After Elton: Ask the Flying Monkey
Q: Near the top of the “what’s-the-most-ridiculous-thing-about-Glee?” file is the fact that Chris Colfer’s Kurt Hummel has a different, elaborate outfit in almost every scene. How do they do that?
Chris Colfer as Glee's ultimate clothes horse, Kurt Hummel
A: Unlike the rest of us, Kurt benefits from a full wardrobe department with the increasingly lavish budget befitting a smash hit show like Glee.
“It’s actually a challenge to come up with enough changes for him, because he changes [about] eleven times per episode,” says Glee costume designer Lou Eyrich. “It’s hard to keep up with our budget, and creatively, coming up with fabulous outfits. But it’s really fun creating his closet.”
Incredibly, for the upcoming season, they’re going to have him go even more outrageous than they already have.
“Now that he’s been able to come out and be comfortable at his school, we have a little more license to push the envelope further,” Eyrich says. “He’s not changing that much, just punching it up a bit.”
The most memorable costume of the last season? Probably Kurt’s Lady Gaga outfit.
“The challenge was the 10-inch heels he had to dance in,” says Eyrich. “[Lady Gaga’s] were originally made by Alexander McQueen, and they were gorgeous - clam shoes, shoes that looked like clams. But they were five thousand dollars. And Kurt wears a man’s 11, which would’ve been a woman’s 13, and they didn’t just make them that large.”
So the show custom-made them - in four days. “It was a challenge!” Eyrich says. “But Chris was such a good sport. He was in that costume five hours a day. But he totally embraced it. Then they took [that costume] on tour, and he had to do a quick-change into it every day.
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Glee‘s Costumer Dishes On Gaga Looks
Glee‘s long-awaited Lady Gaga episode is finally upon us, and while we’re looking forward to singing along with New Directions’ versions of “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face” tomorrow night, we’re even more psyched to see how they interpret Gaga’s inimitable style. Luckily, we were able to convince costumer Lou Eyrich to give us the inside scoop.
“I have great respect for Lady Gaga,” she told us. “This episode is a tribute to her genius. The costumes are not replicas; we wanted it look like the kids made them.‘” So that’s exactly what they did: “Rachel (Lea Michele) wears two outfits. The first inspired by Gaga’s Kermit the Frog dress: She goes through her stuffed animals at home and staples all of them to her dress. The second is like the dress Gaga wore with the big silver mirrored triangle.”
Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) was hand-picked by creator Ryan Murphy to wear the famous bubble dress. “It was really heavy,” Eyrich reported, “and it made a lot of noise. We turned it into a vest so that it would be easier to take on and off, because there was no sitting down in it.”
While Eyrich wanted to each re-interpretation to have its own homemade spin, she strove for authenticity when it came time to copy Alexander McQueen’s 10-inch ‘Armadillo’ platforms. “I’m a huge McQueen fan so I wanted to do them justice,” she said. “We tried to buy them” for Kurt (Chris Colfer), “but we would have needed a woman’s size 13. They don’t make them that big.”
Armani gets a nod too: “We built the Armani orbit dress around Quinn’s (Dianna Agron) pregnant belly. The original is so amazing that we didn’t want to even try to rip it off, so we made it look fun.”
And the most complicated? “The lobster head that Brittany (Heather Morris) wears. The dance is very ambitious, and to get it to stay on her head we had to build a Buckram orb that could be safety-pinned on her head. Then we had to sodder steel tentacles onto the sphere.”
Eyrich says that even football hunk Finn (Cory Monteith) will go Gaga. “He wears a floor-length red vinyl dress, like the one Lady Gaga wore when she met the Queen. He wears it in solidarity to stick up for Chris.”
source
Chris Colfer as Glee's ultimate clothes horse, Kurt Hummel
A: Unlike the rest of us, Kurt benefits from a full wardrobe department with the increasingly lavish budget befitting a smash hit show like Glee.
“It’s actually a challenge to come up with enough changes for him, because he changes [about] eleven times per episode,” says Glee costume designer Lou Eyrich. “It’s hard to keep up with our budget, and creatively, coming up with fabulous outfits. But it’s really fun creating his closet.”
Incredibly, for the upcoming season, they’re going to have him go even more outrageous than they already have.
“Now that he’s been able to come out and be comfortable at his school, we have a little more license to push the envelope further,” Eyrich says. “He’s not changing that much, just punching it up a bit.”
The most memorable costume of the last season? Probably Kurt’s Lady Gaga outfit.
“The challenge was the 10-inch heels he had to dance in,” says Eyrich. “[Lady Gaga’s] were originally made by Alexander McQueen, and they were gorgeous - clam shoes, shoes that looked like clams. But they were five thousand dollars. And Kurt wears a man’s 11, which would’ve been a woman’s 13, and they didn’t just make them that large.”
So the show custom-made them - in four days. “It was a challenge!” Eyrich says. “But Chris was such a good sport. He was in that costume five hours a day. But he totally embraced it. Then they took [that costume] on tour, and he had to do a quick-change into it every day.
source
Glee‘s Costumer Dishes On Gaga Looks
Glee‘s long-awaited Lady Gaga episode is finally upon us, and while we’re looking forward to singing along with New Directions’ versions of “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face” tomorrow night, we’re even more psyched to see how they interpret Gaga’s inimitable style. Luckily, we were able to convince costumer Lou Eyrich to give us the inside scoop.
“I have great respect for Lady Gaga,” she told us. “This episode is a tribute to her genius. The costumes are not replicas; we wanted it look like the kids made them.‘” So that’s exactly what they did: “Rachel (Lea Michele) wears two outfits. The first inspired by Gaga’s Kermit the Frog dress: She goes through her stuffed animals at home and staples all of them to her dress. The second is like the dress Gaga wore with the big silver mirrored triangle.”
Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) was hand-picked by creator Ryan Murphy to wear the famous bubble dress. “It was really heavy,” Eyrich reported, “and it made a lot of noise. We turned it into a vest so that it would be easier to take on and off, because there was no sitting down in it.”
While Eyrich wanted to each re-interpretation to have its own homemade spin, she strove for authenticity when it came time to copy Alexander McQueen’s 10-inch ‘Armadillo’ platforms. “I’m a huge McQueen fan so I wanted to do them justice,” she said. “We tried to buy them” for Kurt (Chris Colfer), “but we would have needed a woman’s size 13. They don’t make them that big.”
Armani gets a nod too: “We built the Armani orbit dress around Quinn’s (Dianna Agron) pregnant belly. The original is so amazing that we didn’t want to even try to rip it off, so we made it look fun.”
And the most complicated? “The lobster head that Brittany (Heather Morris) wears. The dance is very ambitious, and to get it to stay on her head we had to build a Buckram orb that could be safety-pinned on her head. Then we had to sodder steel tentacles onto the sphere.”
Eyrich says that even football hunk Finn (Cory Monteith) will go Gaga. “He wears a floor-length red vinyl dress, like the one Lady Gaga wore when she met the Queen. He wears it in solidarity to stick up for Chris.”
source