By Phoebe Reilly
American Horror Story is back, to everyone’s perverse delight—well, everyone except clowns: The menacing Twisty in the fourth season’s Freak Show stands accused of stoking “coulrophobia” or clown fear. (My misgivings date waaayyy back to the days of Poltergeist and It so. Sorry, clowns.)
Series star Jessica Lange returned in the premiere last week, this time as Elsa, a Marlene Dietrich wannabe in Jupiter, Florida, circa 1952, when television first did to side shows what it has now done to movies—threatened them with extinction. But ringleader Elsa has a plan, and it involves conjoined twins (played by Sarah Paulson) and a three-boobed woman (Angela Bassett). Your move, I Love Lucy.
Turns out styling clothes for these characters, in addition to the rest of the so-called freaks, was a lot harder than it looks, because really, what DO you put on a woman with three boobs? (Pasties, for starters! Miley would approve). The friendly and talented Lou Eyrich, longtime series costume designer, talked us through her process.
MTV STYLE: It’s tempting to start with the three breasts of Angela Bassett, but let’s come back to that. I noticed so much red in the first two episodes. What’s the significance?
LOU EYRICH: None, other than we were trying to really sell the Technicolor aspect, so we’ve been using a lot of bright colors. We were going to go with more neutral, washed-out, Dust Bowl tones but when we started the process,that just seemed uninteresting. If you watch The Greatest Show on Earth, it’s lots of purples, pinks, greens, and yellows. It just comes alive because of all the color.
FX
The first we see of Jessica Lange’s Elsa is her bag with the devil on it. Will its history be revealed?
That’s the hell’s mouth of the carnival. When you enter, you walk through it. Luci Leary, the property master, had it made to resemble an old carpet bag. It’s just an accoutrement for the character that [showrunner] Ryan [Murphy] was adamant about.
FX
I love Elsa in the white suit with the fedora and stole. Is she consciously modeling herself after Marlene Dietrich or is that your impression of her?
Both. It’s her faded glamour. She’s obsessed with looking through magazines and tear sheets of glamorous Hollywood actress—Marlene being one of them, but also Jean Harlow. She’s trying to mimic what she thinks is Hollywood glamour.
Michele K. Short/FX
But what abut the powder-blue suit she wears when she sings David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”? That had an oddball quality.
We fashioned it after a ’40s suit, but a take off of the blue suit that David Bowie wore. So, it’s a ’40s version of a ’70s suit. The clothing will always hew to the period. The music is the only thing that changes—it’s like Moulin Rouge.
Jimmy Darling (a.k.a. Flipper Boy, played by Evan Peters) is kind of a greaser. Were you trying to attach iconic ’50s looks to the characters?
In the beginning, we always go online and set a standard for what we think we can mimic each character from. So, Jimmy was like James Dean meets Marlon Brando. And [Amazon] Eve was a pinup girl. And because she has a 40-inch inseam we really wanted to play on the legs by putting her in short shorts.
How much time do you spend building a closet for every character?
In this particular case, I got six weeks of prep, and that’s for coming up with boards, meeting the actors, doing all the research. And then once I get the actors, it usually takes a couple of fittings to finesse the character. But I only got to fit five of the 36 actors during prep—the others I had, like, maybe two to four days. It wasn’t ideal.
FX
Let’s talk about Twisty. To me, he’s a cross between It’s Pennywise and Captain Spaulding from The Devil’s Rejects. I suppose all clowns look creepily alike—again, sorry, clowns—but were any of them an influence?
Well, no, because we wanted nobody to identify with him. The premise is that he has been wearing the same costume since the late ’30s. Something happens down the line that will explain why, but he never changes. And then Ryan’s like, “Oh, let’s say he lost one of the pom-poms and put something weird there.” So that’s why he’s got one yellow one in the middle.
A lot of the costumes are born out of necessity and nostalgia. It comes down to what’s available in the fabric, since we need to make multiple costumes for stunt doubles and dummies. Also, it’s very hot in New Orleans, so for the clown, it needed to be two pieces. He needed to be able to take the jacket off between takes. We learned our lesson last season on Coven. Everybody was so uncomfortable.
OK, so the three breasts of Desiree. What design challenges do they present?
Major! We had to design her clothes before anyone got to see her in the prosthetic. So, basically we needed everything to be low cut enough to show the cleavage, but also make it look real. We built her character off of a Dorothy Dandridge type—the sexier siren of the era.
Michele K. Short/FX
When you heard about the girl who claimed to have had surgery to add a third breast, was everyone like, “She’s stealing our extra-boob thunder”?
Somebody brought this to my attention, like, two weeks ago. We had already been shooting for a couple weeks or so when this was happening. I don’t know if she saw what was going on and then did it, too, because it’s very similar. It’d be interesting to know.
Do you find anything remotely sexy about three? Or is it kind of like martinis: One isn’t enough, and three is too many.
[Laughs] You know what? I’ve been working on American Horror Story for too long for anything to even affect me. Now I’m like, “Whatever.” And Angela is just so beautiful, you can’t stop looking at her face.
Who’s your favorite character to dress this season?
Artistically, probably Elsa, because Jessica wears the ’40s so beautifully. But creatively, it would be the “freaks.” I’ve learned to adjust to their different needs and ability. Like [the character] Legless Suzy—I had never fit anybody without legs before, and you might figure you just cut something off, but it wasn’t that way. You have to figure out what she can move in, and what goes underneath to protect her, and she needs to be able to walk on her hands, so what goes on her hands. Rose Siggins was so lovely to work with.
Michael Becker/FX
Is having the preppy guy be the sadist a way for Ryan Murphy to comment on the danger of the wealthy and presumably conservative?
Ryan never told me what was happening with him when we designed his look, but his name says it all: Dandy. He’s a spoiled socialite, in Florida, in the ’50s, so we wanted to show a difference between him and both the carnie people and the town folk. He was super tailored, in bright obnoxious colors, and an ascot—things that set him apart and sold that look. We didn’t know he was going to be a sociopath. That came later.
Frank Ockenfels/FX
What challenges did the conjoined twins, Bette and Dot, present?
Well, there has to be three of every single dress she wears, to accommodate the animatronic head she wears on her right or left. And if there’s a stunt, there has to be nine. And she wears a harness underneath, so the dress had to be built in order to fit over the harness without seeing anything underneath. So, unfortunately, I can’t really sway from this one particular look. It’s the only thing that works.
Are people working overtime to build these wardrobes?
Last year we had one tailor, and this year we have three, every day, just trying to keep up. It’s been pretty crazy.
No Comments