Nessarose’s iconic slippers couldn’t have been the same as the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz because MGM still owns that design, but Wicked always planned to make them silver like they are in the Broadway musical.
Wicked is an amazing movie, and in my opinion, the best parts are the costuming and the hair and makeup design. Alongside their respective teams, costume designer Paul Tazewell and hair and makeup department lead Frances Hannon truly made magic onscreen, and their work deserves to be celebrated.
Here are 22 Wicked behind-the-scenes facts from the costume department and the hair and makeup department:
1.On Broadway, Glinda’s bubble dress is blue because “there were legal issues with using pink for the Broadway design just because of studios.” However, Wicked was given clearance to use pink like Billy Burke’s bubble dress in the original 1939 movie.
Paul told People, “I was also intent on creating a similar quality of silhouette. There’s a fairy princess quality in Ariana as Glinda in that dress. It’s sparkly, and it is covered with bubble imagery that swirls around her. So it has all of those qualities that are magical and give you that sense of the Good Witch of the North in a very strong way, but it’s re-envisioned, it’s turning it on its head.”
The design of Glinda’s bubble dress carried into the rest of her wardrobe.
Paul told Teen Vogue, “I carried that through even in her uniforms. There are butterflies applied to her blouse. Iridescence and translucence are very important in the theme of her wardrobe as well…It always tied back to the warm pink from the bubble dress.”
2.The design of Glinda’s bubble dress was inspired by butterflies and the Fibonacci spiral.
Paul told Vogue that Glinda represents “all that is air-bound and effervescent.”
3.Glinda’s bubble dress was designed so that light passed through it, giving it a “lighter-than-air quality.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Paul told Teen Vogue, “There was a lot of trial and error in figuring out what our products would be. It was always going to be shot and lit so that it emanated a certain amount of light.”
4.Frances worked with special effects makeup manufacturer David Stoneman to create custom body makeup for Elphaba’s iconic green look. After a lot of research and testing different shades on models with Cynthia Erivo’s skin tone, they still couldn’t find one that looked good in different lighting. However, Frances finally found the answer in an unexpected place — a little tube of discontinued neon eye paint from Canada.
She told Glamour, “I brought that to David, and he took the base of the neon and put a few drops into the green that we already created, and it just gave the reflective quality that we didn’t have. And with that, it worked in every light. We ticked that box straight away, and that was before we got Cynthia in the country. It was going to be makeup [instead of VFX], which was a great joy to us because, of course, it’s lovely to do your art.”
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5.Once the team had the process down, transforming Cynthia into Elphaba only took “roughly two hours and 15 minutes.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Frances told Glamour, “The girls who made her up were Alice Jones and Olivia Jerrard. There were two people used, one for the hands, one did the face, and then Cyn did her wig.”
Removing the green took three women using a special remover about 45 minutes.
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6.Cynthia was “very much so” involved with deciding on Elphaba’s hair. Frances told Glamour, “We wanted to make it timeless, so it was trying to find a balance. Cynthia, as an artist, is tiny, and her costumes — that big witch’s hat and those cloaks — are big. So we had to bring a style to Cynthia that could grow and change but not swamp her. Micro braiding fulfilled every nuance.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
She continued, “It kept her head shape very small and tight. It allowed development by letting it free, but keeping it very simple. Elphaba isn’t vain, unlike Glinda, so she wouldn’t be doing anything too fancy to herself or taking time for that sort of thing. I brought it to Jon Chu and Marc Platt. Jon really loved the idea, then he took it to Cynthia, and she loved the idea. It just developed from there. We made four simple hairstyles but as Cynthia’s Elphaba developed, more hairstyles developed within it.”
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7.Ariana Grande wore wigs in the movie, but, during pre-production, she dyed her hair blonde as well “because it gave her the feeling every day of being Glinda.”
Ariana Grande / Via instagram.com
Frances told Glamour, “She often asked to wear a blonde wig to rehearsals or read-throughs, because she wanted to feel like she was bringing Glinda into everything. The visual of the blonde, no different from the green, was very important to her.”
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8.Cynthia pitched ideas for Elphaba’s shoes, glasses, and pajamas.
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
She told Vogue, “I said to [Paul], ‘I would love for the heel of my boot to get higher as we move on in her story.”
He agreed with her request.
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9.Many of Glinda’s outfits were based on classic Hollywood icons.
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Paul told Harper’s Bazaar, “Like those 1930s noirs where they wear a lot of teddies. They can be very elegant, but the way she ends up performing with it, it becomes funny and irreverent.”
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10.Her hemlines reflect her character arc. As she matures, they get longer.
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com youtube.com
Likewise, her wardrobe evolves into couture, which will be more prominent in the sequel.
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11.Elphaba’s outfits were based on the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, but her silhouettes are “more of a turn of the century 1890s shape, albeit it’s still from the lens that feels more contemporary.”
Paul told Harper’s Bazaar, “I set about defining why she’s in black, which is the fact that her mother passed away at a very young age, and so she was in mourning, and just making sure that there’s a tie back to the Wicked Witch of the West.”
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12.Her “very restrictive and tailored” school uniforms contrast with her flowing “Defying Gravity” look to reflect how she’s breaking free.
13.Paul told Teen Vogue, “My approach to Elphaba was to connect her to nature and to a world that is organic and grounded. That connection to nature speaks to her advocacy for animals.”
">Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
He continued, “I was looking at a lot of textures of roots and design lines of roots, bark, mushrooms, and all those things when you turn over a log in a forest — the mystery and beauty of what that is and how that relates to her as a character.”
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14.Because Cynthia shaves her own eyebrows, she wore eyebrow transfers in the movie.
15.Nessarose’s slippers couldn’t have been the same as the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz because MGM still owns that design, but Wicked always planned to make them silver like they are in the Broadway musical.
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Paul told WWD, “I have the heel starting as a tornado of jewels that swirls up and then wraps over the foot, and swirls around the foot. We also used short socks on Nessarose when she’s wearing the shoes, which is how we see them on Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.”
His design was also inspired by crowns like the Boucheron Wave Tiara.
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16.Paul told Playbill that the floral embroidery in Nessarose’s costumes was “reflective of her mother, the red poppies and white milkflowers.”
He said, “Everything she wears ties her back to Mrs. Thropp and that trauma.”
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17.Glinda’s crown and Nessarose’s slippers were 3-D printed by Guberinic, the same artisan who made the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show wings.
Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Victoria’s Secret, Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
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18.Paul told E! News, “For Fiyero, he’s a prince and heroic, and his character, played by Jonathan Bailey, needed to embody all of that. The embroidery that we used on his Ozdust Ballroom suit, inspired by tribal design, which I think gives it a little more edge.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
“It’s more of a North Africa or Southern Spanish quality, along with military stylings with all the gold buttons, is in direct keeping with who Fiyero is and then becomes—the royal family that he comes from and where he ends up in the second film as well,” he said.
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19.For the Shiz University uniforms, the costume team “were intent on finding a color palette that would be magical or bring [them] delight and be completely different from the other films that have school uniforms.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Paul told Wonderland Magazine, “But what was very important for me for all of those uniforms is that much in the same way that uniforms will be taken by younger people and worn in their own individualized ways, I have that reflected in the different students of Shiz.”
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20.Paul told Teen Vogue, “We created probably five or six Wicked Witch hats, all going in different directions. There was one that had the same texture, but it was completely pointed. We had an origami shape that kind of collapsed. There was another that had a different swirl and texture. I was getting at what would be the perfect — the icon — for the film.”
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
“It needed to live on Cynthia’s head in the perfect way so that it set off her face and was the right scale for her hair. You can’t do that until you have the piece in front of you. We ended up combining two different ideas so that it could collapse and open up, and then when it went on her head it became the perfect thing. I knew she could wear a wide-brim hat with great swagger, but I needed to make sure it fit all the other elements, scale-wise,” he said.
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21.Elphaba’s “Defying Gravity” dress had a hidden corset that helped Cynthia buckle into the harness for flying scenes.
Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com
Paul told Town and Country, “There were holes that we had to make into the dress so that you could clip into it so you wouldn’t see the harness.”
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22.And finally, the texture of her dress mimics the underside of a mushroom.
Paul told Elle, “What was inspiring about that was her connection to nature, the timelessness and beauty of nature as well. Her advocation for animals. Also, her power: the fact that she can defy gravity. She can control gravity, she is connected to the natural elements. I wanted to imbue that in all of looks.”
