Five acclaimed costume designers take us behind the scenes of their costume fittings to reveal the unexpected sparks of inspiration that happen when the wardrobes they created or sourced are paired with their performers for the first time.
In an exclusive video roundtable interview with Gold Derby as part of our Meet the Experts: Costume Designers panel, “Abbott Elementary” costume designer Susan Michalek, “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” costume designer Lou Eyrich, “Shōgun” costume designer Carlos Rosario, “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” costume designer Bernadette Croft and “The Wheel of Time” costume designer Sharon Gilham discuss what they love most about collaborating with the on-screen talent of their projects. Watch the full roundtable above. Click on each person’s name to watch an individual chat.
“It takes about two-three people to dress anybody with any of those costumes for about 45 minutes or an hour,” reveals Rosario about the arduous process of fitting his “Shōgun” performers. Though he only “had one shot” to try on each piece, he says the experience of working on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century set Japanese epic was incredible because he “never worked before representing this culture, the Japanese culture, so it was really beautiful to see all my characters come to life.”
Croft often has to represent many different fictional cultures on “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” including a variety of alien species. She finds it most rewarding when guests try on their Starfleet costumes for the first time, sharing, “It’s very powerful when you put on this uniform. You’re going to be a part of a team that values life and diversity… It makes people walk with confidence.”
Others talk about the close collaborations they have with their stars. On “Feud,” Eyrich reunited with Jessica Lange, who previously played Joan Crawford on the first season and returned as Truman Capote’s mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, known as Nina, for the second. Since there was “very little information on her,” the costume designer and actress were “trying to figure out who Nina was” and were thus “playing dress up” during the fittings. The same goes for Demi Moore as Ann Woodward, who the audience first meets through a “fantasy scene.”
Michalek worked with “Abbott” star Quinta Brunson to transform the wardrobe of her character Janine Teagues as she moves from elementary school teacher to employee at the Philadelphia school district. To implement that fashion “transition,” the costume designer was “bringing a ton of stuff in and whittling it down with her and seeing how we could shift the character and how it evolved.”
Sometimes, inspiration comes from unexpected places during fittings, too. As Gilham shares, she and her team were trying to craft the look for one of their antagonists, Lady Suroth (Karima McAdams), especially the facial covering that she wears in her introduction episode. Someone on the team stumbled upon “a box at the back of the cupboard” that had inside this “kind of bowl, it’s like a fruit bowl that folds in… a piece of metal with lots of holes punched in it.” When they paired it with the rest of the outfit, she and McAdams and director Thomas Napper said, “Whoa!”
Watch the full roundtable discussion above to hear these impressive artists also discuss their favorite fabrics to work with, on-set costume mishaps and working with incredibly large numbers of background performers.
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