An Interview With William Ivey Long, the Costume Designer of the New ‘Rocky Horror’ Movie
The classic 1975 Rocky Horror Picture Show has been reimagined, and we couldn’t be more excited. Starring Laverne Cox, Victoria Justice, and Ryan McCartan, the TV movie, which airs tonight on Fox at 8pm EST, will be a frenzy of music, laughs and, of course, fabulous fashion. William Ivey Long, the famed costume designer, gave us an inside look at what inspired him and how he gave the cult classic a modern look. Not only was he inspired by the legendary David Bowie, but Britney Spears and Beyoncé. Does it get any better than that?
Photo: Clement Pascal1/17Check out the slides ahead to learn more about William Ivey Long's creative process.
Photo: Clement Pascal2/17William Ivey Long stands as one of the most influential and successful costume designers in entertainment. Not only did he design the original costumes for Chicago on Broadway, but his latest project is for none other than Fox’s Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Photo: Clement Pascal3/17Immediately upon walking into the lower-level of Ivey Long’s studio, which used to be a Manhattan button factory in 1852, you’re immediately entrenched in a time warp (pun intended) – Grace Jones, glam rock, skinny jeans, punk, lace – everything and beyond covers the walls.
Photo: Clement Pascal4/17Teen Vogue got an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at his incredible showroom in Manhattan. The designer set up dozens of boards, showing us his design process for creating the crazy cool looks for this classic remake.
Photo: Clement Pascal5/17As indicated by one of Long’s many lists, the inspirations for the film’s costumes were four-fold: old Hollywood glamour, 1970s glam rock, B-horror films/sci-fi, and 1950’s Norman Rockwell Naivete.
Photo: Clement Pascal6/17“I heard about the film in September 2015, only about 5 months before shooting,” Ivey Long said. “The producer called me and said, ‘We always assumed you would do it, but we forgot to ask you. So you have to do it and we won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.’”
Photo: Clement Pascal7/17“The Transylvanians were really fun because Kenny Ortega, the director/choreographer, wanted them to be the audience for all the scenes,” William describes. For these characters, the designer was heavily influenced by the late David Bowie, and tried to make their costumes as unisex as possible.
Photo: Clement Pascal8/17From inspiration images to his initial sketches, the process of creating the looks for stars such as Laverne Cox and Victoria Justice is no simple feat. On one of the many boards of drawings, notes and sketches, the exact formula for Dr. Frank-N-Furter was laid out: 60% Grace Jones, 30% Tina Turner, 10% Beyonce. (We can’t think of a better combination than that!)
Photo: Clement Pascal9/17Although the initial ideas and designs come from Ivey Long himself, the process of creating each character’s costumes was very much collaborative with the performer. “We created it together. It starts with a sketch, but then it grows,” he says.
Photo: Clement Pascal10/17The designer explains the piece he’s happiest with. “The one that I’m proudest of and is the biggest deal is the lab coat. Because it was a real lab coat in the film. And we took a real lab coat, but we turned it into a Joan Crawford-type look, because the idea is Dr. Frank-N-Furter loves 40s movies – the glamour of the old movies.”
Photo: Clement Pascal11/17Ivey Long began his career with none other than the legendary couturier Charles James, who was the inspiration behind the 2014 Met Gala exhibition. “It took me six years of stalking him,” Long explains on how he got the position.
Photo: Clement Pascal12/17One of his closest and longest friends is none other than the Queen herself: Meryl Streep, who he roomed with when they were at the Yale Drama School together.
Photo: Clement Pascal13/17“Osmosis is a very underused design process, I think,” Ivey Long says. “You can’t just study the film – in fact, you should go back and study what was going on around it and what they were looking at. Because you know, male, female, straight, gay, transgender – that’s the story. So I surrounded myself with as much of this as I could.”
Photo: Clement Pascal14/17All these collages were done to get into my brain – even though I lived through it,” he says. When it came to dressing Laverne he notes, “The main thing I knew I needed was I needed to figure out two things: corsets and fishnets. I have a real woman with an anatomically correct body – so it can’t fit the same way Tim Curry’s did. But mostly, it was about the fishnets.”
Photo: Clement Pascal15/17While of course the main characters require extra attention and detail, Mr. Long still digs deep into the ensemble cast as well. For the back-up band, he carefully thought about each member. “I did the history of rock ‘n roll and blues. Each of them, in my mind, was a different great musician,” he says.
Photo: Clement Pascal16/17Tune into Fox on October 20th to see the costumes come to life in the film’s premiere.
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