WHILE MOST PEOPLE strive to take care of their clothes, Amy Mann excels at distressing them. She sands and bleaches T-shirts, paints and scrubs new clothes to look old, and creates special effects like the bloodstained bullet holes on actor Hugh Jackman’s white tank top in Marvel’s Logan (2017). As a costume ager/dyer, or breakdown artist, she creates the looks that tell a TV or film character’s story. Growing up in Albuquerque, Mann scoured thrift stores for treasures to transform, cutting up shirts and sewing ruffles on them, and painting her shoes for school dances. At the Maryland Institute College of Art, she studied fiber arts and experimental costume design—a perfect pathway to a job she didn’t even know existed. One of just a handful of ager/dyers in New Mexico, Mann is in big demand in one of the country’s top filming destinations.
WHEN I STARTED as an assistant, my very first job was painting the shoulders of a black denim vest to look like they’d been sun-bleached. That was the moment when I said, I love this. It combines my interest as an artist, a painter, and having a deep knowledge base of color and tools. To be able to combine that with costume was a real revelation for me.
For Netflix’s Army of the Dead (2021), I made zombies for six months straight. They’re a lot more difficult than you could imagine, because these were old zombies, so they had lots of layers of filth and blood. I’ve also worked on a bunch of Westerns, including Hostiles (2017). Agers/dyers are mostly needed on Westerns, thrillers, and apocalyptic movies.
For the Predator movie Prey (2022), I was in Calgary for six months as the head textile artist and ager/dyer. I had two assistants. The movie takes place in 1719, and all our Native characters fighting the Predator wore costumes made of deer hides. I was working with the costume designer creating different motifs for every warrior’s costume, leading the breakdown, making things really dirty. We worked six days a week for four months straight. Of all the work I’ve done, I’m most proud of that movie.
The less you notice the costumes on screen, the better they are. If they don’t stick out to you, then they must have been right, and that’s what my goal is—to make things look as natural as possible. —As told to Lynn Cline