a visit with
Katarina Zhu
We are so excited for BUNNYLOVR, the debut feature by Writer-Director-Star, Katarina Zhu, to release in New York cinemas on April 10th following its 2025 Sundance Film Festival selection. We recently had the pleasure of hosting this conversation between Katarina and Costume Designer, Holly McClintock, who has previously worked on Pet Shop Days (2023), and The Sweet East (2023). We discuss their costuming process, the role of clothing in the film, rotting at home, and Holly’s favorite house museum.
Portraits of Katarina by Olivia Parker, wearing salter.mom.
salter.mom: Holly, tell us about how you begin this process of costuming a film like this? How do you approach it?
Holly McClintock: With a movie like this, which takes place over a concise number of days, we ask: where do we want to start?, and where do we want to end?
Then, what are our categories of dress? She has ‘cam girl,’ she has… ‘rotting at home,’ ‘work’ and then what comes in between… so the process is drawing lines between all of those settings, filling the gaps between our cam girl outfits, work outfits and home outfits. Also, it is obviously a very personal movie to you, Katarina. So it was never gonna be that different from you.
Katarina Zhu: Yeah.
Holly: It’s really all about the main character. Everything is centrifugal to you, in your experience in the movie. So I spent a lot more time thinking about your character, instead of you know, the best friend, or gallery scene, or boyfriend. They fall into place. They almost automatically fill themselves in.
SH: Katarina, for the character you wrote, and would eventually play, how did you imagine her clothing when it was still on the page?
Katarina I was imagining a faceless version of myself, in a way. There was a lot of overlap between the character’s style and my style, certain pieces in her closet that intersected with mine. But, I imagined her as a blank slate, simple and pared down, allowing other people to project whatever they want onto her. A character who's not making big bold choices because she doesn't want to be judged for them… for anything.
SH: Did you have a favorite look, or one that helped you find the character in a way that was different from… from you?
Katarina: I think the most fun look was the cam outfit, white with fishnets, a little skirt and button-down. I loved that one because I'm not wearing it day-to-day. It felt like I was taking on more of a different persona in that costume. The other outfits were much closer to my style in real life.
Holly: Totally. I mean, it was definitely the furthest on the spectrum from you, personally. It's been interesting to see in the promos for the movie and how much the fishnets have become a visual symbol. Like, not just an outfit, but a texture.
I have a big soft spot for the slip with the blue hoodie and the flip-flops, just because I feel like it’s the one that speaks most to the sort of bodily dissociation. When you're so detached from your body, you almost don't want anything touching it too much… I don’t even want to tie my shoes, I don't want to button my fly, clasp a bra because it feels too overstimulating. That's the look. It’s such a weird abstract feeling that is hard to communicate, but visually that's the feel of the outfit.
Katarina: Okay, I changed my answer. I completely, completely agree. Specifically the slip with the hoodie and the flip-flops, and I love what you said about the disconnection from the body.
SH: Is there a difference between the character’s camming outfits and her personal life outfits?
Katarina: There's a difference but there's also crossover. I think she has to make the difference clear to herself, but actually doesn't want to do the performance of the whole thing. From a time point of view, she doesn't really want to spend that much time thinking about what she's about to do. She wants to just do it. If I was to spend a bunch of time doing makeup and picking out my outfit, then I'd have to sit in this experience more, and that's not what she's trying to do. I have to find some way to immediately be this girl. So it's usually like, I'm putting on my fishnets, I'm switching into cute underwear instead of period underwear… not spending time examining it.
Holly: Yeah, it has to be immediate, and okay. There's no closet in her room. Everything's just on the ground. The camming outfits and the public outfits, maybe they're just different piles on her floor.
Katarina: Yes, exactly. Yeah, there are two separate piles on the floor, and she's sort of grabbing…
SH: At salter.mom, we think a lot about how we can normalize the use of typical bedroom clothing — nightgowns, sleepwear, basics, etc — as OK to wear in public, out of the house. It seems like a cam girl might invert that private / public divide. How do you think about house clothes vs public clothes?
Holly: You'd think that the cam girl wants to have more of a separation between the bedroom clothes and the outdoor clothes, because the bedroom is almost the workplace. But I think that in the movie, there's actually less of that. The more sleepwear and bedroom clothes she can get away with wearing outside of the house, the better.
Katarina: I completely agree, yeah.
Holly: But there's always a gesture of, I am aware I'm leaving. I am aware I'm going outside. At least in the beginning, before she leaves the house in the night dress… which is funny, because a slip is technically bedroom clothes, but she actually never wears that inside. It’s actually a funny movie to talk about sleepwear in because, yes, it very obviously has a lot of sleepwear, but the sleepwear doesn't appear in the room. This girl doesn't do pajamas.
Katarina: Exactly, she's exclusively wearing the sleepwear outside, and very much mixing. There’s almost no border or distinction between the two, they're completely interchangeable. She's wearing house clothes in public and public clothes in the house.
Holly: It's also a summer movie, so that's very contextual. If the setting wasn't so hot and sweaty, we might have incorporated more sweatpants or, like, bottoms in the home, but… I think the entire time you're just in underwear.
Katarina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was hot.
SH: How do you think about the relationship between intimacy and suspense?
Holly: Have you seen Trouble Every Day?
Katarina: The Claire Denis vampire movie? Yes!
Holly: Yeah. There's a scene where he's the bad guy and he's holding this puppy on the subway in this violent way, and it's this cuteness-aggression — that's the tone when you're interacting with the bunny. Like, that's when BUNNYLOVR becomes a thriller, because I know the bunny's heartbeat is racing. Like that scene in Trouble Every Day, I can almost feel the puppy's heart racing.
Katarina: Oh, I love that reference.
Holly: Yeah, it’s not a horror in the genre sense, but more a horror like, “I am horrified” sensorially. You know, I'm upset, and I feel violated. But it's not, you know, it's not Sharon Stone, Fatal Attraction. It's more about the sensory aspect of horror.
SH: Katarina, many of these photos by Olivia are in our pointelle ‘basics’. What are your thoughts on the idea of ‘basic’?
Katarina: I think my entire wardrobe is basics, like I'm in like a black this black cardigan every day or like a basic. I love basics. I have a rack full of beautiful skirts and dresses but I'm only wearing those once every 6 months or something. Holly, what are your thoughts on ‘basic’?
Holly: Some people think of basics as a foundation that you add to, but the basics are actually the entire thing. It's like, if I was building my plate and like, white food was basics, I'd be the kid at the table with just chicken fingers and rice … yeah, that's the metaphor.
SH: Did you have a favorite supporting character to dress?
Katarina: I feel like my actual favorite costumes were Perry’s, the shirt that you found for Perry when we first meet him, the Playboy shirt that is… just incredible.
Holly: Yeah, dressing Perry was so fun, and also some of our favorite conversations, thinking about the way that people who are older or sick dress; like old people stee.
He's gonna be in, you know, looser fitting pants. He wants to look nice sometimes, but he has this sort of chaotic and practical sensibility of an old guy. Like—this is an outfit, because I have pants, and I have a shirt, but I'm also stylish, and I put sunglasses with it, and now it's an outfit—you know? It’s a weird combination of being stylish and also having no relationship to style at all.
Katarina: Completely.
Holly: And, the remnants of style, or maybe from the past. He's still wearing them, but he doesn't wear them in the same way he used to. He'd approach it in a different way, and now he still has the shirt, but he doesn't really have the wherewithal to make it a thing.
Katarina: Jack [Kilmer]'s yellow dream shirt, didn’t get that much play, but was just so, so perfect. He took that home. He was obsessed with that. He wears it all the time.
Holly: No way! Wait, really? That's so cute! I'm so glad. That's adorable.
SH: What's your favorite room at home?
Holly: Honestly, I'm a big kitchen girl. I love to have a kitchen table with a tablecloth, cloth napkins, the right lighting. I think there's something comforting about it, because it’s a very utilitarian room, so, I feel like the pressure's off if I'm in the kitchen.
It's almost like being in the laundry room. You're like, “okay, well, this is a useful room to be in.” If I'm in my bedroom, I feel like I don't have an activity; I'm either rotting in my bed or I'm like, “should I be cleaning my closet?”
I like being in a room that has a function.
Katarina: I feel like I'm sort of the opposite. I love the bedroom. My bedroom is everything to me. Being in the bedroom is like having permission to just lay around and not really do a ton. I'm obviously very similar to the character. But also, I live in a studio right now, so it's sort of difficult, because everything is the bedroom. There's no separation.
SH: Are there any recent movies, music, or books that have influenced your style?
Holly: I mean, everybody's on their Carolyn Bissette thing. It's very in-the-culture. But I've been on that, and I feel like you've been on that. There's a lot of discourse right now about, ‘what is Carolyn Bessette’. People misconceive it, she's not a minimalist… she's a utilitarian, very practical. She wears a headband like you're wearing, because she wants to get her hair out of her face. She wears all black because she doesn't want to show stains, because she's fucking busy. Before this discourse happened, I've been inspired by her because she's an effortless basic, you know, really the blueprint. I describe my style as Carolyn Bissette from the dumpster.
Katarina: I love that. Like you said, she's a style icon, she's the blueprint, always has been, but I was never hyper-aware of her style. But now it's in the zeitgeist and I'm seeing pictures of her style recreated all the time. I was born in 1995, and I feel like my mom probably was influenced by it and then passed it down.
Holly: Exactly. We are minimalist basics. That's the whole thing, so it is fun to see something that’s part of my core in the zeitgeist.
SH: Have you repaired or restored anything recently?
Katarina: I recently took these black sandals with the little block heel to be re-soled. I wear them every single day of summer, and coming into spring I realized I need to get them re-soled, otherwise they're just gonna be totally destroyed this summer.
Holly: That's… it's so brilliant. Honestly… I'm actually the opposite… I'm so bad. I get really cheap shoes, $20 shoes, and I destroy them.
I would love to get certain shoes repaired, but because I could technically do it myself, it actually prevents me from doing anything. I'm actually not going to do it myself, but I'm also not going to pay someone to do it. So… actually nothing's gonna happen.
Katarina: Totally.
Holly: But that's so important. A block heel that you wear a lot, it wears on the back. It reveals so much about who you are as a person, the way you're healed. If your heel wears like that, it means you drag your feet…
Katarina: Oh my god, really?
Holly: Yeah, you're dragging… I mean, I do it too…
Katarina: I love that, and I love that your brain, I love the detail that you pick up about clothes. That’s why you're such a genius costume designer because it's all of the little things that are indicators of a person's personality or emotional state that you would… I would never think about.
Holly: I'm not a stylist. I'm never gonna be a stylist. People think these things are so related, and I'm like, it's just a different skill set. It's a different way of thinking.
SH: Do you have a favorite house museum?
Holly: Actually, there's this one in Chicago, where I went to college. The Roger Brown Museum, do you know Roger Brown? He's kind of an ‘outsider’ artist. So he has a lot of his own work in his house, but he also collected work from other people, from naive or self-trained artists. Very cluttered, paintings and mobiles and little sculptures made out of bottle caps, stuff like that. It’s like my favorite place, and it's tiny. Usually you think of a house museum like an estate with a little roped-off area. The Roger Brown Museum is, I think it's like a tiny apartment where he lived, and it's super cluttered with his weirdo art collection. It's my favorite.
Katarina: Well, if I'm ever in Chicago, I will definitely check it out.
Holly: Check out Roger.
BUNNYLOVR is in New York theaters on April 10th. Buy Tickets online at Quad Cinema.
_________
Thank you to Katarina and Holly for the conversation, Olivia Parker for the photography, Talia Mayden for the bedroom, and Roger Mancusi for bringing us together.
