After Wicked’s 21-year run on Broadway, we all know: “Pink goes good with green.” Visually, this has never been more apparent than in the Jon Chu film adaptation of the popular musical, out in theaters on November 22. The origin story of The Wizard of Oz, Wicked follows the unlikely friendship between two witches, Elphaba (played by Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande), who dazzle in deliciously fantastical fashion.
When creating the looks for the film, costume designer Paul Tazewell, who previously worked on The Wiz and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, wanted to strike a balance between fantasy and real life. “I want [viewers] to want to wear everything that they see,” Tazewell tells Refinery29. “Jon wanted to establish a new vision for how he wanted to tell the story and then incorporate the spirit of what had come before it in the Wicked Broadway musical, The Wizard of Oz, and The Wiz.”
Inspired predominately by the 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie, Tazewell took memorable looks, like Glinda’s (Billie Burke) pink ballgown, and reimagined them with a “modern eye.” For the opening scene, which takes place in the present, Grande’s Glinda floats down to Munchkinland wearing a gown featuring a beaded butterfly-inspired bodice and a swirling bubble-printed skirt. This level of detail extends to her accessories, including heels with a swirl pattern and frosted heel, “so that it feels like everything is sprinkled with magic,” according to Tazewell.
After the movie jumps back in time, viewers learn of Elphaba’s childhood. While protecting her sister, Nessarose, Elphaba — an outsider to her peers because of her green skin — dresses the part while wearing chunky combat boots, oversized glasses, and a goth black puff-sleeve dress.
While imagining the evolution of the character — who becomes a villain in The Wizard of Oz — Tazewell wanted the costumes to act as a fashion “springboard” that could have realistically led to the Wicked Witch’s (Margaret Hamilton) dress-and-boots look from the 1939 film. “How do I start to create a story about a young woman who will end up being that [character], and where does she start? What moves her to gravitate to black?” Tazewell says. “Because Elphaba lost her mother early in life, she was in mourning from a very young age. She grabs hold of [black] as a defining color palette for her wardrobe because it keeps her different and interesting and severe.”
Elphaba enlists a new pair of heeled, square-toed combat boots as she enters Shiz University with Nessarose (Marissa Bode). “She holds onto the boot as an element that defines her look. It just shifts and changes. It becomes taller and has more presence. It was very important for Cynthia that the heel grow when she first enters Shiz to a taller heel that just gave her more stature,” Tazewell says.
Footwear continues to be a major storytelling driver: “I wanted to reflect an Ozian world from head to toe.”
When Nessarose is gifted a pair of heels at Shiz University, rather than have them be a pretty pair of silver sparkly heels like in the Broadway show, Tazewell “wanted to include the Easter egg of a swirling tornado where you see that in the heel, and then it opens up into swirls of jewels that wrap around the foot.”
In addition to crafting intricate looks for the leads, Tazewell custom-made hundreds of group costumes specific to each location throughout Oz. In Munchkinland, the residents wear rustic orange and brown agricultural outfits, while in Emerald City, the city dwellers don dressed-up vibrant green and purple looks. At Shiz University, the students wear teal uniforms (with not one exactly the same as the other, according to Tazewell). “You get this sense that everywhere you look within the world of Oz, there’s something that’s delightful and has its own design element,” he says. “It was imperative that each of the citizens of [Oz] feel individual because that would give us a reality.”
While the Shiz students wear various versions of grey and teal velvet, pleated, and striped pieces, Elphaba and Glinda stand out in their respective black and pink palettes. From Glinda’s prim and proper, pastel pink-and-blue striped skirt suits to Elphaba’s conservative black dresses and severe asymmetrical vest sets, the feuding duo’s contrasting outfits reflect their opposing personalities throughout the film. The juxtaposing looks are especially prevalent in the scenes inside the duo’s shared dormitory, where Glinda wears frilly, sheer pink nightgowns and has piles of pink luggage splayed everywhere, while Elphaba wears thick green and black robes and has a more frugal wardrobe.
During the climax of the film, at the Ozdust Ball, Glinda floats around in a ruffled, vibrant pink-and-orange ombré dress. Meanwhile, Elphaba steps out in a textured black gown, debuting the infamous witch hat that has become associated with the Wicked Witch character. “It is the simplest silhouette that we see her in throughout the film. It gives her a very striking and iconic look. Once you add the hat to that, you know exactly who this person is,” Tazewell says.
After becoming friends and leaving school to make their way to Emerald City and meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), Glinda dons a more demure and grown-up outfit compared to her prior ones, while Elphaba looks more confident and stands a bit taller in an all-black look.
“There were many challenges with arriving at Elphaba’s Emerald City dress,” Tazewell says, pointing to the “waving, swirling, micro-pleated pattern” of her look in the final scene, which sees Erivo singing “Defying Gravity” while performing intricate stunts and movements. “Working with a couture tailor, we figured out how to… make sure the cut of the dress moved in the right way,” says Tazewell. “That we got the right petticoat underneath, and that it’s always swirling, and allowed for Cynthia to do everything that she needed to do [for the scene].”
Talk about leaving viewers on a high note until Wicked Part Two releases in 2025.
Wicked is in theaters on November 22.
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