressed Joe in the film.
We debated for a very long time whether Joe was going to be in the same uniform as the others, or just different, and we came to the idea that this was his uniform. It was just this simple white shirt, and there were many reasons why we also wanted the white shirt, which goes more towards the end of the film at night, where we wanted a white kind of dot that we could follow. In that way, we could also see the progression of what happens to him with the dirt, the blood, and the sweat. It would be much more explosive to have him in white, rather than have him in khaki, because we wouldn’t notice those details as much.
Then, with the jeans and the boots, we debated a lot with the boots. There are a lot of people in New Mexico who wear cowboy boots, but I did feel like shoes are something really important that completely changes the way that you stand up, and the way you present yourself. I felt that Joe, at the end, is more grounded. He’s somebody that is approachable, so we wanted more of a work boot. During the dinner scene, we wanted to show who Joe was and the person behind the uniform. What was his Sunday best? I remember finding that shirt, and I was like, this is Joe, but it has also to do with his house. The house, the textures of the house, the color of the house, and what the color palette was blended in with that character. He did put in a huge effort to put together himself for Louise.
AF: Louise, in the beginning, was kind of blending in with the bed and with the sheets in the home, and then gradually, as she spent more time with Vernon, her clothing brightened and became lighter. Can you talk a bit about her progression and the emotional progression of her costuming?
Terrazas: I think you just said the perfect word. It’s an emotional progression for her. She starts in the house that she never leaves. This is the only way that she had to express herself, and through her dolls and through her artwork. We wanted her, in the beginning, to be like one of the pieces of furniture. She blends in with the entire house. It’s just like she’s part of it. She doesn’t say anything. She’s covered. She’s introverted. We just wanted her to show her fingers. You don’t even see the shape of her body.
Then, there’s a relationship between the dolls and her costume. She will cut a little piece of her sweatpants and then create it into a doll. So, there’s always a relation between what she’s doing and how she’s expressing herself.
When she meets Vernon and starts having confidence in herself, and she starts changing. Vernon leads her to this new world that, in the end, is able to talk about the true story of who she is and what happened to her. She finds freedom, and then she can take off all these layers.
When she comes for dinner with Vernon, she’s showing a lot more skin. You can see her body a lot more. So, that’s the sort of emotional progression that we wanted to have with her.
AF: Looking back at “Eddington”, what are you most proud of in your work?
Terrazas: For me, making a new film is always a learning process. I never go in thinking I have nothing to learn. I think you discover a lot of things in each film that you make.
Here, it was being able to create a film with the things that I had in front of me. Sometimes we think that we need to find this piece of clothing that we are never going to find. Albuquerque opened my eyes to the thrift stores, to use clothes, think about the world, and where we are.
I’m so thankful to Ari for creating this film because we made a film with what we had, and we always worked as a team. If I didn’t have my team and the crew and all the heads of departments to collaborate with, then I wouldn’t be able to create films. It really takes a village.