Fashion School

Image Credit: Adam Rose/Fox

Last nights Glee unveiled not only three original songs, but also some highly original costume choices. When it comes to deciding the New Directions girls outfits for regionals, Glee costume designer Lou Eyrich asks, Is it youthful, is it pretty and soft, and does it fit Ryan Murphys vision?

Last years regionals dresses came from Betsey Johnson, which Eyrich says makes the perfect show choir dresses. This year, the show needed a designer whos used to making dresses of varying sizes on a tight turnaround, so who better than a bridal designer? Eyrichs team ordered aqua bridesmaids dresses from Los Angeles-based Jenny Yoo (who also did the girls dresses for Kurt and Finns parents wedding) on a Wednesday; Yoo made them on a Thursday, and on Friday, Eyrich and her team fit the dresses on the girls who require a wide range of sizes and added sashes around the waists and applied jewels from deconstructed BCBG necklaces to the fronts.

The biggest twist on the ensemble, though, came below the waist. The ladies of both New Directions and Aural Intensity sported black leggings, mostly for practical reasons but partly for style. Their dance numbers are very athletic, says Eyrich. Theyre jumping on boys shoulders and sliding on their knees we have to give them [leggings] for protection and comfort. For New Directions, at least, the leggings were also part of an 80s Cyndi Lauper look, along with the big Doc Martens the girls wore with them. The boots came as an addition straight from the top: Ryan Murphy liked the sweet, youthful dresses but wanted to make it more Balmain. Just a little more fashion-y and trendy, not just another dress with dance shoes, because weve done that so many times.

As for some other Glee-toure curiosities:

Speaking of uniforms, how do you feel about Quinn, Santana, and Brittany no longer wearing their Cheerios outfits all the time? Creatively, we love it! It makes a lot more work for us, and the girls [Dianna Agron, Naya Rivera, and Heather Morris] were thrilled to get out of the cheerleading uniforms at first. But now they see how many fittings they have to do, and theyre like, Hmm, maybe we should go back to Cheerios uniforms. Were having a lot of fun with it, though.

Do you know what people are wearing at Nationals yet? Wed love to get a jump on it. We were just talking about Nationals this morning. We usually wait for the music so we know: Is it upbeat? Is it rock and roll? Is it reggae? But we want to get a jump on it and show Ryan some ideas because well be doing two big episodes in a row.

I guess people dont talk about the boys fashion as much, but what kind of thought process went into designing their regionals outfits? We start with the girls and find a color that works for them, because its harder to find a dress that works on seven different girls. Since we chose aqua and black for the girls, we wanted to color-coordinate. We put the New Directions boys in black Levi jeans, black tops, and a skinny black tie to dress them up a bit.

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Tags: Costume, Costume Designer