Inside the mind of Zoolander’s costume designer

If you were to ask Derek Zoolander who he’s wearing, he would probably tell you he doesn’t wear people. There would be an uncomfortable pause, he’d tug on his blouse just to make sure it was made of fabric. Most of his outfits are actually confounding to him—and the people around him. Yet his penchant for looking like a washed up 90s boy band member isn’t as haphazard as we would like to think. In fact, costume designer Leesa Evans—who conceived the DZ lookbook for Zoolander 2, is extremely serious about Derek’s lack of taste.

Although Evans didn’t work on the first Zoolander, she vowed to preserve the cartoonish sensibility in the sequel by visually bridging the two films together. What is most surprising is that a decade and a half has passed for Zoolander’s main characters—Derek and his arch rival/bff Hansel—and both are out-of-work models in the sequel. In order to fill in that fifteen-year gap, Evans had to work closely with director Ben Stiller, the writers and producers in order to build a backstory. This isn’t the first time she’s matched plot with frocks. Evans was an assistant on Clueless in 1995 and went on to dress characters for comedies ranging from Forgetting Sarah Marshall to Bridesmaids to Trainwreck.

For Zoolander, Evans had to use clothes and aesthetics to explain a few things. Firstly, her racks had to explain why Derek and Hansel are no longer friends and why Hansel is wearing a gold-plated eye patch in the desert. She also had to show the audience how desperate the duo was for a makeover—and a fashion comeback, even though the twosome’s highest priority is looking good at an orgy.

Even if clothing is optional or inappropriate, it still feels more customized in Zoolander 2 and that is partly because Evans collaborated with designers like Costume National, Saint Laurent and Valentino to design pieces specifically for the film. “There are a lot of hints as to what the [characters] would all wear as a group,” Evans says, referring to a scene where Penélope Cruz wears a white trench coat, Derek is in a navy pea coat and Hansel’s in a blue-and-white fringed poncho. “It’s colour palettes that tie them together.” Colour is one of those things that amplify a comedic film and the way Evans uses colour as a tool to enhance the personalities and dramas of a funny script. “Often times my base colour will start with true neutrals—beige, charcoal grey, camel,” she says. “Then I’ll bring in extreme combinations, like red, green, red, purple, blue and yellow. A lot of times in comedy, the scene requires a pop of colour to keep the tone of what’s on camera light.”

But the comedic tone of the film is a lot more muted this time around. If Zoolander was a parody of the fashion industry, then Zoolander 2 is about it infiltrating it. That is to say that Derek and Hansel are no longer positioned within fashion but outside of it. As old, lame has-beens who are now more out of touch than ever. Instead of modern street-style, the pair favour couture.

Of course grooming also plays an important part in the film, signally its own type of transformation. For example, when Derek and Hansel finally make up, Hansel suggests that they “shave off the billy goat beard and show [the] punks what real fashion looks like.” This is when Derek has a major costume change and ends up looking like he’s being swallowed alive by his sequined clothes. Hansel looks like he’s soaring through dimensions on a Peyote trip. “I tried to stay as vigilant,” Evans explains of her process. “With every single item of clothing, I would ask one question: is it couture or is it comedy? If it’s [wasn’t] one of those two things then it [did] not belong in the film.”

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