Like all costume designers, Katina Danabassis spends a lot of her time thinking about the backstory of the outfits her characters wear on screen. Speaking to The Set Set from inside her costume and vintage warehouse in upstate New York, she shares the internal monologue that's constantly zipping around her head: “How and why did they have this shirt? How long have they had it? Are they travelling? Are they living out of a suitcase?”

It’s only natural, given that her job is to take characters from a script and find a way to use clothing to express who they are. However, what perhaps sets the Canadian costume designer apart is that she believes that the outfits she uses in movies can have an afterlife, too. That’s why she set up the warehouse—named Barracuda—which she co-owns with her go-to assistant costume designer, Celeste Montalvo. “We had accumulated a lot of clothing through various projects,” Danabassis explains, “And now we’re trying to get it up and running as a costume rental place.”

It’s a smart move, given not only the quantity of items inside—rails and rails of clothing line the inside—but the quality too, as Danabassis, who got her start assisting on indie gems like “Ladybird” and “Booksmart,” before gaining recognition for her work on zeitgeist-y titles such as “Past Lives” and “Materialists, opens in new tab,” has an unrivalled knack for thrifting the most covetable items. "What reads on camera is different than what it looks like in real life," Danabassis says of her preference for vintage. "When things are too crispy, it sometimes looks like it's from a sitcom. A lot of the time, directors don't want that, and actors don't want that either."

Instead, she explains, "they want things that have had a life, that communicate a story." Flicking through a rail filled with vintage finds, she talks us through her process: “I'm always like, can I see the tag? I want to see the tag because it helps you date the piece, it lets you see the content of the fabric.” Pulling out a men's grey polo neck with black accents, she continues:  “This is Old Navy, but it's old Old Navy, and the quality of garments back then was just much better than it is today because they weren't making them in factories in the same volume. The quality of the fabric is better, the quality of the stitching is better, and so that's why I like older stuff.”

Having a space that holds all of her incredible finds comes in handy when you're up against a particular brief from a director. For instance, if a character needs a perfect white tee. "I will always hunt for the right white t-shirt. I don't think you can have too many of them," she says, holding up one from Calvin Klein. "I can't tell when this would have been from, probably like the 2000s, but it's so soft. It has such a good drape to it, the neck is big, so it looks good on a woman's collarbone, showing a little bit of femininity there."

However, not everything here is vintage—we spot the memorable burnt-orange bridesmaids dresses from the millionaire wedding in “Materialists” hanging up on a rail nearby—which provided Danabassis with even more reason to set up a place where other costume designers and fashion lovers could source items and give them another life. Working primarily on contemporary films, Danabassis dresses her characters in a mix of mid-range designers and mall brands, as well as her signature secondhand finds. As a result, they feel incredibly real. "Every decision that is made about their wardrobe should come from a motivation in the story or the character,” she says. 

Case in point, when it came to dressing Dakota Johnson’s protagonist for “Materialists,” she drew a line between Lucy’s wardrobe while dating Harry (Pedro Pascal) and John (Chris Evans). “She’s kind of business when she’s with Harry; with John, it’s real love, so it’s all-natural and floral.” For both looks, Danabassis primarily relied on brands that today's modern working woman turn to—Aritzia, Reformation, Zara—but drew distinctions in the shape and cut of the clothing. She brought that same binary idea into the jewelry of the movie, too. "Lucy is a silver girl," she says, picking up some of the silver-toned necklaces and earrings seen on Johnson in the movie. Harry, on the other hand, is a gold-wearer, and this clash in tones signals why they're not a romantic match—although Danabassis points out she doesn't mind mixing metals herself.  

For Danabassis—whose work can next be seen in A24's highly-anticipated release "The Drama" starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson—it’s clear that costume is never just about what a character wears, but what their clothes reveal—about who they are, where they come from, and how they change over the course of a movie. In that sense, every rail in Barracuda is less a collection of garments than a catalogue of lived-in stories. “My job is to be a costume designer,” she says, “but I would say I’m more of a visual anthropologist.”