For any costume designer, a project of Wicked’s scope and scale would pose a thrilling challenge. But in Paul Tazewell’s case, he was tasked with outfitting two such movies—Wicked and Wicked: For Good—simultaneously. “It was exciting to shoot this way, to really maximise the scenery and consistency of the characters,” he says. “But it also meant that we needed to have a clear sense of the overall arc of the story.”
His work has already paid off in spades; Tazewell won an Oscar this year for his costumes in the first film. Now he’s ready to share a first look at Wicked’s highly anticipated sequel, out on November 21.
Wicked: For Good picks up right where Wicked ended: Now vilified as the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has fled to the Ozian forest, while Glinda (Ariana Grande) is working for the Wizard in Emerald City. “In part one, we see two young women beginning their adult lives and making choices [about] how they want to see the world,” says Tazewell. “In Wicked: For Good, we see how they make sense of the consequences that are created in making those choices.”
Tazewell’s work reflects that shift in perspective, deepening the film’s two central character studies. As Elphaba withdraws further into the forest—and into herself—we see her signature black cloak deteriorate, becoming increasingly distressed. “Her tunic is the dress that she wears at the end of Wicked, and her duster coat is actually her raincoat from the first film too,” says Tazewell. To see them degrade, he says, is to see “her shed all that that society has put onto her, to realize herself in a very honest and authentic way.”
When, later in the film, Elphaba sets off to the Kiamo Ko castle in a different overcoat, it too is suffused with meaning. “With this look, we see how things change and how she’s arriving at who she truly is,” teases Tazewell. “The coat is of Fiyero’s lineage, and that is represented in the black and blue ombré of the velvet cape and the tribal spiral pattern.”
Given the importance and visibility of her position in Emerald City, Glinda’s wardrobe required a different tack. “We see her maturing into womanhood, but also as the pawn of good for Emerald City, and how she’s being manipulated into an icon of goodness,” says Tazewell. As such, he wanted her look to be fit for royalty. “It was this idea of Dior meets Marie Antoinette,” he says. “She has this level of power yet also has this soft and feminine quality to her. There are a lot of layered fabrics, with tulle and organza.”
When, at the start of the second film, Glinda descends from her bubble for the first time, she’s wearing a blue and lilac fairy-tale gown, its silhouette inspired by the dress Billie Burke wears as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. “It felt important to represent her in a very classic way,” Tazewell says. “We also nodded to the original blue Glinda dress from the Wicked musical with the color choice.” As the film progresses, however, her look becomes a bit “simpler,” per Tazewell. (See: a pink skirt suit embroidered and beaded with dandelions.) “It was more about strong lines and getting down to the essence of who she is.”
Tazewell also went in a more contemporary fashion direction for Glinda’s wedding ceremony. “[Ariana and I] had deep discussions about what Glinda would wear as a wedding dress and how it would continue to show the evolution in her character,” he says. They landed on a clean, full-skirt gown with an asymmetric neckline and butterfly embroidery. “It has these dimensional butterflies that swirl around the hem of her dress,” says Tazewell. It’s finished with a 25-meter-long veil and a butterfly tiara—a metaphor for Glinda’s transformation.
Of course, Elphaba and Glinda weren’t the only characters Tazewell had to dress. For Michelle Yeoh’s Madame Morrible, the same themes of power, regality, and surrealism that governed her look in the first film returned—all in shades of emerald, of course, to represent her reign over the Emerald City. “She is a woman of great style,” says Tazewell. “She has magical powers and can control the weather, so that is how I decorated her clothing. Throughout the story, you can see meteorological symbols or clouds and smoke swirling around her dress.” Tazewell even embroidered one of her deep green velvet dressing gowns with sparks of silver and gold bullion to resemble lightning strikes. “It’s like lightning that’s exploding from the center of her body,” says Tazewell.
For the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), meanwhile, Tazewell leaned into more theatrical—and even campy—detailing; he is a showman, after all. “He is the one who has created all of the artifice that is so spectacular about Emerald City, and he carries that on his body as well,” says Tazewell. As such, the Wizard’s wardrobe, inspired by circus acts like Barnum & Bailey, includes ornate patterns, dramatic wide-lapel coats, and, of course, top hats galore. As with Madame Morrible, emerald details affirm his position of power. “His black dressing gown comes with an emerald green lapel, but the silhouette is true to a regal figure in control of Emerald City,” Tazewell says.
And then there were the costumes for characters like Jonathan Bailey’s Fiyero—“I wanted to make him appear as dashing as possible,” says Tazewell—and Pfannee (Bowen Yang). Tazewell ended up dressing a whole army of Ozian characters, each of whom had a distinct story and mood to communicate. None was more fun to figure out, however, than the buzziest quartet in all of Wicked: For Good: Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.
In tackling some of the most famous characters in Hollywood history, Tazewell wanted the original Wizard of Oz foursome to feel familiar—but with a twist. “That was hugely fun, to play with and manipulate what that image is,” says Tazewell. “They needed to be identifiable as the four friends—you need to know exactly who they are when you see them and how they fit into Wicked. But I also thought that it was important to reflect the original Baum book”—that is, L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Dorothy’s country-bumpkin costume, for one, nods to the one worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, as well as to what the character wears in Baum’s novel. What you won’t see, however? “We don’t have ruby slippers in our film,” Tazewell says. “There weren’t ruby slippers in the original Wizard of Oz book.” Fair enough!
He was no less considered when it came to creating the Tin Man, portrayed by Ethan Slater. Tazewell drew from “some of the original illustrations, in terms of the silhouette of the body and the funnel on the top of his head,” he says. For the Cowardly Lion, meanwhile, Tazewell had to outfit a fully animated character, just as he had Doctor Dillamond and other animals of Oz in the first film. “That was fun and exciting,” he says. “It took a lot of digging to figure out what the best shapes are that can stay Ozian and also function in a way that is believable.”
Reflecting on the breadth of the entire Wicked and Wicked: For Good project, Tazewell says it was a Hollywood task like no other. “I am so fortunate as a designer to have the opportunity to create this kind of world,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be a part of an epic film that is telling a story as big as it is—and also as intimately as it is, because it relates to how we see each other and how we operate, hopefully, with empathy and love.”
This story was originally published on Vogue.com.
