Dressing for the Emerald City Dressing for the Emerald City
The New York Times
To create the costumes for the new “Wicked” movie, the filmmakers turned to a Tony Award winner who already knew his way around Oz.
Paul Tazewell was 16 years old and living in Akron, Ohio, the first time he designed costumes for “The Wiz.” It was a high school production, and much of the work happened in his family’s dining room.
He has been summoned back to Oz several times since that first show — a workshop here, an NBC broadcast there. So when the director Jon M. Chu asked him to design the costumes for Universal’s long-awaited film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Wicked,” there was little learning curve to speak of.
A prequel of sorts to “The Wizard of Oz,” “Wicked” centers on two reluctant roommates at Shiz University: Galinda, an effervescent daughter of privilege who goes on to drop a vowel (that first “a”), and Elphaba, a green-skinned outcast who goes on to pick up a title (the Wicked Witch of the West).
By the time Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were brought on board to play the film’s lead witches, Mr. Tazewell, 60, a Tony Award winner for his work on “Hamilton,” was already off to the races on his own preparations, collecting images of mushroom caps and bisected seashells for inspiration.
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