'Wicked' Costume Designer Breaks Down Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s Dresses InStyle

The meeting of these two contrasting characters is the strength of this story. You're green. And how they change each other, how they help to balance each other, how they learn to love one another, that's a beautiful thing to be able to create and represent visually. For over 20 years, Wicked, the musical prequel of sorts to The Wizard of Oz, has been thrillifying audiences across the globe. When the musical opened at the Gershwin Theater on October 30th, 2003, where it remains to this day, it propelled stars Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth into the stratosphere as household names. Since its Broadway debut, Wicked has become one of the most successful musicals of our time and is currently the fourth-longest-running and second-highest-grossing musical on Broadway. And almost as instantly as the musical hit Broadway, discussions of adapting it for the silver screen began, resulting in a nearly 20-year journey leading to Wicked's feature film debut, releasing across two parts in 2024 and 2025. But the origins of Wicked extend much further back, beginning with the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by author L. Frank Baum, which some of you die-hard fans may recognize as the origins for the name Elphaba. I would say that my first connection to Wicked was the Broadway show. I am changed. Susan Hilferty is the designer of that original Broadway musical. It was fascinating to see what Susan was coming up with. And The Wizard of Oz, the movie that was done in the 1930s, that has been a part of my life since I was a very small child. I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too. And then The Wiz. He's The Wiz, and he lives. I've designed The Wiz probably six times. That was actually the first major musical that I designed when I was in high school. So the story of The Wizard of Oz has been in my life for a considerable amount of time. So then to turn around and be asked to do the film of it was a surprise and also very exciting. Three, two, one, action. It was really John Chu, the director, that connected with me. And because of our connections through In the Heights with Lin-Manuel Miranda, I think that there was a familiarity that already existed. When I think of the film that I did before Wicked, West Side Story, that I designed for Steven Spielberg, I was very aware of the original West Side Story that was done in 1960 is very beloved. I love it. It's one of my favorite films. It's one of my favorite designs of a film. It was imperative to capture the energy of that design and bring it into our film, our new film. With Wicked, it was important to pull in the fan base of the Broadway musical, but then have them experience it in a new way. With film, you do need to create everything, all of the buildings. And indeed, Nathan Crowley, the production designer, did an amazing feat of building these huge sets. They were mind-blowing. My challenge was to then people these spaces with clothing that makes sense within itself. I knew from the very beginning that we were gonna need to manufacture everything in this film. The costume department encompassed sometimes 150 people at the same time, tailors and costume makers, milliners and fabricators of all sorts. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to have these amazing craftspeople to make these things come to life. What we're seeing here is the Elphaba Ozdust Ball outfit. So this is the first time that she actually wears the hat in public and she is dressing up. Everyone at Shiz, they're all dressing up to go to the Ozdust Ballroom. The character of Elphaba, that's where I have the strongest connection. She's marginalized because of the color of her skin. And then that idea is interpreted in a fantasy realm. As a costume designer, I'm always thinking about how to maintain a consistent point of view for each character. You see the same silhouette represented in the first time that we see her, when she has a beautiful black cashmere coat, and then she comes out of that and then she's in a felted dress with a blouse that is all micro pleated. For Paul and his team, the attention to detail to bring the character of Elphaba to life didn't just end with her costumes, but was also an important collaboration across multiple teams to be, well, fixated on her verdigris. But for good reason this time. Frances Hannon, who's our makeup artist, spent a lot of time figuring out what the perfect kind of green would be, especially going on to Cynthia's skin. And then within the costume department, needed to go about figuring out, okay, so when Cynthia is wearing a costume like this and she's painted green, does the rest of her body need to be painted green as well? I was using a lot of sheer fabrics. If we were going to see a bare arm, we definitely needed to paint that. If we only saw the green through a sheer sleeve and a sheer bodice, then we went to a dyed bodysuit. On camera, you couldn't tell that it was not actually makeup. Thinking about Elphaba, she has been marginalized by her family and by the community of Munchkinland, but she is also the advocate for animals. So I aligned her with nature. We've reinterpreted the underside of mushrooms as these swirling pleats that are applied onto the net of her blouse. And then also the ruffles and pleats that have been felted into the surface of the wool. If you look closely at her velvet bodice, you'll see fiddle ferns embroidered onto the surface of her waistcoat. And then her iconic hat is also micro-pleated and architectural in its shape as well. It's made in a traditional way with buckram that's wired and all of these sections are their own shape. And then as you stack them together, they create this shape. There's a moment that you see in the film where the hat actually opens up. So it's the way that it's packed away. The story is that this is a hat that was made by Galinda's grandmother. She never wears it, so she's giving it to Elphaba as a joke. But indeed, it tops off this very beautiful silhouette. The imagery of the Wicked Witch of the West would become the blueprint for the idea of a witch depicted across pop culture. So for Paul, his goal was to bring this iconic silhouette into a more modern frame of view. The way that I fabricated it turns it into something else. I leaned into felting mainly because of its organic quality and because we were able to create different kinds of pleated textures that we can then manipulate, whether it was undulating in a wave pattern that was applied onto the silhouette of a dress or it was ruffling that created a different kind of quality. The choice of black was because her mother passes very early in her life. Elphaba is kind of stuck emotionally. And I think that her gravitation to black as well, there's a starkness about it. And then when she goes into uniform, into Shiz uniform, she is in a darker charcoal gray, but it's still a world of charcoal gray. It does have some of the teal that is part of the Shiz pinstripe world, but it stays on the darker spectrum. I used purple just as an accent. You know, if you look closely at the skirt, it ombres from black into purple as it goes down to the hem of the dress. So that kind of plays in and out of a lot of her clothing. I'm Glinda, the Witch of the North. You are? When you think about Glinda, the first image is gonna be from the 1930s film and you see the silhouette and a very tall crown. I went about figuring out how to reinterpret that. Oh, hello. Much of my inspiration was through this idea of bubbles and circular pattern and spirals. I really leaned into that for her crown where it's all a series of circular bubbles that are stacked on top of each other and set with diamantes. And you see these stars and kind of spirals within the crown as well. The silhouette is this big kind of fairy princess dress. I've reinterpreted it with the help of the tailor that made all of Ariana's clothing. We were looking at the Fibonacci spiral shape. So with the dress, we were looking at flat shapes that then when they're spiraled around themselves, they start to create a specific shape. And then on top of that, it's over embroidered and beaded. And we've printed the silk organza that then has some color movement. So we're going from dark to light. It was ombre and with the pattern on top of it, then you've got this shape that undulates and moves in a very elegant and ethereal way when she arrives. So this is Glinda and this is her Ozdust ballroom dress-up dress. I was living in London as we were in production for the film. There were these beautiful roses that were in Regents Park, a rose that ombred from this wonderful golden yellow to pink. And I thought, oh my gosh, that would be so reflective of who Glinda is. And so I used that for this living and breathing petal dress. To fully capture the vision of the rose that inspired Paul, the ombre effect of Glinda's Ozdust ball gown was mirrored by custom dyeing the satin on Ariana's shoes. The color schemes for Glinda always were rooted to the pink, always went back to that iconic Glinda dress, the one that she appears in at the very beginning of the film. Many of the silhouettes that I used for Glinda were based in this kind of Dior 1950s romanticism. So a whimsical, but then perfect silhouette that I think keeps us in this world of the fantasy. I'm so ready to fly. Nessa Rose, the character, and also the beautiful actress Marissa that played Nessa Rose, she's wheelchair bound. So all of my designs needed to acknowledge that. This again is Nessa Rose's Ozdust ball dress. And my thought was turn of the century dress in knitwear. So this is a custom knit dress. She wears her crystal slippers that have been gifted to her from her father. My interest is to make sure that it's consistent with how we see Elphaba and that they're of the same world. There's an innocence about her. There's youth and she is in some ways untouchable. Keeping her in lighter tones, there's a lot of white and semi-sheer. I was very interested in giving her this feeling of untouchable perfection. There is no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply charming. Donathan Bailey plays Fierro. This is Fierro in his Ozdust suit. Fierro is, he's a prince. I mean, he is of royal blood. What is set up and established with Fierro is this tribal geometric patterning that is throughout a lot of his costumes. It's very influenced by Spanish equestrian clothing and some of the North African and Southern Spain sensibility and then there's this military element as well, especially with this suit. So we have Jeff Goldblum as the wizard. If you remember the 1930s film, you've got a man who is part of a carny. He's also a charlatan. I am the great and powerful. So I was trying to imbue him with this kind of carnival feel. His costume is covered in bobs and chains, that one that's a balloon and another one that's, it's like trinkets or like little metal Monopoly figures. You, come with me. Of course, not you, you. Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, you're enticed by her. I mean, she is the one that actually holds a certain amount of magic. Her magic is her control of weather. So I've used that idea throughout her clothing and also in her hairstyle, this undulating cloud. You also see the stars and the astronomical images that I use throughout her clothing. And we've done that with embroidery and beading and some printing, and you see it represented throughout her looks. The story of Oz has been a part of the fabric of American literary and cinematic history for so many decades. It is almost impossible to overstate its influence and impact on culture. And has continued to inspire generations of creatives by the myriad ways this dynamic story could be retold. And with the new screen version of Wicked set to make box office records, it is clear that the love for this story and its many adaptations is unlimited. I believe that Wicked is so meaningful to people. It speaks to the strong bond and relationship of two very different people and how their bond and relationship changes their lives. And then it also speaks to self-empowerment for both of them in choice, being in charge of your own power and how you're seen. It resonates very much in a modern way.