Having designed costumes for film, television, Broadway, and regional theaters for more than three decades, Paul Tazewell is one of the industry’s most revered designers. He joins to discuss his career, costuming some of the most memorable characters of our time, and his recent award-winning work on the Oscar nominated film, Wicked.
Paul Tazewell:
Contemporary design is often more challenging because everyone involved and also seeing it knows clothing because it’s what we wear every day.
Curtis Fox:
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be, who they are, and what they’re thinking about and working on. On this episode, Paul Tazewell talks about costume design.
Paul Tazewell:
Look, my lens into my design for Wicked is seeing Elphaba as a person of color.
Debbie Millman:
Wicked, West Side Story, Hamilton, these stories have lots of iconic, memorable characters. And those characters? Well, they all need iconic and memorable costumes; costumes that align with their character that are in harmony with the set design but that also capture the viewer’s imagination. Paul Tazewell has designed the costumes for Ariana Grande’s Glinda, Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba, Rachel Zeller’s Maria, Daveed Diggs’ Jefferson, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and many, many, many more.
For three decades, Paul has been designing costumes for theater, film, television, opera, and ballet. He’s won an Emmy, a Tony, and he’s just been nominated for an Academy Award for his groundbreaking work on Wicked. Paul is here to talk about his career and how he goes about costuming some of the most memorable characters of our time. Paul Tazewell, welcome to Design Matters.
Paul Tazewell:
Hi, it’s so good to be here, Debbie.
Debbie Millman:
Paul, congratulations on your Academy Award nomination-
Paul Tazewell:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
… for designing the costumes of the film Wicked. Now, I understand the very first play you designed and created the costumes for was The Wiz way back when you were in high school.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
And I believe you also had a part in the production. Who did you play?
Paul Tazewell:
I played the title character. I played The Wiz.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, wow.
Paul Tazewell:
Not Dorothy.
Debbie Millman:
Rats.
Paul Tazewell:
But I played The Wiz. I wanted to be a performer. Once I was stung or bitten by the bug of theater, I really wanted to be a performer, and costume design was a side gig. I happened to be in a program where they put a lot of money into a public school to integrate, and so whenever Wicked became available, the head of that program decided that we should do that. And I think that was very smart of him because it was a largely Black school.
Debbie Millman:
Now, I believe that your mother helped make the white suit and the cape with the green lining and that your dad helped spray paint Glinda’s gold cape for that production.
Paul Tazewell:
All that true, all that true. I have memories of asking my dad to spray an ombre of rainbow colors on the Glinda cape on gold lamé. And he did his very best. He was a research chemist for Firestone. That was not his profession. He wasn’t creative in that way, but the fact that he took that on was really beautiful.
Debbie Millman:
You grew up in Akron, Ohio. You’re one of four boys.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
What order do you follow?
Paul Tazewell:
I’m number three. Yes. Yeah. My two older brothers were about a year apart, and then there’s a three year break, and I was born. And then my younger brother is four years younger than me.
Debbie Millman:
You mentioned your dad was a research chemist for Firestone Tire and Rubber, and your mom Barbara was a French and English teacher.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
But also a painter, a puppet maker, a performer, and a seamstress.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right, all of those. And her mother was a painter and her dad was a professor at Akron University.
Debbie Millman:
My mom was also a seamstress and a painter, and when I was living on Long Island through junior high school and high school, she would put ads in the Penny Saver to advertise her business. She worked in the basement in a little room that she carved out for herself. And what really entranced me about it was she did something that I guess now in doing my research for today’s show, quite a lot of costume designers do, which is you draw the person and the outfit and then you cut out little samples of the fabric and then attach that to the drawing. And she did that, and there were drawings all over her little space that she had with her Bernina sewing machine, which I remember.
Paul Tazewell:
Oh, my God.
Debbie Millman:
She taught me how to draw as well from doing that. Because I wanted to draw the models that she did of hers. I loved seeing everything that you did. It took me way back in a very whistful, bittersweet way.
Paul Tazewell:
Oh, that’s wonderful. So many different parts of what you just said ring true for me. Paper dolls and dressing up paper dolls and color forms. I don’t know if you remember color forms [inaudible 00:05:33].
Debbie Millman:
Oh, of course, and paper dolls. Oh my God, the Betsy McCall-
Paul Tazewell:
In heaven. Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… paper dolls in McCall’s Magazine. I still have mine, Paul.
Paul Tazewell:
All of those things I think were additive to create what I do now, it just happened that I diverted into performance for a little bit and then I came back.
Debbie Millman:
Now, your mother taught you how to sew. Is that correct?
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right. I was in the fourth grade, maybe, and I was making dashikis the first thing. It was a very simple T-shaped garment. And it was fashionable at the time, so it all made sense.
Debbie Millman:
I was in seventh grade when she first taught me how to sew, and I started making my own clothes. Probably the most memorable was a pair of bright red corduroy overalls, form-fitting that I appliqued a butterfly on the front panel of the overalls. And I really wish that I had a picture of it to show you-
Paul Tazewell:
Oh, that’s so great.
Debbie Millman:
… because it was probably my best moment as a seamstress in training. You and your brother studied quite a lot of music. You studied the Suzuki violin, you also studied piano and sang in the church choir. It really seems like your childhood, you were really surrounded by culture and arts and-
Paul Tazewell:
That is very true. We were in Akron, albeit. And even so, my grandmother would teach piano. She played the piano and she also taught piano. She went to Oberlin to study music. That element of culture of the arts was always a part of our life. It then bled into our time at church and being an acolyte and singing in the choir there. But my oldest brother, Joe, he pretty much led our experience with Suzuki violin. And he was excellent for his age. Then each of us needed to follow suit.
Debbie Millman:
I read that when you were nine years old, you saw a production of Oklahoma, and that was when you decided that you wanted to become an actor and a dancer. What was it about that show in particular? Did you see it as a play or did you see the movie?
Paul Tazewell:
No, it was a high school production. It was at the same high school that I ended up going to. I was in grade school; it might’ve been in the fifth grade or sixth grade. I was familiar with live performance, but there was something about seeing that story as a musical being presented with the kind of excitement that was coming off the stage. And there was infectious, and I really wanted to… I decided at that moment that I wanted to be a part of that energy. There was something that was really magical that was coming from the stage. And I held to that until I was able to actually do it.
I think my first plays were probably in junior high. And those were just very simply presented plays. But then it was the production of West Side Story, which was produced by the… It was a summer musical program again at my high school, but it was pulling many students from all over the greater Akron area to do a production of West Side Story. In that production, I played Officer Krupke.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Paul Tazewell:
And that was probably my first full-on performance. And that was great. It was a lot of fun and life-changing because, again, it was creating a community of artists coming together for this single goal of creating art and what’s turned into creating something beautiful for me. That’s been a consistent part of my professional experience. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
And is it true for a very brief period of time you thought you wanted to be a psychologist?
Paul Tazewell:
You dug very deep. Well, yes. Yeah. When you go through this process of as a kid be a doctor or a lawyer or a fireman or… I actually had a child psychologist growing up; it was a group therapy situation. And I had loved that time. For me, it was playtime. And so I think that it made me very self-aware in a good way. But I then also realized that as a profession, I could choose to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. It served me, that interest, as I investigate characters and wanting to understand personalities, people, why we make certain decisions and how that informs what we choose to dress ourselves in. I think that it is all part of how I have made sense of what I do.
Debbie Millman:
You started college at Pride Institute in Brooklyn, majoring in fashion design and intended to continue taking dance and acting classes. And I understand that it was your parents that insisted that you study fashion so you would have something to fall back on if auditioning didn’t work out. And it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of parents insisting that a backup safety job would be a job in fashion.
Paul Tazewell:
Well-
Debbie Millman:
They must have had a lot of faith in your talent.
Paul Tazewell:
I think that that was okayed by my mom. I think my dad, who was a very pragmatic man, wanted to make sure that his children took care of themselves and could take care of a family, and making choices according to that. Really, theater and the arts for my father wasn’t a solution. That wasn’t an option, really. And I think that my mother probably talked him into this as an idea because, indeed, you could get a degree in fashion design.
My intention was to get to New York, come hell or high water. I realized that when… I think that my class took two trips to New York while I was in high school, and I knew that I wanted to be in New York. I wanted to mature as an artist in New York. And that was where I could actually start to do theater. It put me in the right place to start to take lessons, voice lessons and audition and eventually join a cast on Broadway. That was my hope. But indeed, it was at least having some degree that I could excel in, why not have it be fashion? Because it was something that I really enjoyed. And I think that my mother knew that I would excel in a profession that I really enjoyed.
Debbie Millman:
You transferred to North Carolina School of the Arts after one year at Pratt. Why did you make that move?
Paul Tazewell:
Well, coming from Akron, Ohio, that was a huge culture shift to enter into New York and Brooklyn in 1981/’82.
Debbie Millman:
Right, it was before Brooklyn was really Brooklyn.
Paul Tazewell:
I live in the same neighborhood that I was going to school in now, and it was completely different situation. But that aside, I was living in a roach-infested apartment because that was the housing for Pratt Institute students; huge high rise full of students that were under the age of 21. That was a little traumatizing. And then I just wanted to get back to, really, what my passion and love is.
There was this program that offered costume design, or major in costume design as well as a major in dance as well as a major in acting, music of all sorts, and it was close to family. It was close to Greensboro where a lot of my family lives, so there are a lot of pluses for shifting. What I didn’t know is that I would not be able to double major, which is what my hope was, that I would double major in costume design and in dance or acting; one of those. That second year there, I needed to make a decision about what am I going to do? And what are my next steps with my life, really? And I made the decision to really set down performance and really embracing what seemed to be working at that moment, which was costume design.
One of the things that led into that decision was also being aware that the roles that I had the potential to be offered at that time were not necessarily roles that I saw myself in, meaning I was not necessarily going to be cast as a leading man in a musical, or those would be few and far between because I’m a Black man, and those roles were not offered up very easily. I thought that given everything that was being communicated to me, that my longevity as a costume designer would be much greater. And really, here I am. I went on then to NYU for graduate school. I continued on for another three years after I graduated from North Carolina School of the Arts. And there I met Tazewell Thompson, who is a director of opera. And we share a name.
Debbie Millman:
I know. So unusual.
Paul Tazewell:
I know [inaudible 00:15:27]-
Debbie Millman:
I had to double-check and triple-check, is this correct?
Paul Tazewell:
No nepotism, it was just that as it was. But he introduced me to Arena Stage in Washington. It was the year after I graduated. I had done my graduate production with Tazewell as the director. That next year, there was a production called Stand Up Tragedy. They were producing it at the Arena Stage, and so I was asked to come in and design that production. That started a work relationship and collaborative relationship with the Arena Stage. And the year after, I was asked to return as the head of the costume department, to be in residence there. And it provided the opportunity to really hone my skills as a costume designer to continue to mature as a costume designer as well and to be able to express, to create on a professional level, but it was outside of the gaze of New York.
At the same time, I was also starting to get invited to other regional theaters around because at that time, the theaters, again, through grants were getting money to produce work about people of color. There was much more that was being done to tell stories about Black people and other people of color. That allowed for introductions to these other theater companies, and in a beautiful way I was able to show them what I could do both to tell the story of people of color and then also to show them that my vision was much… Well, it was inclusive of other things as well.
Debbie Millman:
You were at the Arena Stage in Washington for eight years. You became the resident costume designer. You got 13 Helen Hayes Award nominations while you were there, as well as winning some. You met George Wolfe in 1996. He was then the artistic director of The Public Theater. He saw your work, found your name, and invited you to work with him. How did he find you? What did he see of yours that intrigued him? Do you know?
Paul Tazewell:
I am going to assume that he came down to the Arena Stage or he had a representative.
Debbie Millman:
Maybe it was the 13 nominations.
Paul Tazewell:
Well, could be. The first play that he asked me to design, it was called Blade to the Heat. And it was set in the ’50s or very early ’60s, I can’t remember, and it involved a Jackie Wilson-like character and then also a Cuban. There were boxers. I believe it was a boxing story. Then soon after, he asked me to design Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, which was my first Broadway show.
Debbie Millman:
First Broadway show, first Tony nomination.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
You was 30 years old.
Paul Tazewell:
Is that right?
Debbie Millman:
Yes, I think so.
Paul Tazewell:
I was like-
Debbie Millman:
According to my math. Assuming I got your age correct. Wow, that is incredible. Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, created by Savion Glover, I saw that back in the day, 1996, I think. Revolutionized theater.
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah, in a huge way. And I look back on my career and I think about those opportunities, those pinnacle moments that have really informed how I design. Just to work with George is amazing. He’s brilliant. And he’s brilliant as a writer and he’s brilliant as director. And to be asked to keep up with him and his pace and his brain may be better and smarter. And I continue to work with George. And in my process, I carry him into it because I’m asking myself questions in the same way.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve also had a really long relationship with The Public Theater. Hamilton was the play after In the Heights. In the Heights was created, the beginning of which was at Wesleyan, but then Hamilton was started at The Public Theater. When did you get involved with Lin and Tommy? I know you’ve worked with Tommy quite a lot.
Paul Tazewell:
Yes. In the Heights was the first production that I did with that group of creatives, with Tommy, with Lin, with Alex Lacamoire and with Andy Blankenbuehler. And there was Tazewell, there was George C. Wolfe, there was Tommy Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alex, Andy. Those were hugely formative collaborative relationships. With Tommy, with Lin, that space became a very safe space to be able to create.
That’s when I do my best work. I know that that’s when I do my best work. And if I think… And don’t have to think very hard, but if I think about what I was after from the West Side Story when I played Officer Krupke and that feeling, it’s searching to recreate that feeling in every experience that I get and searching for collaborative relationships where that can be engendered, where there’s space to offer up in a way that doesn’t feel… There’s no judgment. Just open and sane. That is what I will always search for because I now know myself and I know that that needs to be part of the experience.
But I think that it was probably… I want to say that it was my husband, he was my partner at the time, found out that this production was happening, I don’t know, probably online. He found out that there was a production called In the Heights. It focused on Latin community and also other people on the streets of New York. It was in line with much of the work that I had been asked to do up to that point. As a designer, I was probably the best person to do that, and so he encouraged me to go after that star. And I’m so glad that I did. I put my agent on tracking down how do we get a meeting with Tommy and see if… And he might’ve been doing the same thing from his end as well, but however it happened, we ended up in the same space. We hit it off. There was a connection.
From then on, there has been a connection. Tommy is one of my favorite directors. It is one of my favorite experiences because there were a number of productions that were between In the Heights and Hamilton. All that time, we were becoming more familiar with each other. And we did a production of The Wiz for Encores. That was a-
Debbie Millman:
That’s where you won your Emmy Award?
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah. Well, I won my Emmy Award for The Wiz Live. It was a workshop level production that was done for Encores at City Center.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve actually worked on a version of The Wizard of Oz three times before Wicked, when you were in school and then Lincoln Center-
Paul Tazewell:
And then the Encores.
Debbie Millman:
… and television. Wow.
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah, I’ve been with those characters for a long time. And then the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda created Hamilton, and that was when life really shifted. Until then, it was the struggle of being a freelance designer. Somewhere in there, I lost a little bit of hope and I went to teach at Carnegie Mellon for three years. And I had things that were on Broadway, like The Color Purple and Caroline, or Change. Those shows closed, and I was just trying to figure out where do I fit in again? And-
Debbie Millman:
Why did you lose hope?
Paul Tazewell:
It was just a huge struggle to be a freelance designer and to feel like I was not being offered those projects that I really wanted to do. I wasn’t being offered projects where I felt like I could really expand. And I think that I was just at a place where I wanted to have life open up and to have new experiences, to have new ways of creating. But it was that same year that I took on the professorship at Carnegie Mellon. I was offered… George Wolfe directed Lackawanna Blues for HBO, and so then it was a film. And of course I was going to do that, and so I was trying to juggle two full-time jobs at the same time and trying to shoot a film as well as teach and be present for the students. It was after that second year, I made the decision that I was going to leave and go back to freelancing because I really wanted to be doing what it was that I was teaching, trying to teach somebody else. And I also knew when I was present, the students did so much better, and they deserved somebody that could be present, and so I made the decision to move on and just kept at it.
Debbie Millman:
Your costumes for Hamilton were also nominated for a Tony Award. I don’t know if you happened to see Saturday Night Live this past weekend when Manuel Miranda made a special cameo performance in his Hamilton costume.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
Which is so iconic now. You don’t even need to know, you just see it and it becomes telegraphic that this is the costume from this play. That’s so rare. When I was thinking about it, it just happened to coincide with preparing for today’s show. And I thought, my goodness, we don’t even need to know that he’s Hamilton to know that this is a costume from Hamilton.
Paul Tazewell:
Well, it’s Lin’s brilliance. And I’m just so grateful to be able to have created those iconic looks. That costume that Lin wears, the three sisters and their colors, when you see those three colors together, you know exactly what that reference is. And to realize that that came out of me, it’s mind-blowing, it’s crazy, it’s crazy. And I’m so glad that I was part of it. That was a beautiful group of people to collaborate with, Tommy and Lin and Alex, but also the cast and setting those characters on that cast and how they forever will be those characters, for me at least, and how the colors that I chose were defined by who was playing the role, and that then defines who that character is from now on. And also hairstyle, there are all these qualities that we created together on that cast and just how we then look at the rest of the cast after them, it was just really beautiful. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
You worked with Steven Spielberg on the movie, West Side Story; another one from your history, your personal history. And that had a very modern look. You also worked recently on the beautiful musical, Suffs, also another show that came out of The Public Theater created by Shaina Taub. Is there a different process that you have for period pieces than for pieces that are primarily set in more modern times?
Paul Tazewell:
Well, I would say that my focus is always representing the character as honestly as possible. I’m after how do we access who this character is as it’s being played by the actor? And if it is period, I can lean on period research. Because of that, it’s like, okay, well, this is what it was. I still have to make character choices around how to use the period research and just what the qualities might be of fabric choice. But I love historic work, I love period work because of the research element.
When I’m working on… Which is this film that I’m working on with Steven Spielberg right now is contemporary, so it’s a different kind of finding the character. Contemporary design is often more challenging because everyone involved and also seeing it knows clothing because it’s contemporary, because it’s what we wear every day. And so you end up with more input on what would be right for a character, whether it’s from the actor or it’s from the director or from someone outside of the creative group. That becomes challenging to manage.
Also, when you’re making choices about personality, my relationship to a piece of clothing is going to be different from your relationship to a piece of clothing. How you read that as an emotional statement is always going to be different. Whether it’s historic or it’s contemporary, all that I can hold to is how I viscerally feel about whatever that decision is. And then I rely on that and I expect that at least 50% of the rest of the audiences will feel the same, will have the same kind of response. But hopefully it has enough insight that it actually hits the mark.
Debbie Millman:
Paul, let’s talk about Wicked.
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
I read that you stated that you remember sitting in front of the television watching The Wizard of Oz when you were four years old, and it left an imprint on how you see color, how you look at design overall and what you find magical. Can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like and how that all happened?
Paul Tazewell:
Well, just you think about that moment when it goes from black and white sepia tone, it’s a very curated black and white, into technicolor. What other moment in filmmaking can you say has that kind of magic where you seamlessly are led from trauma and reality into a space of magic and anything can happen and beauty and love and brilliance and any of those words that are descriptive of what Oz is and feels like? That as well as being full of, you’ve got a fairy princess named Glinda and a huge tulle dress that’s sparkly, which is like Cinderella, which is my favorite Disney film, and then you’ve got a witch that melts and she explodes into red smoke, and ruby slippers that sparkle. There are so many different iconic clothing images alone that are in my bank of visual inspiration.
Debbie Millman:
In the original 1939 film, Glinda, the good witch wore an iconic pink gown that was designed by Adrian Aldoph Greenberg, who just went by Adrian. I love that. But Glinda’s gown beginning in the Broadway production designed by Susan Hilferty is blue. Can you talk about the difference?
Paul Tazewell:
Early on, I had a conversation with Marc Platt who was the producer, the lead producer of Wicked the film. And he’s also the producer of the Broadway show. It’s been his baby for years and years and years. I believe because of the difference of studio, it was MGM who held the rights to The Wizard of Oz and Universal that was going to be doing the film and then a different entity that was doing the Broadway show. For Susan, she wasn’t given access to that color for that design for legal reasons.
Debbie Millman:
Isn’t that incredible that it was a copyright?
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Debbie Millman:
How were you able to go back to what I’ve read now is Billie Burke pink, as it’s been called in Ozian mythology, to be able to have Ariana Grande wear a pink gown again?
Paul Tazewell:
Well, I was using it as an icon, as a cultural icon that many people access, know and access. And I have it in my creative being as well. I thought that it was important and useful to tap into that color because I could then use it to define the rest of her color story. And it just felt design appropriate to be able to use it in that way and consistent to say something about her character and to say something about artifice, all that is lovely and beautiful and bubbly. It was reflective of all of those qualities. And it was also the same color as what Billie Burke wore in The Wizard of Oz. I held onto that, and then for what is the equivalent of the Billie Burke dress, that moment when she rides in in the bubble, she’s in a very same color, very different silhouette. And the way that we arrived at that silhouette is much different than what that dress is, but it is a Glinda icon for 2025. That’s beautiful to create that. It serves the film overall. And she wears it so very well, Ariana Grande.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, I’ve seen so many people trying to recreate the dress in different names. But the gown includes over 20,000 beads.
Paul Tazewell:
That’s right. That’s right.
Debbie Millman:
It took 225 hours to make. Is it true that you created and constructed more than 1,000 costumes for the film?
Paul Tazewell:
Oh, yeah. I’m surprised that it’s not… It feels like there were many more, but that was it. And we were working on both films. Wicked Part One and Wicked Part Two are two different films, and they were filmed at the same time. And in a given week, we might be shooting… Two days of the week would be all Wicked One, and then we would shift over into Wicked Two. It wasn’t shot in sequence, we were dropping in and using sets that needed to stay up only for a limited amount of time. And then when we shot that set out, then they could shift it to something else. That was the practical reason that we were doing that, we were faced with doing that way.
But it also, it meant that we had to figure out the design of the whole story and both films all at the same time, which was very useful because I could lay out the design and actually see what the arc was going to be all the way to the very end and make sure that the choices that I make at the beginning of the film need to somehow relate to what’s happening at the end of the film. And it all needs to make sense in the way that John wants for it to make sense. That made for a really beautiful and creative process in telling the story. And to design something that was quite so epic was really, really quite wonderful.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve worked with Cynthia Erivo now on several projects, on Harriet, on Wicked. Did getting to know her while working together on Harriet impact your collaboration on Wicked?
Paul Tazewell:
Absolutely. Cynthia, she happens to be one of my favorite actresses to work with, but just one of my favorite people. And having worked with her on Harriet, I gained so much respect for her because she does everything. She is an amazing athlete. She doesn’t complain about the physical nature of it. She does what she needs to do and is very adamant about taking on things that producers are a little on the edge of her taking on. But she wanted to do as many of her stunts as possible. She wanted to do all of her own flying. And she wanted to be singing while she was… Or she was. She was singing all of those numbers where she is flying, she is singing as well daily. Just the stamina she really exhibits. I would give her the world to make her feel good and taken care of. And that was established with that relationship working on Harriet.
Harriet, it was a tricky time for me because that was the same… My husband passed away right before I was going out of town. We filmed in Virginia. And so I was going through that grieving process and using the creative process to help me with that grieving. It gave me a place to escape into that. It helped me to heal because of what I was doing daily and the kind of focus that I needed to have daily, which was really powerful, and I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot of what I need in going through something hard like that. But speaking of Cynthia, she was always present and connected to that, acknowledged that in me. And that kind of warmth allowed for me to go through that process and be more present because I also felt seen and heard.
Debbie Millman:
Talk about dressing her nails.
Paul Tazewell:
Well, I didn’t get an opportunity to design them. I would give my input, but she and the nail designer really came up with what the sequence of looks would be for her nails. Her nails are very important to her. You see her on the red carpet with decorated nails well before Wicked. She wanted to pull that into how she was telling the story of Elphaba, and then figuring out how do we use… Because there were certain things that we… Like earrings, for instance. I didn’t want to use earrings at Shiz because I felt like it would pull us out of the world of Oz for that moment. She was perfectly fine with that.
But it was interesting how you… Really being able to unpack how we see people in different elements, different accessories, and what feels very contemporary and what is okay. When you look at… There’s a silhouette of the Wicked Witch of the West with her hands. You see this silhouette and you see these pointed fingernails. Just in that, it allows for you to expand on that and make that be one of the identifying things about Elphaba.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. In The Wizard of Oz when the Witch of the West is trying to get the shoes and then the electrical shocks and it burns her nails.
Paul Tazewell:
Exactly. Exactly.
Debbie Millman:
Oof, that burned into my brain. You talked about earrings. I know that the rings that Cynthia Erivo was wearing were very specifically designed. And I learned so much in researching this. I understand that traditional Western tailoring is built on the symmetry of the golden rectangle in geometry. Did not know that. But your costumes for Wicked were influenced by the Fibonacci spiral, which favors asymmetry. Talk about that very specific decision.
Paul Tazewell:
The way that I start all projects is I will have multiple conversations with the director to better understand what their point of view is about a story or about a world. I did have those conversations with John early on. I might’ve come up with some images, I believe that I did, that I showed to John in the hiring process when I was being interviewed. And I offered up a glimpse into how I saw the potential of this world and how I might realize it.
But then adding to that, after I was brought on board and I was thinking about other imagery, I was very much drawn to decor and other pieces of art, kaleidoscopic images that included some kind of spiral. And then looking at the Art Nouveau period, which is the same period that Frank Baum was writing the original Wizard of Oz, those were happening simultaneously, so I wanted to investigate, okay, what is within this world of Art Nouveau? And that is taking nature and manipulating it into a design. With Art Nouveau, that was what is an operation. And with that, you see a lot of spirals and a lot of asymmetry.
And so with design, I’m always searching for what are those common things that will help to define what this world is? For both Nathan Crowley, the production designer, and myself, we need to create rules for a made-up world. And it was informed indeed by the book by Gregory Maguire of Wicked, it was informed by The Wizard of Oz film from 1939, and it was informed by the Broadway show. How do you collect all of that as imagery and then make use of it in a way that helps you to create a new world and a world that, actually, we have to explode it because we’re going to see so much more of what Oz is? Whether it’s Munchkin land or it’s Emerald City or it’s Shiz. We really needed to figure out, okay, what is visually in operation? And the spiral ended up being a large part of that sensibility and what seemed both whimsical and could hold all the magic that was going to happen within the film.
I latched onto the Fibonacci spiral as a creative element or a formula that would govern this world of Oz. And you see it in the Shiz uniforms where there’s asymmetry, you see it in… All of Elphaba’s clothes are asymmetrical. There’s the organic element that is added onto that for Elphaba, which it’s more reflective of those things that are mysterious and hidden in nature like mushrooms, like fungus, like the underside of a trunk in a forest, like dried leaves, and knowing that black was going to be very highly used for her costume. I wanted to make it more interesting because when you’re filming black, it can very easily just go to just a block because it soaks up so much light, but with the brilliance of Alice Brooks, the cinematographer, she figured out a way to light all those different textures that I was creating. But then also, when I would add color underneath, there was an iridescence that you got from her clothing as well.
Alongside of that, adjacent to that was that we also wanted to be very aware of Elphaba’s skin and her skin tone showing through her clothes as well. There was a lot of sheer fabric that was used on Elphaba as well. It was all of those elements together. We were talking about spirals and I went into something else, sorry.
Debbie Millman:
No, no, it’s great because even Elphaba’s glasses have a spiral to them, her pinky rings, which I read was the center from which the rest of the Fibonacci spiral originates.
Paul Tazewell:
Right. Exactly.
Debbie Millman:
I want to talk a little bit about the soul of Elphaba a little bit. And you projected her so beautifully through clothes. I didn’t realize that Elphaba wears black, not because she is evil, but because she’s in mourning and that’s the color that she wears. But when I was reading about the original book and the backstory of Elphaba, who was actually named in Wicked, not in the book, and Elphaba is the initials of the original writer, L. Frank Baum. His initials are L. F. B., and that became Elphaba.
But one of the things that I can’t stop thinking about is how Elphaba is portrayed. And I know that Gregory Maguire began contemplating the nature of evil when he was living in London and working on the book. And he stated this: “If everyone was always calling you a bad name, how much of that would you internalize? How much of that would you say, ‘All right, go ahead. I’ll be everything that you call me because I have no capacity to change your minds anyway, so why bother by those standards should I Live?'” We learned so much about Elphaba over the course of the play and the movie. Do you think that she really was evil in any way?
Paul Tazewell:
No, no. Look, my lens into Elphaba and into my design for Wicked is seeing Elphaba as a person of color. That is my key, my emotional key into understanding what this world is, what both their stories are, both Elphaba and Glinda. As a person of color, many assumptions are made and she’s completely misunderstood, and even her reserve is misunderstood. And to walk this earth as a Black man, I understand that challenge. And to be vilified for the color of her skin, her green skin is true and huge, and it makes for a very timely story.
Debbie Millman:
More so than ever now.
Paul Tazewell:
Yeah. And timely because you have the opportunity to see this beautiful relationship come together of two people that don’t like each other. And because they’re forced to live in the same space, they grow to understand each other and then grow to love each other. That’s a beautiful story and necessary for everyone to learn, but definitely necessary for young people to learn.
Debbie Millman:
There’s a moment when Elphaba and Glinda going into the Emerald City, and it almost seems as if their silhouettes are similar in that moment. Was that intentional?
Paul Tazewell:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, good.
Paul Tazewell:
Thank you for pointing that out. You meet these two women that very clearly have different modes of operation as they navigate their world. I spoke of Glinda who becomes Glinda-
Debbie Millman:
Glinda, yeah.
Paul Tazewell:
… and her world of artifice and beauty. And how she’s seen, without question, is nice, very polite, beautiful, desirable. She’s of an affluent family. There’s just all of those things that make life very easy for her publicly. And for Elphaba, it’s just the opposite because of her difference and because she doesn’t play by anybody else’s rules as well, which is admirable, but it is threatening to the rest of the community.
You just continue to follow that forward and figure out, okay, how can this evolve to a place where Elphaba softens within her own style? It was partly because of Cynthia playing this role and her love of clothing I knew that Elphaba had to… She’s got a very definite style. It’s all intentional and it’s all very beautiful. It just happens to be within the color palette that she gravitates to. Their balance needed to always stay the same, but from a different point of view so that to the end, the only important thing is their friendship. When Glinda’s invited to hop on the train with Elphaba and they ride to this very scary place together, we see them in the same way. And then their relationship shifts and changes very quickly at that very end and moment.
Debbie Millman:
We have about 11 months to wait for part two. I’m so upset about that. Any surprises in the costumes that await us?
Paul Tazewell:
All I can say is that there is lots to look forward to.
Debbie Millman:
You said that in such a way that I was expected to hear, “And there’s going to be this.”
Paul Tazewell:
No.
Debbie Millman:
Paul, I have one last question for you. You stated this: “Keep your eyes and heart open. Understand the power of storytelling and how clothes help tell stories.” For anyone looking to discover how they can best harmonize what they wear with who they are, what would you tell them?
Paul Tazewell:
Every day that you wake up and you’re going through what your day might entail and you check in on your emotional state, make it intentional what you choose to pull out of your closet. It’s all going to inform how you’re seen. I always say we’re making judgements daily, minute by minute. Those people that are walking towards us down the street, anyone who enters into a room, you’re making choices about who they are, what their emotional state is, what their personality is before you actually meet them, before you have a conversation. You’re making a judgment on who that person is, and it’s defined by their clothing. It might be their hair as well or the glasses that they wear, but clothing is a large element of what you’re taking in and making a judgment about. And then that person may prove you wrong or they are right in line with what they’re wearing, but know that how you dress yourself is very intentional and speaks to where you are in your heart and how you want to represent yourself.
Debbie Millman:
Paul Tazewell, thank you, thank you, thank you for making so much beautiful work that matters. Thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Paul Tazewell:
Thank you so much. This was a wonderful conversation.
Debbie Millman:
Thank you. Paul Tazewell’s latest work can be seen in the movie Wicked and on Broadway in Death Becomes Her and MJ the Musical. You can read lots more about him at paultazewelldesign.com. And I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Curtis Fox:
Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The editor-in-chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.