If designing comfortable clothes for the 1923 cast to wear in the extreme Texas heat wasn’t enough of a challenge for Gaby Acosta, then it was having to avoid the pesky insects that tried to snack on her skin.

“What did they call them, trigger bugs? People would put a bunch of chalk on their legs to not get bit by these little insects,” says Acosta, a co-costume designer on 1923 , with a laugh. “We also had to deal with a lot of snakes. I was definitely in a big cowboy hat, and tried to shield myself as much as I could to survive out there.”

It just wasn’t a scenario she was entirely prepared for — but then again, neither was a career in film and TV costume design when she first left her childhood home in Baja California, where she was raised by a single mother, to make her way in

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