Shirley Kurata, the costume designer for Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, built a deliberately monochrome corporate world and a vivid booster universe—part design choice, part creative argument against Hollywood’s growing grayscale look. The film hits theaters F
The first teaser for I Love Boosters didn’t just go viral—it sparked a kind of visual hunger.
In January, when the trailer landed on social media, the internet fixated on the film’s in-your-face color scheme. One of the most liked YouTube comments captured the mood with a blunt reminder that “Nice to see that someone remembers that colours exist!!!” The reaction matters because it points to a frustration that Kurata says she’s been feeling in cinema’s broader shift toward muted palettes.
Color is central to I Love Boosters, according to Shirley Kurata, the film’s costume designer. “Color is so key, because it helps create worlds,” she tells Fast Company. And while the movie itself doesn’t hinge on dimension-hopping, Kurata has long been designing across multiple realities. For the Best Picture-winning 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once. she costumed characters across dimensions—from the muted realism of everyday life on Earth to a chaotic rush of colors and patterns for the finale.
In I Love Boosters, she didn’t chase that multiverse approach by changing realities. She did it by separating them—cleanly, visually—so audiences could feel the boundaries.
The movie follows a group of boosters: shoplifters who steal clothes and resell them. They’re led by aspiring fashion designer Corvette (Keke Palmer). and they run amok in a surrealist. color-blocked version of San Francisco. Their chaos lands in a chain of department stores where each location is entirely monochrome.
To make those different “worlds” legible, Kurata says color had to be the first signal. “There’s multiple worlds in both Everything Everywhere All at Once and I Love Boosters,” she says. “To separate that, I think color is the first thing that really shows that. And so it was probably one of the most important things for me in terms of costume design.”.
That separation isn’t only aesthetic. It becomes a way to underline how control works inside the film—and how it collapses when the boosters move.
In the department store world, the company’s power shows up as corporate monochrome. Each Metro Designers location carries its own signature color applied to the walls, the wares, and even the employees. There’s also a behind-the-scenes fashion universe tied to villain Christie Smith’s fashion brand. including a Chinese factory where workers are subjected to brutal conditions for next to no pay. Then there are the boosters themselves, who use eccentric disguises and embrace different eras and aesthetics to avoid detection.
All of it sits next to what Kurata describes as a wider industry problem: modern Hollywood’s tendency to go gray.
From Kurata’s costumes to the production design by Christopher Glass and cinematography by Natasha Braier. I Love Boosters leans into a stark contrast with the dominant color scheme many viewers say has been flattening film’s visual energy. Moviegoers. the article notes. appear to be fed up with films that verge on grayscale—whether that happens through lighting. color grading. or production design.
That dissatisfaction has shown up in online reactions. When Disney announced a live-action Moana remake. social media users said it “sucked up all the color” from the original animated film. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has faced criticism for flat color palettes. with video essays like “Why Do Marvel’s Movies Look Kind of Ugly?” reportedly racking up millions of views. Even high-fantasy color spectacles. including the two-part Wicked series’ technicolor world of Oz. have drawn complaints that it still looks strangely desaturated.
Kurata doesn’t deny that muted palettes can have their place. She just seems to crave the opposite—and I Love Boosters is built for it.
“I always love being part of something that’s an exception to the rule,” she says. “Though she thinks muted palettes have their place in cinema. she can’t help but find herself drawn to ‘hypermaximalist worlds’ like that of I Love Boosters.” Kurata calls out what those worlds offer: “It taps into this surreal other world that I think is just sometimes more visually appealing. more interesting.”.
Making that world required more than picking bold outfits. Kurata describes close collaboration with production designer Glass to ensure the film’s many monochrome settings were truly one color, top to bottom.
“To get the right shades of the yellow or the green, I wanted to make sure that I had the actual paint chips,” she explains. “Glass actually did send me little painted boards so that I could hold that up with the clothing.”
That kind of tactile detail matters because I Love Boosters is obsessive about separation: monochrome spaces on one side, maximal color chaos on the other.
She and director Boots Riley also worked together on the film’s most outrageous outfits. A mid-movie montage shows the central gang of boosters looting store after store while dressing for each new hit with a different theme. They wear neon Kawaii outfits pulled from Tokyo subculture. They also appear in suits and featureless masks painted with cartoon faces. and in head-to-toe floral ensembles that would feel at home in Midsommar.
The fashion may be wild, but the movie’s message is pointed. I Love Boosters is Riley’s second film, following 2018’s Sorry To Bother You. Both are surreal satires with strong anti-capitalist themes. I Love Boosters calls out the fashion industry’s massive waste, its inaccessibility, and its poor working conditions. The story culminates in a finale highlighting the power of collective action.
Kurata says she understands why those themes land. With a decades-long career as both a stylist and a costume designer, she has seen fashion’s injustices firsthand.
“I have a pretty broad understanding of all the mechanisms and also the things that are problematic about the industry. which I think this movie addresses so aptly. ” she says. “I thought it was important that we do think about fast fashion. about ethical treatment of the workers that are creating the clothes—which are all still very problematic in this day and age.”.
Behind the camera, she also tried to keep that logic moving. For a climactic sequence set at a fashion show, she connected with fashion students at Savannah College of Art and Design, featuring some of their designs on the runway.
“I’m just always a big proponent for supporting up-and-coming designers and showcasing their work whenever I can,” Kurata says. “For me, it’s really important to work on movies that tell an interesting story, but also have a sort of added benefit to society.”
I Love Boosters comes to theaters this Friday, May 22.
I Love Boosters Shirley Kurata Boots Riley Keke Palmer costume design Hollywood color fashion industry fast fashion anti-capitalist satire Savannah College of Art and Design
So basically it’s colorful on purpose? Finally.
I swear everything looks grey now. Like even commercials. If this movie actually makes people happy with color then cool, but I don’t trust the hype.
Wait, is this the one where they jump dimensions? I thought that was Everything Everywhere lol. Anyway I feel like Hollywood goes grayscale so it looks “serious,” but then everyone acts shocked when viewers want color.
The trailer going viral proves people can’t focus unless it’s neon. I mean I get it though, the comment about “colors exist” is kinda true. But also… couldn’t they just use better lighting instead of all the costumes? Seems like a marketing trick to me, yet I’ll probably still watch.