William Ivey Long: 25 Years of Tony Memories

About the author:
Many designers would be offended to hear a critic declare that their costumes "hover between taste and travesty," as Broadway.com contributor John Simon once wrote of William Ivey Long. But Long was delighted with Simon's cheeky description and used it as the title of a major retrospective of his work currently on view at Wilmington's Cameron Art Museum in his home state of North Carolina through October 14. One of the most popular figures in the New York theater community, Long has demonstrated his agility in designing character-specific costumes for more than 50 Broadway shows. Along the way, he has earned 11 Best Costume Design Tony nominations for edgy musicals Nine, Chicago, Cabaret and this year's Grey Gardens, dramas A Streetcar Named Desire, comedies Lend Me a Tenor and big-budget musicals La Cage aux Folles, Hairspray, The Producers, The Music Man and Crazy for You. On this, the 25th anniversary of Long's first Tony for Nine, Broadway.com asked him to look back on his four wins and tell us the secrets of his success in channeling Big and Little Edie Beale in Grey Gardens.

When director Michael Greif first called me about Grey Gardens, he said all the things I love to hear: "This is a complicated clothing story; it's an edgy show; we don't have a second act yet; we're not sure how the whole thing is going to work." To use a Southern phrase, my favorite assignments are the ones that "throw me in the briar patch." I like to be asked to bring choices that will help transitions fall into place and tell a story from the stage. Another reason I wanted to do Grey Gardens was Christine Ebersole. We've been friends for 30 years, since we worked together at a theater that doesn't exist anymore in Huntington, Long Island.

Grey Gardens is a show that is happy and sad, sweet and sour. The harder of the acts to design was Act One, because you're imagining a dream of what a betrothal party would look like at a Hamptons mansion in the 1940s. I did a lot of research, including using the book Halcyon Days, about the Phipps family in Old Westbury, as a reference. My starting point was figuring out how Big Edie Beale would have wanted to present herself in her drawing room at Grey Gardens, which Allen Moyer re-created, goosing up the turquoise wallpaper. Some society ladies who hold court want to blend in with their surroundings, but I figured that Big Edie wanted to stand out. What could I do but go to the opposite side of the color chart and dress her in peach? The entire Bouvier/Beale family is costumed in peach, creams and light blues blended together to make the whole color scheme more dreamlike.

In the second act, the audience should feel that the Grey Gardens movie is coming to life—but the reality was more complex. There are certain classic images in the film that we wanted to present, but it's been achieved in a different way. For example, the real Little Edie wore turtlenecks, but an actress can't pull a sweater over her microphone, so I had the idea of wearing sweaters backwards. It's "in the style of" Little Edie rather than actually copying the movie. We originally intended for Christine to wear eight different looks in the second act and never leave the stage: She would wrap and unwrap outfits while talking and singing and staring out at the audience. Christine could do it, but we finally decided it was just too much. She now leaves the stage three times, but the rest of the changes do happen onstage, in front of the audience.

I did more actual sewing on Grey Gardens than on any show I've designed in a long time. For example, I sat in Christine's dressing room with her creating Little Edie's head wraps, which helped give her the confidence that the process of wrapping her head was real. The same idea applied to her red upside down skirt. The costumes need to become a real part of the character. You're supposed to believe what you're seeing is indeed real—and it's my job to help make that happen.

After designing costumes for more than 50 Broadway shows, I'm always asked if I have a favorite. I don't. I love all my children. But the Tony-winning shows—Nine, Crazy for You, The Producers and Hairspray—are sentimental favorites, for different reasons. Nine is where it all began for me. Fellini's film 8½ was shot in black and white, so that was the inspiration for the women's costumes. Other than skin tones, the only color on the stage was Anita Morris's red hair!

Crazy for You was special to me because it turned out to be the beginning of a long collaboration with my dear friends Susan Stroman and the late Mike Ockrent. It is funny that the year I won for that show, I also designed the revival of Guys and Dolls which was some of my best work but did not receive a nomination. I'm in a similar position this year, for my work on two very different shows, Grey Gardens and Curtains. The latter was an homage to Kander & Ebb, with whom I have worked on the revivals of Chicago and Cabaret and 70 Girls 70. Curtains is special because it is a pure love letter to the theater.

I am also lucky to have had the chance to work with America's three greatest satirists, Mel Brooks The Producers and Young Frankenstein, John Waters Hairspray and Paul Rudnick Valhalla, Poor Little Lambs. That's been a thrill and an honor, because satire is the most sophisticated form of writing. As crazy as Hairspray looks, it's the most powerful and inspiring story I have helped to tell on stage.

Only two of my 11 Tony nominations have been for plays: Lend Me a Tenor and the revival of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Natasha Richardson. The process of designing for the characters is the same in plays as it is in musicals, but the technical requirements of a play are much simpler. You don't necessarily need dance gussets, and you don't have to design a dress that can be turned upside down or dragged through someone's legs and still fall perfectly! Or, sometimes you do.