Being tasked with re-creating Billie Holiday’s iconic looks in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” was a challenge for costume designer Paolo Nieddu, both because director Lee Daniels’ biopic required so many costume changes and because there was a pressure to get the history right. Ultimately, Nieddu, who previously collaborated with Daniels on “Empire,” determined that the film’s aesthetic was an imagined take on Holiday rather than a definitive reality.

“I knew Billie has a lot of fans, and there are a lot of people who might say, ‘That’s not realistic,’” says Nieddu, who had eight weeks of prep time before production in Montreal in late 2019. “But we created our Billie. It’s not an A&E ‘Biography’ documentary. This is ‘Lee Daniels does Billie Holiday,’ and that’s where I had to take my mind and focus. It became our interpretation of this time.”