How Stranger Things' Costume Designer Created Every Character's Season 4 Look | GQ

a costume department keeps track of everything they make we keep track of the buttons that we make it with here's pantone's for camp nowhere there's our roast beef logo how cute here's the made to order sheet for karen wheeler's bathing suit so we go from here to here hi i'm amy parris costume designer of stranger things and i'm excited to show you some of my work [Music] season four knowing that we'd be in four different huge locations i wanted to definitely make sure the color palette like showed through the screen so we made sure that the stock was specific for each location we knew that russia would be like darker and scarier so we made sure that those clothes really reflected that in the uniforms hawkins is still its classic like dusty rusty but with saturated colors so we made sure to really like make it pop between each frame i definitely leaned into the movies of the 80s that like reflected high school kids like tough turf or one of the guys and used that and yearbooks from the location in the region so if it was california we were looking at california yearbooks and when we were doing hawkins we were doing like midwest yearbooks from like 84 to 86 so that we'd really make sure we were following the right trends of the time ali sheedy for the breakfast club was a huge inspiration for eden brook shields was an influence for nancy molly ringwald was an influence for our new character vicky part of our process is building stuff that we need multiples for so often we'll make fabrics or boots or belts or hats and so i often use like a fabric printer and we take our fabric samples and our colors and we find out what works best for the outfit you might recognize this as the milkshake dress from 11 in the roller rink scenes and we knew we wanted a kind of like soft linen fabric so we printed it on multiple styles just to make sure it would have the right hand and the right feel i think mine and my team's eye is so trained to see 80s clothing we really do use real vintage pieces almost entirely for stock you need to be head to toe like authentic to the period otherwise it'll stand out it'll show 11. it felt important to make her feel mismatched because she's trying to figure out who she is in this new space you know being in california let alone being in a new high school you're trying to fit in and so you definitely try different outfits you try different friend groups you try different things to see where you fit and so it was important to show that she'd have pieces that might have been hand-me-downs from joyce might have been borrowed from will maybe even hand-me-downs from jonathan and she doesn't have max there either so she may have some leftover pieces from the mall like the milkshake dress but she doesn't know that it's weird to pair it with will's old shirt you know so it's important that even in the frame with will she'd kind of look like she's wearing his clothes but then also threw a dress on it that she's like well this this goes right [Music] wipe out we found the best thing to do was to actually throw a real milkshake on it and our prop master nico physically threw it on the dress that we had on a dress form and we loved the way it looked the duffers loved it so we thought well let's let it dry and see what happens it dried and it dried well and so we actually use that and that's the dress she's actually wearing physically it has real milkshake dried on it then of course you need multiples because she's wearing it a photo devil's wearing it a stunt person is wearing it so to match we had our age or dire gayle paint an exact replica of the milkshake on the dresses so that each one matched the roller rink was so special and different we did that at the end of the season shirts are custom made they also of course have like the custom graphic but we couldn't find this shape of a shirt for the men and the women so we just built them the shorts are um special velveteen shorts which are vintage but the trim was not pink which matches the jacket so we had to take off the trim and replace it with the new trim the jackets were custom made we put custom ribbing and put the wrinkle mania logo on the back and then what you don't really see is a lot of the employees have these cute little suspenders that have little like roller skates on them so even if you don't see a detail it's there [Music] it was kind of last minute but we knew that we needed a blood splatter and i felt like the best way to achieve it was to physically drag something in blood and it was at night and i'm about milli size so i figured i'll throw it on and then i let my assistants drag me through the blood so we set up a table uh cloth on the floor and put like blood puddles and we talked to the ads we talked to the duffers we asked what it would look like and how the blood pattern would go and it was still a work in progress and we knew we needed to see the blood first so they strapped belts on my ankles and then pulled me through the blood pattern sort of in the way that we anticipated them doing and then took the picture and showed it to them and got approval so that is also something she's wearing because it's actually the real like pattern to what it would have been steve harrington we knew that it was time for them to get out of scoops ahoy so it was nice to give them a uniform that's a uniform but still could show their own clothes underneath so we thought the best way to do that was with a vest so we took some creative licensing in making the vest but it's you know green and orange that's a thing you could put over any outfit and it's a uniform but still it shows their personality through so it was nice to be able to to get to do that and let them shine with steve he's classic steve you know polo shirts he looks good in jeans he's been wearing those levi's jeans like kind of all seasons and they fit him so well because joke here he doesn't age or get any bigger he's just sort of this magical human that stays like pristine so like we keep giving him the same jeans and he keeps wearing them i gave him a different jacket this season i gave him like a more 80s gray jacket which kind of echoes the members only gray jacket but kind of it made it even more 80s i mean they're both so iconic and they're both so 80s but it was nice to kind of just move it and make it familiar and gray but make it a little more like exciting in 80s jim hopper the russia stuff was really challenging but really rewarding i had never worked internationally and we went to lithuania so we were able to source costumes in poland from hero costume ahead of time so you heard from that yeah they arrived last night they're meeting really soon all goes well for tomorrow night you're home eating answers with your sexy woman she's not my mom of course not she saves your life because of friendship you can't get a plethora of like russian prisoner uniforms to use on an american tv show so we knew we'd have to build them and we made name tags and sean levy actually came up with the idea to have david's a custom name tag it says american in cyrillic so those uniforms the fabric is meant to last for russian prisoners that should be durable so imagine breaking down freshly new outfits that should be on camera but look like they've been around for 40 to 50 years i mean that is so much work for our ager dyers you have to take out the color you have to add distressing you have to add dirt and grime so we were working on those up until they were on camera and even then some adding dirt on top and like constantly trying to take them down because they're so rich in color that you almost have to go further so the camera sees the distress and the dirt so it was a lot of work i mean physically just like pounding on those uniforms it's it's a lot it's a it's a whole other color palette you know it's like the dark the blue the green the scary the dark red you know we used authentic hats we used authentic pieces as much as we could the gloves are real david's uniform he needed about six of them in addition to just like distressing these outfits for all the prisoners then it's distressing them for the actors to have at least like six or more so it's it's a lot of work dustin henderson yeah it's been exciting to get to change his hat up because it is such an iconic piece for him i knew i wanted to do something different because he's not in camp so the thinking cap felt like a hat that he'd find at the mall and buy the scantron shirt was a fabric that i found in atlanta at a fabric store that it's like bubbles that i thought i could see dustin like sitting in class getting bored and filling that in so we made this shirt and i talked to gayton about it and i said can you imagine dustin doing that he was like oh yeah of course so my friend trevor who made the hellfire logo actually did the artwork on the shirt no no no no no no no no food what are you doing man setting up face of operation too face of operations stop get off of that i need it need it for what looking up eddie's friend's phone numbers oh eddie my new best friend eddie you think he's cooler than me because he plays a nerdy game i never said that this is exciting because it's kind of like zelda type in imagery you know like video game stuff so there's a castle and like a viking shooting arrows at an elf with a guy on a horse and then it connects to the back which has this fire breathing dragon and there's a wizard down here which is a lot like the will wizard from season three eddie munson the hellfire club we knew we wanted it to look like the boys in the club made the shirt so we were really specific about the logo you know we used research and images of young d d club players so i knew a lot of them had white with black sleeves just because it also pops and then you can see the logo really well so we tried black with white sleeves we tried red but really the one that stood out the most was the white uh base and the black sleeves so then we built on that and we found a leather jacket by the brand shot and that was the perfect slim jacket that could be over his shirt but then have a vest on top and so the vest is a vintage levi's trucker blanket line jacket somebody had cut the sleeves off so it had the right amount of fray there's distressing on the collar everything about it was the perfect level of like worn in he's probably had it forever kind of guy absolutely not you asked for a sub we delivered this is hellfire club not babysitting club i'm 11 you long-haired freak my my the child speaks we added a belt buckle that has like a handcuff on it we gave him his reebok sneakers with the tongues pulled out because he would have done that in the 80s we gave him like a chain on the leather of his jacket like maybe the zipper broke and he tried to like close it so we really focused on little details he listens to that wizard medal he has d.o on the back and that is actually a gift from the estate of ronnie james dio his ex-wife wendy sent us vintage shirts and sweatshirts and stuff that we were able to use so yeah this is our exciting eddie vest that we love we kind of stitched it so it would look like he did it himself some of the pins we had to like tech down so they wouldn't be so bright and shiny on camera but they're all vintage pins of bands that he would have been a fan of in the 80s we have iron maiden mega death motorhead judas priest wasp except merciful fate this is the levithian cross this is in the back of his pants this is like the vintage custom handkerchief and his handcuff belt buckle which we also had to like tech down so it wouldn't be so shiny oh yeah this is our original do patch on the back we did need about five eddies at one point because eddie also gets dirty he gets you know like black blood from the bat fight so you have a clean you have a dirty eddy you also need to have the vest that goes to jokiri and so there's a jokiri vest as eddie and then that's dirty so it was a challenge but it was so worth it he's the perfect eddie he really is joy spires it was such a different element knowing we were going to lithuania to shoot lithuania as russia and our intention was to keep our actors as warm as possible we knew they'd be freezing and we knew we'd be stuck in these clothes for a while so we had tried building in like heat packs like electronic heater that was like built inside the outfit to keep them warm that would work at times we made sure we gave them hats and like comfort gear but i wanted to make sure winona would stay warm as a human in a really cold climate she has a lot of ideas for the characters and she knows the character best so it's nice to kind of have a formula and to know a fit the jacket does a good job of like being a feminine like mom coat that she would have had from hawkins and then brought to california but never wore since because you wouldn't need a coat in california there's like a science to like the fit of the pants now we know exactly like where they sit on the waist exactly how they bail out over the shoes we probably won't ever get her out of a white reebok sneaker i mean those are her shoes those are joyce all seasons i'm sure nancy wheeler there's like a hint into nancy's dress that that dress that had the purple dress with the teal we had to remake that because we needed a double so the original that she wears is vintage but then the stunt one is not or here's her shirt that we made for them all nancy is now getting a little more serious with school she's getting ready to go to college and so we kept her still in her sweet pastel color palette it was nice to make her feel even more mature than just dresses like we did last season and the striped shirt i enjoy keeping her battle outfits and stripes because season one and two had her in that so season three she's in stripes at the mall so i knew i wanted to keep her in stripes for this season and we knew that there was a moment where she would need to rip off a part of her outfit to help steve when he's hurt during the bat bite so it started off as the cowl neck but we noticed that that was a little complicated and the continuity of that mixed with like having a raw edge around her face so much of tv is here that i kind of didn't want to distract the audience with like looking at this like ripped shirt all the time so we progressed it and found it was better for it to come off the ribbing at the bottom of the shirt so we had a lot of tests with that making sure that we could sort of like score the fabric and make it easy for natalia to rip on the day the cowl neck and the ribbing was custom dyed to match the stripes so that it would be the right color and then once it's built and aged and dirtied then it's like pre-cut so that she could rip it easily now you know what they say those who get to teach [Music] uh yes yes that's actually why we're here nancy's outfit is all made from scratch we made the shirt and the little two-piece set which has a cute little wrap-around belt and then maya's is a custom shirt and skirt it's just the only original vintage piece is the sweater and we did have to remake it in multiples for the girls the sweater we cheated for the for the like driving double and we gave a very close match but luckily it's driving double so you don't see that it's not the perfect match we got to make custom boots for nancy this season that have a matching belt and we did that with jitterbug boy in canada so that was fun to be able to have the time to do that because i knew she'd need boots but i knew there weren't really any current boots that have enough 80s details that are passable so i said let's make them so we did my wheeler that's a rad shirt man ocean pacific oh hey mike this is uh my friend ergo oh hey oh no no no no it's a shitty knockoff yeah don't sweat it man i'll get you the good threads out here so mike wheeler's outfit was written into the script that way and it was written that our guy would go oh hey cool shirt so we knew we'd wanted something that felt like an outfit maybe he would have bought at the airport before he got there so it's kind of hokey you know it says surf on the back and there's surfboards and it's bright it's not a color that mike normally wears and he would have accessorized it with a hat and sunglasses with croakies knowing he was going to be outside in the sun he wears flip-flops and the outfit was actually manufactured by quicksilver we had a collaboration with them which was really helpful because during pandemic we couldn't make clothes fast enough we had made two colorways we made orange and teal and he's worn teal before so it felt like orange was the best color that was different from his closet that felt like he was trying to make it work in california he seems really revved up tonight he's always rubbed out we'll just cash out casual casual right okay totally it's interesting because he's definitely influenced by eddie so we added a little darkness to his clothes like he's wearing black jeans this season he's also wearing converse which it feels like something that he thought eddie would probably wear it's cool to kind of slowly edge him a little bit darker and a little less preppy you know maybe his mom's not buying all of his clothes now the shirt that he's wearing in teal has you know like the diamond shape and so the angles of the shirt are a little more edgier so it's like you're physically seeing sharper images and sharper corners on him because he's turning a little bit edgier max mayfield [Music] she's still in mourning her brother had passed not too long ago so we had done this first outfit the outfit of the grid pattern shirt with the sweatshirt and is a little brighter than i think i would have wanted it to be looking back but it was right as we were like coming back from pandemic and i think we were all trying to figure out how to keep the show going and it had been in the works so it is what it is but later on the next outfit is a little darker which reflects that she really is kind of in mourning and trying to cover up so the outfit is kind of baggy the jeans are kind of baggy you know she's kind of trying to hide it and protect herself in her clothes we had made this outfit the grid shirt was made and then the sweatshirt was made but the second outfit is a hang 10 corduroy jacket with a target shirt and again we kind of bought it during quarantine and it was sort of like you can get what you can get and so shopping was really limited and so we only had a couple and then we found out we needed so many more so we have our shopper caroline hodge who's wonderful she combed through the internet and found every possible target green striped shirt she could on poshmark so she she did end up finding quite a few you know those are the challenges that you have to overcome when you're dealing with multiples and things selling before you know that you need that many part of the the way to avoid that is to build it yourself to have the control of like printing the fabric or making the boots or finding the leather like doing the stuff yourself so that you know you can recreate it because this is a show where you kind of don't always know what's going to happen lucas sinclair i found out that lucas would sort of be a jock type in reading the script so it was a balance of figuring out how he's kind of jock and kind of hanging out with you know jason and those guys but still part of the d d club so he's sort of you know between friend groups and balancing that out we were able to give him custom converse sneakers that converse made for us he wears those with the uniform that was also custom made for lucas the balance of making his outfits still kind of nerdy d and then kind of jock-like allowed us to make him a little bit sportier and add you know like kind of an athletic look to his clothes it was important to like make sure it felt like an outfit that wasn't too nerdy wasn't too cool it was a balance murray balman [Music] aren't you a lot of cypher sore eyes huh hi murray kids like risotto yeah yeah the apron was actually uh that that's props to props that's props to nico he found that apron we had smaller vintage like women's aprons that in theory would have maybe been joyce's and she's a petite person so we had tinier ones but they were almost too tiny so it was nice to have like a more substantial bib apron and that was shawn levy he was like i want to be able to see it up here so we found this bib apron that is so perfect it totally looks like an apron she would have had also so that was a props prop so thank you props and will you please stop trying to talk to me and stay in character remember you are frightened scared confused yes i am frightened scared okay all right yes marie's really exciting and one of my favorites because most of that is custom made we started knowing that we'd need to have layers that would be revealed so we had we were between two coats a teal coat or a brown coat and the teal was best because it's worn with this beautiful hand-knit sweater that was hand knit for the show um it kind of has that golden mustard color worn with a brown turtleneck this is murray traveling so murray might dress up because now he's like outside of his house which he's kind of a hermit so when he's outside it's nice to see him get kind of gussied up back in the 80s you used to kind of dress up a little bit more for traveling so we gave him a gold chain you know he's single maybe he's out to meet people robin buckley [Music] so that is a wrangler's jacket that we knew we wanted to give the girls some layers because we knew they'd have to eventually lose jackets when they jump into the water and it was nice to give maya a little like diy chance to kind of put her own spin on it so we grabbed an assortment of like vintage patches and was like what do you like you know so she actually my hand picked those patches and we talked about where we would place them it felt real it felt like what robin would do with maya's influence the yellow over shirt that she wears for quite a while and the season has like a leaf print and then we we custom printed it so i added some triangles and some equality symbols to kind of have an easter egg that there's some lgbtq plus imagery within her outfit you know i thought that was important to help represent her for that oh my gosh those are cool so those outfits are legit like 80s uniforms so i think it's marchinglinks.com there's a website that you can actually go to all the piping in the band uniforms are like hand painted orange the feathers on their caps those are custom made with like orange tips and we added the little patches the cumber buns all had to be like hand painted and hand dyed to be the right color [Music] i can't breathe in this thing and i'm itchy i'm itching all over it's so cute right that was fun to get to do because maya was excited to show something that's like not a typical robin moment and so we were collaborating on that like how it should feel around the neck and how tight it should be i think it turned out beautifully and i think maya's performance in it really helps and that's always nice to be able to lend the clothes to the actor's performance for her to say i'm uncomfortable in this you know to like use that and help them aid in in something that's uncomfortable or something that feels good or bad it's nice to be able to use the costume to help the actor give that performance will byers [Music] he's the youngest of the boys and he's grown the most and matured a lot in this last season and with the pandemic and with the break in between you definitely see an age progression especially in his face but also in his body you know like there's more muscle definition and stuff so you kind of you either need to lean into that or lean away from it so we hit his arms a little bit just to help hide that but between season three and four he was in stripes a lot for season three and so i kind of brought back the plaid for season four because he's in hawkins which is a little bit more fashion forward so it was nice to have kind of that old plaid style still running through his character argyle that was fun to do because it is so different from anything we've done so it's authentic pieces that are either recreated by quicksilver from the 80s which was really nice to get to do and collaborate with them on or it's like vintage stuff it's hard for him because we needed a lot of multiples so a lot of things were made in in doubles or triples um but you know wearing down the shoes and giving him like mismatched socks and pins on his um hat as well like you know eduardo's wearing bracelets and some of them were done by like friends who have daughters that can do like friendship bracelets i was like can you ever make like five please it was nice to make it feel like it was real i mean he probably would have made them himself you know like again it's nice to put yourself in the mind of the actor and think if they're bored at high school they're going to color on their shirt or they're going to make friendship bracelets or they're going to find pins that they're going to put on their clothes so it's nice to like take the time to be more authentic that way dead dude i'm making him a headstone and you do realize we spent all morning hiding the body well i'll just write uh here lies unknown hero agent man it's an iconic yellow and right now when you look up visors they're not as long and they don't have the terry right and so inside like especially in california be warm so it actually has that terry cloth inside which is a big 80s thing to do the brim is longer and the like the height of it is higher than they are now that helped kind of sell it as more of a period visor than anything we could find in the stores right now and the custom surfer boy pizza logo that was from the art department and that was scripted of course so it was nice to kind of imagine that a pizza shop in the 80s would have done like a one color screen print just pump out these shirts so we just did red on yellow which is super graphic and bright and it was you know why not add the visor and he has his hair is such a character too you know so part of my design process for him was to give him all these bright patterns and colors knowing you wouldn't see so much of it because his hair covers it so logos graphics you know you'd lose them behind the hair so it was nice to have stuff that would kind of pop out amongst it that makes sense jonathan byers that was an exciting shirt to get to do and he was an exciting costume to like move through because he's in california now and you know he's kind of like absorbed this like 420 lifestyle so it was nice to be able to show that through the fabric that he was wearing he's in icat print shirts at the beginning and then i knew we'd want to build a shirt that he'd track through because he's in it for so many episodes so that's a fabric i found it's like a vintage dead stock fabric and a store called rag finders in downtown la we over dyed it and then built this beautiful shirt that almost feels psychedelic it was a lot brighter and i knew we'd need to like take it down so we over dyed it so it wouldn't be so bright but it was fun to kind of feel like you'd look at the shirt and be like what is that you know like that's kind of how his mind is as he's like going through his 4 20 time he's definitely influenced by argyle so i think you know brightening him up and giving him a color it was like kind of the perfect pattern for this outfit erica sinclair [Music] back in the 80s it was really big on sets and matching pieces so it's a very coordinated outfit it's something i probably would have worn at her age and so that was fun to get to do we screen printed the pink fabric and then made the dress with fabric that we found at fine fabrics in atlanta i wanted erica to still look youthful and that's that's a interesting thing to do because priya's growing you know she's becoming a woman she's like you could see it in her face she's at an age where personally she wants to look older but she also should feel the age that she's supposed to be on camera so it was tricky to kind of balance that and make her feel feminine and young and keep her looking younger than she actually is if that makes sense yes the american flag cape is so fun so that's our prop master nico he supplied the cape and we had fun in the fitting like playing around with that it was written in the script that she would show up that way so i like when the script's really specific about really like big props and costume pieces like that that's fun to get to add i think it's also nice that her clothes are so like like genuine and sweet and girly but she has such an attitude you know so you wouldn't expect the mouth of that girl to look like that it was so fun to get to do that dr martin brenner the work that modine does is a complicated timeline and so in order to showcase that and help the viewer know what timeline we're in we tried to make sure that the the suits that he's wearing are very specifically 70s that wide lapel those long collars you know the pattern and the tie is specific to the era so that kind of helps the viewer to see when it's 70s to when it's 80s or even at like 60s flashback vecna [Music] after you [Music] yeah i mean this was really cool to get to work with jamie campbell bauer on this because he's the perfect vechna and knowing that this outfit sort of establishes his character before we find out who he is it was really important to make sure that it was really stark really clean kind of perfect you know he plays the character so well i wanted the costume to aid in that so we made sure the fit was just right we made sure that it was like perfectly clean perfectly fit and kind of creepy you know i think the the all white with the black belt and the black shoes does just that thanks for having me gq i'm amy parris and those were my fine points

Channel: GQ

Views: 1,718,303

Keywords: byers, costume design, costume designer, dustin stranger things, eddie munson, eleven, eleven stranger things, fine points, gq, gq magazine, gq stranger things, jim hopper, lucas sinclair, new stranger things, season 4, steve harrington, stranger things, stranger things 4, stranger things costumes, stranger things explained, stranger things s4, stranger things season 4, stranger things steve, stranger things vecna, vanity fair, vecna, vecna stranger things, who is vecna

Id: iI3j673h0GE

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022