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Costume designer Paul Tazewell built Wicked’s wardrobe from three familiar sources—the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and the Broadway musical—then reshaped them into a distinct visual world for director Jon M. Chu’s film. Nature supplied patterns and textures; character research turned them into contrasting wardrobes; and fittings, engineering, and specialist craft made the designs workable on screen.
How Tazewell found a fresh visual language for Oz
Tazewell’s challenge was to honor what audiences already knew without simply reproducing the stage production or the earlier film. In an interview with British Vogue published in October 2024, he identified Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Victor Fleming’s 1939 The Wizard of Oz, and the Broadway musical as central reference points. He and Chu discussed creating a fresh vision while recognizing the musical’s established audience.
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Tazewell also looked to the wider culture of The Wizard of Oz, including illustrations in the bound book and the 1930s film. Rather than assign the costumes to one historical period, he drew on nature to make the world feel fantastical. “I went to nature as a major design influence, including things such as the Fibonacci spiral and how nature creates patterns that can be very kaleidoscopic,” he told The Credits in November 2024.
That research led to forms that could be adapted differently for each character: spirals, mushrooms and fungi, dried leaves, and bark. These references became more than surface decoration. They helped establish a relationship between the characters and the world around them.
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How Elphaba’s and Glinda’s costumes express character
The contrast between the two wardrobes is not just green versus pink. Tazewell used texture, silhouette, movement, and changing details to make the costumes track the characters’ distinct temperaments and emotional development.
| Design element | Elphaba | Glinda |
|---|---|---|
| Underlying idea | Grounded, earth-associated forms and textures | Airy, effervescent forms |
| Nature references | Mushrooms, fungi, bark, and dried leaves | Butterflies and the Fibonacci spiral |
| Texture and silhouette | Glazed bark cloth and mushroom-like pleating; early looks include sober silhouettes associated with Victorian mourning dress | The bubble dress uses a buoyant, rounded silhouette; its construction is designed to support the shape and movement |
| How the wardrobe changes | Details such as glasses, pyjamas, and a boot heel that becomes higher reflect ideas Cynthia Erivo contributed as the character develops | Clothing shifts with the character’s style and emotional changes over the story |
The table describes design approaches, not a one-to-one code in which every garment or color has a fixed symbolic meaning. Tazewell has described the costumes as reflecting the women’s styles and emotional changes over their year. Erivo and Chu have also emphasized that small details contribute to the storytelling. “No piece of costume is frivolous,” Erivo told British Vogue. “Everything has a use, and everything is meaningful.” Chu put the point this way: “You could look at any shoe, any button – you could touch any of them, and they tell our story.”
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How the bubble dress was built and made wearable
Glinda’s bubble dress looks light, but its shape depended on substantial hidden construction. Tazewell compared the underlying structure to the girders of a building and described working hands-on with the tailor. The design had to sustain its conspicuous silhouette while still feeling manageable over long shooting days and allowing the skirt to move through space.
Cosmopolitan reported in 2024 that creating Galinda’s bubble dress took 225 hours. That is a reported making-time figure for this particular look, not a measure of the time needed for the film’s wardrobe overall.
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Movement and safety shaped the wider design process, too. Tazewell described repeated fittings with actors and makers to work through comfort, silhouette, corsetry, stunt movement, and harness placement. For flying scenes, the head of stunts joined fittings to advise on safe harness placement while the costume team worked to preserve the established look.
The makers and scale behind the wardrobe
The film was shot in the UK, and Tazewell worked with local specialists, including weavers, shoemakers, and embroiderers. British Vogue reported in October 2024 that the workshop had more than 100 people on its busiest days. Its listed specialties ranged from tailors, dressmakers, hand-felters, knitters, and milliners to shoemakers, armorers, jewelry makers, and experts in 3D printing and laser manipulation.
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- Runtime: 138 minutes
The Credits reported approximate production counts in November 2024: about 25 looks for Glinda and about the same for Elphaba, plus additional multiples for stunt and cover use. Tazewell also described hundreds of costumes for the main cast and day players. These categories matter: a count of looks is not the same as a count of individual garments, particularly when duplicates are made for performance needs.
Background wardrobe required another kind of scale. In a January 2025 interview with Backstage, Tazewell described renting and refashioning clothing for Emerald City scenes with more than 400–500 background performers on some days. The figure is his approximate description of certain days, not a count of the film’s total background performers.
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- Genre: Musical
- Number of Discs: 1
- Number of Tracks: 0
- Rating: PG
- Director: Jon M. Chu
Why the process matters to the finished film
Tazewell’s approach connected visual research to practical filmmaking. Natural patterns helped give Oz a coherent design vocabulary; the distinct treatments for Elphaba and Glinda made their differences legible without reducing them to color; and fittings, tailoring, and stunt collaboration helped translate those ideas into clothes actors could wear and move in. The result is a wardrobe in which both the broad silhouettes and the smallest details can contribute to character and story.
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