Designing Gravity

Paul Tazewell is having a moment, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been an iconic costume designer for theater, film, and television for more than three decades now. From Broadway’s Hamilton, In the Heights, and Death Becomes Her to working on films like Harriet (2019) and West Side Story (2021), Tazewell has seen his career leveled up further for his work making thousands of costumes for the two live-action Wicked movies directed by Jon M. Chu — earning his second Academy Award nomination (and first historic win!) for the first installment of Wicked this year.

After praising directorial collaborators such as Steven Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tazewell describes Chu as “a very warm man [who] invites creative input as to how we’ll see the clothing, see each character, and then define what my role is.”

Tazewell created over a thousand costumes for the Wicked movies, including 60 costumes for Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), another set of 60 for Glinda (Ariana Grande), and 12 costumes for Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Specifically, Grande’s pink bubble dress — seen in the “No One Mourns the Wicked” opening number of the film — involved 137 pattern pieces and approximately 20,000 beads. It also took 225 hours to hand-bead Glinda’s pink bodice.

Given his work in theater productions and musical films, Tazewell is challenged to make costumes that look great and fit an actor while considering that the clothes will be worn by performers who must move comfortably in song-and-dance numbers. From flying on a broom to tap-dancing through life to spitting hip-hop bars as a Founding Father (in Hamilton), Tazewell’s costumes meet a different set of requirements in comparison to designers creating looks for runways or photo shoots.

“That’s a part of my job that I really love. In fact, I studied for a year in fashion design and shifted to costume design because of some of those elements,” Tazewell says. “It all comes down to storytelling and making choices about character. As a costume designer, I’m making a garment that’s appropriate for a character, and it might be that it is a glamorous beaded dress or a beautiful 18th-century dress all made out of silk taffeta with all the trimmings.”

The designer breaks down specific examples from Chu’s Wicked. “For Elphaba, it’s a black dress that needs to be reflective of the Wicked Witch of the West from the 1939 film, but also very specific to Elphaba and where she is at that age. I’m always thinking about what the design will represent as an image, while also acknowledging what’s necessary for it to function.”

Tazewell also reveals his process for Hamilton: “The musical has a group of core dancers who need to move their bodies in the way that Andy Blankenbuehler choreographed. They need to be in coats that make them look like American soldiers and then like British soldiers. The women also get in ball dresses that are really just a skirt added on top of their original corset so they can do the winter’s ball. And all of that needs to happen seamlessly, considering how short the transitions are. Hopefully, the choices that I’m making feel specific to the character and how the actor is playing the role.”

That Broadway show received well-deserved praise for its “color-blind” casting and its hip-hop tone to tell the story of the Founding Fathers. Even though Tazewell won a Tony Award for Best Costume Design in a Musical for his work on Hamilton, there hasn’t been as much acknowledgement that a Black gay man dressed those characters, who in real life upheld the patriarchy, owned slaves, and were considered womanizers. Tazewell describes that significance as “beautiful and deep.”

“When I was invited to design Hamilton, I was given the script, but it was hard to make sense of how this could be told,” Tazewell says. “I was reading it without the music, so I was just reading the poetry and reading the lines. Once I heard the music, I listened to it over and over again, and I fell in love with it. There was a reading soon after that, but it wasn’t staged — just actors singing through it.”

“But I was still blown away,” he adds. “I was crying when it ended. I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. I [was determined] to make it be the best that it could possibly be. I wanted my role in it to be as effective and as smart as the piece itself. I didn’t want to get in the way of the piece and what it was saying about the creation of our nation.”

“My process always starts with collecting abstract images,” he continues. “For the forefathers, there was the benefit of having all these paintings and portraits of them and their families as well as moments in history such as signing the Constitution. There are so many representations of those men.”

“Because my original relationship with Lin and Tommy [Kail the director of In the Heights] was streetwear, I also looked at contemporary images of people in clothing that was inspired by the 18th century,” he notes. Tazewell eventually did go with period pieces but “designed them in a way that was stripped back and very controlled.”

Tazewell explains that working on costumes for Broadway’s Death Becomes Her — the buzzy adaptation of the 1992 cult classic about frenemies seeking eternal youth — involved a lot of research and development. After all, many of the film’s iconic scenes rely on special effects and CGI, which isn’t really an option for live theater.

“We had a theatrical magician as a consultant who had proposed certain approaches, and then it was on us to fulfill them,” he says. “As a costume designer, you try to honor and collaborate with a fellow creative type. But at the end of the day, what he was proposing just wasn’t working for the production. That’s when my team and I took over that process and came up with [costume ideas] involving the lighting team.”

From a hole on a character’s body to a staircase fall to a twisted neck, “you never quite know how far you need to go until you see it theatrically,” Tazewell says. “And then you see how it’s lit and how you can support it so that the audience kind of stays with it and sees what’s going on.”

It’s remarkable that Tazewell has pulled off what could be considered an impossible task of creating distinctively iconic costumes that can handle the daily rigors of Broadway performances. The secret?

“Some of it is intuitive. I’m always asking myself, ‘Does this make me feel empathetic about this person?’ Looking at my career to date, I’m so grateful for working with so many great people, being able to set a tone, or hit a zeitgeist,” he says. “The first Broadway show I did, Bring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk, was groundbreaking for live theater. The Color Purple [on Broadway] was a heartfelt gift for everyone involved.”

In the film world, Tazewell has had the privilege of working with Color Purple alum Cynthia Erivo in the 2019 Harriet biopic and recapturing that magic in Wicked — both film roles garnered the actress Oscar nominations.

“It was a joy to be able to dress her as this iconic hero [Harriet Tubman],” he reflects. “When Jon [M. Chu] cast her as Elphaba, I was beside myself! One, because I knew that she’d hit it out of the park. I had also been feeling that this musical would resonate so supremely having a person of color in that role. Even though the green skin is fantasy, it still resonates because you know who the actor is. You know what she brings to Elphaba, and I just thought that it was so very beautiful.”

This article is part of the Out March/April issue, which hits newsstands April 1. Support queer media and subscribe— or download the issue through Apple News, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader starting March 20.