“Costume is prime real estate in television — whatever message you want out, you’re going to see it in the person’s wardrobe,” costume designer and stylist Ayanna James-Kimani observed in an interview with PopSugar. Best known for her eye-catching looks on Issa Rae’s “Insecure” and Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar,” the Jamaica-born costumer knows just how to send a memorable message to audiences through her detail-oriented costume design.
James-Kimani took an unconventional route to the TV circuit: she studied biochemistry at Florida A&M University with the intention of becoming the “Black, female version of Dr. House,” she told Chicago Ideas in an interview. She always had an affinity for fashion and even wrote a style blog at the time, a hobby that would take her career on an unexpected detour and, eventually, an entirely new destination. After a celebrity stylist tweeted about a job opening for an assistant, James-Kimani promptly responded with her résumé: “I had an interview and got hired that day. That is my genesis into styling,” she explained to Coveteur. Some of her earliest clients were Tiffany Haddish, Jidenna, and Usher, a catalog that would eventually grow to include Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and Blue Ivy, when she designed for Jay-Z’s “Family Feud” music video.
After her first foray as a styling assistant, the ever-enterprising James-Kimani started growing her own clientele — often budding actors — and worked on independent and student productions. Meeting Rae was a watershed moment in her professional journey: the connection was instant and James-Kimani ended up designing “Insecure” for its first three seasons.
“I design for the entire show: styling through the main cast to our season regulars to our guest stars to the background. I even pick what color I want the valet guy to wear,” James-Kimani details to Coveteur. The HBO comedy follows long-time friends Issa (Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji), navigating their careers, relationships, and the modern Black experience as women in their late 20s. Accessorizing the show’s core themes, James-Kimani creates a menagerie of costumes inspired by Black pop culture and childhood nostalgia, a wardrobe characterized by the same intimate and personal storytelling that propelled her career.
On “Insecure,” James-Kimani proves that clothes aren’t just pretty ornaments nor inert background props — they mobilize conversation. Her designs personalize the characters: each item is deliberate and idiosyncratic, a material representation of a personality trait or temperament. Rae’s character, for example, has a playful and irreverent wardrobe to match her awkward and offbeat nature: “Her clothes are never always quite right; sometimes there’s something wrong with them,” James-Kimani tells PopSugar.
The costumes and their wearers fuse together so naturally it’s as if the characters themselves had assembled the outfit. To achieve this illusion, James-Kimani would shop in local stores that the characters would go to. “[Issa] would shop probably at the Crenshaw Mall or in Leimert Park, where the office is based,” James-Kimani told The Hollywood Reporter about designing Rae’s character. “That was why her palette is so texture-heavy and print-heavy.”
Sure enough, the devil is truly in the details when it comes to sartorial storytelling: “T-shirts are the little Easter eggs we put in the show,” she revealed in a promotional video for HBO. “Both Molly and Issa created this world where when they are in their relaxed and casual wear, they are just reminiscing about their childhood.” The graphic tees have become emblems of the show in their own right: the characters wear tops inspired by cultural mainstays including Public Enemy, Beyoncé, and Prince, whose passing James-Kimani honored with a dove-emblazoned T-shirt on the second episode of the first season.
When asked about what energizes her creative pursuits, James-Kimani told Chicago Ideas, “The upliftment of my people.” James-Kimani brings her love for the bespoke and the artisanal to her work, often collaborating with independent designers for “Insecure,” and at the same time using the show’s cachet to elevate up-and-coming Black designers. “We do have a big impact,” she emphasized. “There are emerging designers that, because they’ve had their clothing on the show, have been able to sell out or jump into something else.”
James-Kimani’s designs can also be seen on Netflix’s upcoming “Tall Girl 2: Junior Year,” the teen rom-com sequel directed by Emily Ting, as well as NBC’s “Council of Dads,” created by Joan Rater and Tony Phelan, about a terminally ill cancer patient who enlists three friends to become father figures to his and his wife’s five children.
