From the moment Audrey Fisher read about the Candy Montgomery case, she knew the task of bringing the housewife-turned-murderer to life on screen would be a difficult yet fulfilling one. “I just was fascinated by Candy and I thought, ‘Well, this would be an incredible character to costume,’” Fisher, the costume designer for HBO Max’s Love & Death tells W. A proper Methodist mother one moment, a lingerie-clad adulterer the next, and an axe-wielding murderer not too long after, Candy’s revolving identities provided Fisher the challenge of creating a multifaceted wardrobe that still stayed authentic to the late ‘70s, early ‘80s time period of the story.
It helped that Fisher has experience dressing characters for that era, having spent two years working in the costume department of That ‘70s Show. Of course, a true crime drama like Love & Death has a decidedly different tone than a network comedy, but the research Fisher “hoarded” from her time on the hit series did prove helpful. “The authenticity is amped up a bit,” she says of Love & Death’s wardrobe. “You’re recreating real people’s lives and how they dressed, which is different, but also really fun. Still, it’s such a tragic story, and I tried to take that responsibility seriously and respect the legacy of these people.”
Research began right away, with the reading of the two-part Texas Monthly article from which the show gets its name and source material. “It’s like a Pandora’s box,” she says of the bloody story. “It just keeps getting stranger and stranger.” From there, Fisher scoured court footage, taking screenshots as she watched, knowing these were looks she would have to recreate. But not every outfit on the show was actually worn by the characters’ real-life counterparts (though an impressive amount are pretty close). So, Fisher dove into the world of small-town Texas dressing in the late ‘70s in order to accurately…
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