North Stonington native wins Emmy for costume work on 'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans'
Oct. 6—The costume design team nominated for an Emmy for "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" — which included Hanna Shea, who grew up in North Stonington — were assigned seats in the last available row of the auditorium at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards in September.
Folks from another Ryan Murphy production, "American Horror Story: Delicate," sat right in front of them. One of those people turned around and said they all must not be winners since they were placed so far back from the stage.
Then, the category for outstanding period costumes for a limited or anthology series of movie was announced.
And the winner was ... the pilot for "Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans."
Shea's response was captured by a friend, Amanda Jelden of Gales Ferry, on cellphone video. She screamed into her hand.
"I was ecstatic, in disbelief, in relief, shock and just beyond happy," recalled Shea.
She walked up onstage with the rest of the team, and costume designer Lou Eyrich gave the acceptance speech. Shea, 37, remembered the team members "all holding each other, shaking."
The acclaimed "Feud" on FX starred Naomi Watts and Demi Moore as wealthy and stylish socialites, aka the Swans, who were dear friends with writer Truman Capote — until he wrote a thinly disguised fiction about their private lives that he published in 1975.
And a note about the other group in the last rows of the Emmys: The costume team from "American Horror Story: Delicate" won the award in their category, too.
Growing up in NS
Shea — the daughter of Bonnie Ward and Kevin Shea — loved the arts and creativity when she was growing up in North Stonington. Her family was interested in those as well.
"My mom was really big into music, and the funny thing is, we're talking metal music, we're not talking about classical. She was into rock 'n' roll," Shea said.
Her paternal grandparents, Leo and Bridget Shea (Pop and Grandma to Hanna) were particularly into Irish culture. Hanna did Irish dance in her younger years, and her Grandma would bring her to Irish dance competitions and classes.
And her Grandma is also a fashionista: "She's where I get my vintage and antique shopping habits from," Shea said. "My Pop was a creative as well, he loved photography and painting and all of that."
Shea said of her father, "He is one of those people that will do anything and everything for someone. No problem is too big for him to step in and help. That to me is cool."
She described her maternal grandmother, Ella Ward, as very funny, and her maternal grandfather, Raymond Ward, a Harley-riding truck driver, also as fearless and funny.
"So I got all the best from those guys," she said with a laugh.
Hanna said she was a tomboy growing up and later on would go to lots of rock shows at the El 'n' Gee Club in New London. She was interested in fashion — she used to go on style.com a lot when she was in high school — but she didn't know what her place in that world would be.
After graduating from Wheeler High School in 2004, she ended up studying digital forensic technology at Champlain College in Vermont. "Very quickly, I was like, 'I can't do this. I've got to go into art,'" she said.
She focused on visual arts and graphic design at Eastern Connecticut State University. Studying abroad at Central Saint Martins at University of the Arts London "flipped the switch fully to: I want to work in fashion," she said.
Finding the right costume
As assistant costume designer for "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans," Shea was, as she described it, essentially Eyrich's sidekick. Other assistant designers did specific things like spearhead items for all the background actors.
Shea came onto the job early to prep with Eyrich, and they researched the entire project.
"For the most part, Lou and I did all the principal costume fittings. We are hunting and gathering with our shoppers and assistants, reaching out to vendors to pull costumes, or we're working with our tailor team ... We're either building costumes or having sketches done to build specific costumes, or we are renting costumes from big rental houses in L.A. and also here on the East Coast. Pulling all over, buying things from Etsy, from the U.K. Everywhere. Then we are doing the fittings, and bringing it to camera," Shea said.
She noted that, for a lot of movies or TV series, costumes aren't necessarily meant to make a character stand out. For "Feud," though, it was all about fashion, glamour and sophistication because of who these women really were.
"This was high society New York," Shea said. "At the same time, they're very classic and they're in couture. They're traveling the world finding these pieces. That's what made it really hard, too; 99% of what they actually wore is in museums or high collector expensive pieces now."
From costumes to gold
As for the Emmy ceremony, Shea didn't make the dress she wore there; it was from Rent the Runway and cost $70 for the weekend.
"I wouldn't say I'm a proficient sewer or anything, but I have friends all the time that will ask about styling or shopping and I love it. Even though it's my job — or used to be my job — I do really love it," she said.
Yes, used to be her job. When the writers' and actors' strikes put a halt to TV and movie productions for much of 2023, no one knew how long the strikes would last. Since they were out of work, Shea and another costume designer friend picked up a side hustle: selling vintage gold jewelry.
"We had found a refinery in New York, and it's basically like a melt pile, where they allow wholesale businesses to go through and pick whatever's in there, and you buy at wholesale cost essentially. So we sell vintage solid-gold jewelry now. We've been doing that ever since. Side hustle turned main hustle. Because the strike ended up lasting so long. By the time it picked back up, we were doing so well with our business that we ended up staying with (it)," she said.
The quirky name for their company: Code Name Orange Juice. They wanted to come up with a different type of name, since so many places have interchangeable monikers like Anna's Fine Jewelry. Shea's business partner likes a band called Orange Juice, and then they just started calling the company Code Name among themselves before making it official.
So is Shea out of the costume business?
"For now. You never know. You never know. But for now, yeah," she said.
She added, "I just love film so much and I love fashion, I love styling. I love all of that stuff so much. But I'm loving having my own business as well."
A lot of people have told Shea the Emmy was like a cherry on top of her costuming career.
"I feel very blessed and grateful. It was such a whirlwind, an absolute shock, to be honest," she said.
Her career path
Shea's work in film and TV began in 2011 when she was employed at American Apparel in Norwalk and doing an internship at 3.1 Phillip Lim (fashion designer Lim's label) in New York City. A production company opened in Norwalk, and the costume designer and makeup artist used to come into American Apparel to shop. They chatted with Shea and eventually asked if she'd want to intern on the film they were on.
Shea ended up doing all three jobs for a while, but then the movie folks asked if she'd join them full-time. She agreed, even though she realized it was a freelance gig and wouldn't guarantee she'd ever have a job again.
That was an indie film, and, over time, she worked her way up to bigger movies and to TV shows.
Her biggest motion picture was "Creed," the 2015 "Rocky" sequel starring Michael B. Jordan. She said the experience was "supercool." She had to learn about boxing — how the clothing for boxers is made, what it looks like, and so on. Learning about Philadelphia and the city as a style were a big part of the process, too.
Sometimes a project involves starting wide and narrowing things down, Shea said. For instance, this was Philadelphia. Winter. In the modern era. Then a costume designer contemplates such questions as: Who are these people? Where are they coming from? What are they trying to show about themselves to the world?
"There's so much psychology behind character-building in costumes," Shea said. "It isn't just about going to fashion school. You have to know so much about people and where they're coming from and also be willing to dive deep into understanding that. That's what I find so fascinating about character-building," Shea said.
Since "Rocky" was such a beloved series in Philadelphia, there was a little bit of pressure, she said. Sylvester Stallone was in it, too, so she had to bring some of the same elements that had originally made the series so iconic.
Her TV shows, meanwhile, have included "Castle Rock" for Hulu, "The Deuce" for HBO, and "Bardo," from Alejandro I?árritu, who later helmed "Birdman."
She was on "Brightside" for Apple TV+; "That was one of my favorite, favorite projects to work on. That was 1950s retro future, so it was like 'Jetsons'-inspired," she said.
Shea also was part of a miniseries for Amazon Prime Video called "Cortés," which starred Javier Bardem as the conquistador who led the conquest of Mexico.
"We did so much work, and this was at the top of the pandemic. We were doing all this costume design (from) the early 1500s, so we were doing so much work. We shot for about a week and a half, and then COVID shut us down and we never went back to it. That was so sad ... That was probably the only project where we were like, 'We're going to win awards for this,'" she said.
Shea said that, with pretty much every project, she dives deep into research for a certain time period.
"So you're becoming a little mini-expert on an era. Then you jump into the next one, and you're doing something completely different," she said.
Dressing Capote
And then came "Feud." Shea worked closely with Eyrich on getting the nuance, style and eccentricity of Capote, who was played in "Feud" by Tom Hollander. They scoured all kinds of resources to find photographs of him in various eras and worked to source and custom build "legendary pieces of his like his long scarves, fun hats and interesting suiting," Shea said. "He had such a cool and playful sense of style, mixing colors and shapes."
Shea said the actresses playing the Swans "were very, very cool, very collaborative. There was a really trusting experience with our main characters, for sure."
Shea thinks that "Feud" is the toughest job she has ever done.
"It was huge — I think way bigger than anyone imagined it would be, and we pulled off the impossible with the budget we had," she said. "My favorite experience was the crew. We were so lucky have some of the most talented and funniest crew with us. For that I'm grateful! Late nights and under serious stress — it's the ones you can laugh real hard with that make it all OK."