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A Conversation with Vicki Graef
(Costume Designer Season 1, Season 2 episodes 201-207) Pt. 2
A: There are a few characters that I really enjoy that I keep hoping will come back in. They come in for a fitting and you just go, this guy is so incredible. He's got to be on the show. Like the Jagger character.
Q: Oh yes, Gabriel's wacky friend.
A: Yes. He's so good. And so I just pulled together a mini closet of clothes for him even though he was only in the one day. And then he has shown up in one of the club scenes, and I'm hoping that he'll come back. So I keep pushing Ralph to put Dov in there some more. We need Jagger. I want Gabriel to have some buddies.
Q: Yeah, he needs to have a social life of some kind.
A: Exactly.
Q: Was it a conscious decision for Sara to show midriff?
A: Yes, yes, very much. Because I've worked with Warner Brothers a lot, I've worked for Fox and Columbia and I know the audience and you've got to give them something. Ralph loves Yancy's androgynous look anyway. Really wants to push that tough androgynous thing. But I knew that I would get notes from somebody about, 'we want T & A!' (LAUGHTER) And I said look, half the time she starts out in the precinct. She runs out the door, jumps on her motorcycle and takes off. Forget the miniskirt. Forget the Jimmy Choos and the Manolo Blahniks. It's not gonna happen. Plus she can't run in those stupid shoes. And the low-cut stuff just doesn't work with the character. She's just not that type of a woman. She gets up in the morning and throws on whatever's on the foot of her bed and leaves for the office. Yancy's got this great body and it was the only thing that I had. I thought, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to chop everything off. It just gives her a little edge that nobody else has.
Q: How often do you let the cast go into their own closets and pull stuff to bring on set to wear?
A: Almost never. Because we have so many stunts. Yancy's clothes, a lot of them, I have four or five duplicates of, depending on whether it's a motorcycle double, whether it's sword-fighting double, whether a gymnastic double. Or say somebody is harnessed and we do all this flying. So it's very difficult to do that. And also I hate being responsible for other people's clothes. And I find if you open that door all of a sudden they're all dressing themselves and I have no control anymore and then Ralph's yelling at me.
Q: Have you ever given the character something to wear that the actor dearly loves?
A: You mean like Nottingham? (LAUGHTER) Yeah, I'll say I have. It happens quite often and that's the best compliment I can get.
Q: Do you make a version for them to take home?
A: Usually if there's something really great and they totally love it I try and make sure that's one that I shop five of, and they can absorb it into their home life. But it scares me 'cause I don't want them to take the character home either.
Q: You said you don't like to shop in stores but sometimes you have to. For Sara specifically is there one store that you kind of gravitate towards?
A: Earl Jeans has been phenomenal and they have sent me boxes of things for Yancy, and they've just been great. So and I've worked with them off and on for a while. Jo Boxer I've worked with forever and they always send me fabulous stuff. Because we have to lighten it up a little bit (LAUGHTER). I try and use a little fun stuff every once in a while. I used Doc Martins on Sara Pezzini last season and then this season I'm trying to make her look a little more sleek and less sort of clunky. So because I was in England over the summer I found these amazing shoes, this company called Pied A Terre in England. So her new boots this season are some that I found in London. And they're kind of halfway between a motorcycle boot and a boxing boot, which I felt really worked for the character. And all of Iron's clothes I designed and they're all custom made, including his shirts. All his shirts are monogrammed. He's very fun. And he has a purple thing. So I can sneak the regal purple into Irons. I'm using some Michael Stars t-shirts on Yancy this season. And I don't want to mention any labels that I've cut to pieces and redone. That's just so rude. (LAUGHTER)
Q: Fans want to know where do you keep all of this stuff? Do you have some giant walk-in closet off set?
A: Well we've got a forty-foot wardrobe truck that has a dryer and a microwave and a sound system (LAUGHTER) . Our own traveling closet on wheels. And we have stuff for extras that we keep there and for the principals. They each have a closet for the season and then per episode. Generally speaking, they have between four and five changes per episode. That little mini closet is on the truck for that episode. We have a huge warehouse where I have a principals' closet that is this giant room with two tiers of racks and they each have an aisle. And it's all kind of stashed in there. I'll repeat things too because not everybody wears brand new clothes everyday. At the beginning of the season I do a basic closet for each one of them. And we pull from there and then for each episode I shop or make specific things. It's dictated by the feel of the script and the color pallette I decide to do on that particular episode. But fortunately I'm really lucky I've got a giant closet (LAUGHTER). It saves my life a lot. . . I'm always going to be adding these secret little things. I found a t-shirt the other day in a thrift store that had some really strange designs on it that looked just like the Witchblade "W". Okay, this is going on Gabriel. We're finding things all the time and you never know what street I'm going to drive down or I've also been known to buy shirts off people's backs.
Q: What do they put on instead?
A: Oh, I trade them. I've done that to crewmembers too. On one movie one of the characters was supposed to be a Deadhead and one of the grips had on this really raggedy old tie-dye t-shirt. It was so perfect and it takes me so many hours to age a t-shirt down, with the rips and the holes . . . .I've also been designing some (jeans) for the show because I got bored with just plain denim. I started doing a line of jeans that are just wild. And they scared Ralph, the ones with the cheetahs on them and the monkeys. 'Cause I wanted to do this whole monkey thing because of Homunculus last season. Do you remember that? There was one line, where Iron says to Nottingham, 'Do you remember your little pet monkey Homunculus . . .?' Well I just cracked up. I went, Ralph you are so sick. So then I started doing all this monkey stuff just to torture Ralph (LAUGHTER). I found this print. . . and it has little organ grinder monkeys all over it. We did a pair of jeans for Yancy . . . scared Ralph (LAUGHTER). He wouldn't let me use 'em.
It's fun 'cause we find that we're all kind of working on this weird, subliminal level. Like the letter "tau". We went up to the art department to get them to print it out on the computer. And Arlene, one of the graphics people up there, she's great, she goes, 'why do you want the letter tau? What do you know?' And I said, what do you mean what do I know? And she said, 'well, you know that Joan of Arc scene? We already did the letter tau on all the banners in the background.' It's like we're all working on the same level and it's bizarre. Ralph just keeps giving us each enough information to go nuts (LAUGHTER) and we're all sort of ending up in the same place.
Q: Thank you so much!
A: Thank you!
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