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Costume designer Gregg Barnes, who conjured the ghosts of Zeigfeld Follies past in the 2012 revival of Follies (and walked away with a Tony Award for his work), stepped up to the plate with a series of dazzling looks for Kinky Boots, which earned him his fifth Tony nomination.
Based on the 2005 film of the same title, the Northampton, U.K.-set musical has a new book by Tony winner Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, Newsies) and music and lyrics by Grammy Award-winning "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "True Colors" songwriter Lauper. Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell (2004's La Cage aux Folles, Legally Blonde, Catch Me If You Can) directs and choreographs Kinky Boots, which stars Tony nominee Billy Porter (Grease, Angels in America, Smokey Joe’s Café) as outgrageous drag performer Lola, who in an upended Cinderella moment, accidentally knocks out her hero with a stiletto boot.
Barnes spoke with Playbill about creating the fantasy and reality of Kinky Boots, the divas who inspired some of Lola's looks, and his well-heeled cast. He also offered a guided tour through some of the costumes from the Tony-nominated musical.
"It's called Kinky Boots, so you know that if you don't get those boots right, you're in trouble," Barnes laughed. "When you sign the contract, it has to register that, 'I better deliver on these boots. If nothing else, I have to get that right!'"
While the in-demand Barnes isn't facing a shortage in work supply like the central character of Charlie Price in Kinky Boots, the designer faced similar challenges. "Our story, with my little team of people who worked on the show, completely parallels the story in Kinky Boots," he said. "How do you make a boot that can have a small stiletto heel and support the weight of a male dancer and not break? It was a very tricky experiment. I can't take complete credit for it. The shoemakers, they've made a lot of stiletto heels and dance shoes, but to make them for a man is a different thing. During try-outs in Chicago two heels broke on different nights. That's your fear, that someone's going to get hurt when one of the heels breaks. So, we kept a chart of how many times it happened, and it's never happened again. We went back to the drawing board after those two pairs broke. My hat is off to T.O. Dey, who did a great percentage of the shoes along with LaDuca, who did Billy's shoes. You're only as good as the people who make the clothes with you and who you collaborate with."
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Billy Porter and Stark Sands | ||
photo by Matthew Murphy |
"Billy Porter, how can I put this. I can't imagine having done this with anybody else - he's the most incredible collaborator. He's very smart, very intuitive about himself and also about the character. It's rare," Barnes said. "Of course actors have certain ways they like to dress, and certain parts of their body they love, and parts they don't like as much, but for him to be able to put that aside while we talked about Lola and who she was... Even during our out-of-town changes, he was never rattled. He was always gracious - he would say, 'I wanna be the best Lola I can be, and if this is a step towards that, let's do it.'"
But before Barnes discussed the details of his designs with Playbill.com, he had a confession. "I wasn't all that familiar with the world of drag," he admitted. "I hadn't seen any of 'RuPaul's Drag Race' ironically, but I thought, 'Well, I'm doing this show where drag is in the back story, so I should know more about this world.' So I rented all the seasons, and there were so many things I learned about the art of doing drag!
"It's a real tradition in the drag world to give a nod to couture or runway fashion, but very often it's divas. Because a lot of drag performance is lip synching, we thought that it's appropriate that we think of celebrity tie-in that maybe Lola might have been looking at and wanted to channel."
Click through for a tour of Kinky Boots costume sketches, in which Barnes reveals in his own words the story behind his designs, including the iconic divas who shaped Lola's style.
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Porter's first costume in the show | ||
Photo by Matthew Murphy |
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Barnes' sketch for the "Black Widow" |
The whole story hinges on that particular boot getting broken, and setting up that Lola wears boots, so there's a scene in between "Land of Lola" and "Land of Lola (Reprise)" that gave us a chance to do an onstage shoe change. It's the first time we see her in boots. In fact, the costume was kind of designed after the fact to showcase the boots, there's a split all the way up to the waist, so the legs come out and you see those black boots.
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Barnes' sketch for this costume |
There's a Thierry Mugler fashion show he did back in the 1980s, and he had a piece like this in one of his runway shows. It was the kind of thing I thought the character of Lola would have seen and maybe emulated in her own creation. We tried to bead the dress in almost a crocodile pattern, because the boots are crocodile. We used a lot of big shapes, because Lola says with a hot glue gun she could make the world a pretty place. So, I thought, for a person in that circumstance, I wanted to give the sense that someone who is very crafty and clever could make a dress like that.
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"Sex Is in the Heel" | ||
Photo by Matthew Murphy |
We know that Lola says red is her signature color. But we thought, what color would look really good on African-American skin, but also be a bit surprising? We were talking about blue, and then Jerry found a picture of Mary J. Blige in a blue outfit that was similar to what we did.
To give you an example of the lengths we go to: we found out that the blouse Mary J. Blige wore was an Yves Saint Laurent design. We found another photo of it, and scanned the fabric so we could duplicate the quality of the blue and the quality of the pattern exactly.
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The Angels arrive. | ||
Photo by Matthew Murphy |
So we took the idea of a very English-looking trench coat. Then we slit all the seams on them to make it not only a great dance costume, but more in the world of drag.
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A nod to Rosie |
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Barnes' sketch |
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The Union Jack |
During the fashion show, there's a Scottish-looking costume at the end that does quote Alexander McQueen. Jerry just said, "It needs to look runway worthy, but also very British." So, one of the things we did, the very last costume, is a Beefeater. There's also a Union Jack. They bookend the fashion show and it's very funny, because everyone I know who comes to the show falls in love with that Beefeater. It's got a naughty french maid quality. They all want that costume!
View more of Barnes' sketches: