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      The Year of the Mega Sleeve

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      Raglan, fluted, leg o’ mutton, bishop, puffed, balloon — whatever you want to call them, we wore them.When Holly Waddington, the costume designer for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s much heralded phantasmagorical film about a young women’s psychological and sexual awakening that opened on Friday, began thinking about what her heroine would wear, she said she was thinking “skinny arms and these kind of straight skirts with the big bustle.”The film, which is based on a 1992 book by Alasdair Gray and stars Emma Stone, is set in an unidentified time period that is sort of like the 1880s — if the 1880s took place in an alternate dimension in which time folded in on itself, so the past was also the future. In part, that’s why Ms. Waddington was drawn to a silhouette that was slim on top and exaggerated at the bottom.Also, it’s “quite phallic,” she said, “and that felt right.” Mr. Lanthimos had other ideas.“He said, ‘It’s about the sleeve,’” Ms. Waddington recalled. And so, indeed, it is.Ms. Stone amid a sea of ruffled sleevage.Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight PicturesPuffed, ruffled and ruched to bulbous extremes, the sleeves worn by Ms. Stone’s character, Bella Baxter, are impossible to ignore. About 15.5-inches wide, they bounce across the screen in every scene like giant hot air balloons or supersize mammaries, bigger than her head, absurd and weirdly alluring, dainty and dominant. They are “vast,” Ms. Waddington said. “Huge.”But monumental as they are, they are also utterly on trend. “There’s something in the air,” Ms. Waddington said. “Yorgos was very tuned into that.” It’s not the marketing tsunami that was Barbie pink; it’s merely one of those cosmic moments when fashion and culture collide.Forget the power shoulder: 2023 was the year of the power sleeve. No matter the exact style — puffed, bishop, fluted, belled, leg o’ mutton, statement, mega, dramatic — all that really mattered was that it was big. Off screen as well as on.We have, said Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, “hit peak sleeve.”Sleeves, Sleeves, EverywhereStyle watchers began talking about a sleeve sweep at the end of 2022. “Forget what you knew about the statement sleeve,” the influential Italian boutique Luisa Via Roma proclaimed on its website. “This season, the style is more dramatic and bolder than ever.” The fall ready-to-wear shows were filled with sleeves — brushing the floor at Balenciaga and Rodarte; bowling ball-size at Thom Browne; rounded and sculptural at Schiaparelli.By Oscar time, sleeve mania had migrated onto the red carpet thanks to Florence Pugh, who wore a palatial puff-sleeve Valentino taffeta robe atop shorts; Jessie Buckley, in a Shakespearean-sleeve black-lace gown by Rodarte; and Mindy Kaling, whose white Vera Wang dress had detachable gauntlets-cum-sleeves.Puffed up: Clockwise from top left, Florence Pugh in Valentino; Kendall Jenner in Marc Jacobs; Jessie Buckley in Rodarte; and Michelle Yeoh in Lagerfeld. Nina Westervelt and Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt the Met Gala in May, Kendall Jenner wore a sequined Marc Jacobs look in which the designer seemed to have taken all the fabric from what would have been the pants and transferred it to the sleeves. (Also joining the statement sleeve set: Michelle Yeoh, Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.)Then Vogue put Carey Mulligan on its November cover in a peachy gown from the Louis Vuitton 2024 resort collection that had such complicated sleeves it looked as if she’d stuck her arms elbow-deep into two giant cream puffs. And then came “Poor Things” with what Ms. Waddington called its “commitment to sleeves.”Little wonder that in January, the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology will kick off its 2024 programming with “Statement Sleeves,” an exhibition of almost 80 pieces from the permanent collection that will focus on how sleeves serve as “signifiers of status, taste and personality,” according to a news release. And though they cycle in and out of fashion, so it has always been.Arms and the WomanBig sleeves have been a part of dress for almost as long as there has been dress. Colleen Hill, the curator of costume and accessories at FIT, who is behind the museum’s sleeves show, said the world’s oldest woven garment — a V-neck linen shirt from the fourth millennium B.C., now in the collection of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London — includes knife-pleated sleeves. During the Renaissance, sleeves were often the most elaborate part of a dress, as well as detachable; grooms often gave sleeves to their new brides.Sleeves became even more prominent in the Elizabethan, Victorian and Edwardian eras. By the 1830s there were so many different sleeve shapes and names, Ms. Hill said, that a woman’s sewing guide from the period stated, in effect, “we’re not going to give you all the styles of sleeves because it is impossible.”Carey Mulligan got big sleeves for her Vogue cover in November. VogueMs. Waddington said that when she was researching these periods for “Poor Things,” she went into fashion archives and discovered sleeves so extreme they were almost unbelievable. “This is the thing that fascinates me about historical dress,” she said. “The shapes are wild.” What looks like science fiction, she added, actually comes from “a 19th-century pattern.”Sleeves got big again in the 1940s thanks to designers like Adrian, the Hollywood couturier whose giant ruffled sleeves were a favorite of a young Joan Crawford and a precursor to the equally giant shoulder pads of World War II. And sleeves made a famous return in the 1980s, thanks in part to Princess Diana and the enormous fairy-tale-on-steroids sleeves of her wedding gown.It’s probably not an accident that the episodes of “The Crown” that focus on Diana, including the recreation of her wedding dress, have coincided with the return of big sleeves. Simon Porte Jacquemus specifically name-checked Diana as the inspiration for his fall 2023 show, which featured inflated sleeves. He said he was obsessed with her “dramatic round puffy sleeves.”“It shaped her silhouette in a sensuous way, but still with a poetic and naïve ’80s touch,” he said.What’s in a Sleeve?At first it may have seemed that pandemic lockdowns and the ascension of comfort clothing would kill the big sleeve. But the way that altered reality shrank our interactions to the size of a computer monitor may actually have turbocharged the trend.“We’re so often seen onscreen these days from the waist up, and sleeves are a way to stand out,” Ms. Hill said.Ms. Waddington said much the same, noting that the torso “is what the camera sees most of the time, so the information needs to be happening between the waist and the head.” And how much better when it is conveyed at volume. Or, rather, in volumes.Indeed, Mr. Roseberry said, sleeves “draw the attention upward to the face and the person wearing the garment.”Maximalist sleeves at Thom Browne. Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesSleeves like a giant circle at Schiaparelli.SchiaparelliSleeves to the floor at Rodarte.Kessler StudioNo matter what, Mr. Lanthimos said, “they really make an impression.” Sleeves are inclusive: They can be worn by myriad bodies in myriad ways and exist at myriad prices. They are theatrical. (Forget talking with your hands; talking with your arms is much more effective.) And they can be resonant of sexuality, safety and strength.That makes sleeves the rare design element that is equally showy and swaddling. Simone Rocha, whose balloon sleeves walk a fine line between childlike and sensuous and have become something of a design signature, said she was drawn to the way “the proportion sculpts around the body almost like a cocoon, creating a sense of security.” Also: big, puffy sleeves are old-fashioned and contemporary at the same time, speaking to history and, she said, “the pragmatic feeling of a work-wear bomber.”Whatever the association, however, the result is universal: “In an upside-down world, emphasizing your physicality in space, taking up room, is a way of asserting yourself,” Mr. Roseberry said. “Of giving yourself importance.”Ms. Waddington agreed. “I think that they’re about empowerment,” she said. Which is, in the end, the hero’s journey of “Poor Things,” and the heart of its emotional appeal.“I feel like I’d quite like to wear big sleeves now,” Ms. Waddington said. More

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      in Music

      Humberto Leon’s Making of a Girl Group

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      Last year, it became Humberto Leon’s job to shape the appearances of 20 young women, whose ages ranged from 14 to 21.He decided what kind of clothing, shoes and jewelry they would wear. He told them how their hair should be cut and their makeup applied.“You have to imagine, with 20 girls, I want each and every one of them to stand out,” Mr. Leon said.Still, young women do not always take kindly to being told how to dress. There were tears. “That’s not how I like to do my hair,” some of them told Mr. Leon.“I said, ‘I know, but trust me. I’m helping you own your personality,’” Mr. Leon recalled. “They think they know what’s best for them. And I have to give them an objective opinion of what I think would look great on them.”Professionally, it was in their best interest to listen to Mr. Leon. Under his guidance, they could become the main characters in their own makeover montage — a tradition stretching from “Pygmalion” to “The Princess Diaries” to, perhaps more relevant to this group, “The Hunger Games.”Mr. Leon rose to prominence in the aughts with Opening Ceremony, which he founded in 2002 with Carol Lim, a college friend. After the pandemic, he decided to expand his horizons.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesThese 20 girls were in direct competition with one another. Six of them would eventually be named members of a new pop group. Upon its debut, this group would already have the support of Hybe, the company that brought K-pop to the world, and Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. The competition would also be the subject of a Netflix documentary series.Throughout it all, the contestants’ public image would be in the hands of Mr. Leon, a 48-year-old fashion designer who rose to prominence in downtown New York during the 2000s with his store Opening Ceremony — a popular boutique for up-and-coming labels — then was recruited to reinvigorate a luxury brand in Paris, then started opening restaurants with his family during the pandemic in Los Angeles.In September 2022, he was brought on as creative director for this girl group competition — a partnership between Hybe and Geffen Records, which is owned by Universal Music Group — in which 120,000 applicants from around the world were narrowed down to 20 contestants, or “trainees,” all of whom were relocated to Los Angeles to train intensively in singing and dancing.When those contestants were announced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for their first group photo shoot in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms. They wore blazers bearing the name of their competition: Dream Academy.By November, half of this group was eliminated through a combination of fan voting and judges’ evaluations. The culling was chronicled on YouTube. (“We’re not forming a friend group, we’re forming a girl group,” one young woman said during a particularly tense elimination round.)For the final photo shoot before the six winners were announced, Mr. Leon dressed the trainees now as “elevated” schoolgirls. This time they showed more skin in tailored gray sets, trading their chunky white socks for black mesh, looking like more polished, modern versions of Britney Spears in “ … Baby One More Time,” the music video that made a 16-year-old girl a star.One morning in Hollywood, I watched as Mr. Leon oversaw these final portraits. He reminded one 17-year-old contestant, Megan, to correct her stance. She had a tendency to stand with her legs wide apart, which Mr. Leon had nicknamed “the Megan.” As in, “Don’t do ‘the Megan,’ Megan.”Later, while the 10 remaining trainees filmed a music video, I noticed that Megan had a way of staring down the camera with a cool, come-hither expression — similar to the seductive one Ms. Spears adopted. (Megan, of course, was not yet born when “ … Baby One More Time” was released.)This tendency was not corrected.When it came to being sexy, Mr. Leon said he had always told the girls, “Whatever you’re doing, do it for yourself, because you want to feel that way.”A “Dream Academy” trainee poses at a Hollywood studio days before the final six winners were announced.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesK-pop, But Not“Dream Academy” was not Mr. Leon’s first time working with a girl group.In 2021, he met the Linda Lindas, a punk quartet that went viral after performing at the Los Angeles Public Library. At the time, its members were between 10 and 16 years old. They had come to eat at Mr. Leon’s restaurant Chifa, named for a Chinese restaurant his mother, Wendy, opened in Peru in the 1970s before the family moved to the United States. When Mr. Leon offered to direct their first music video, the group said yes. “Growing Up” showed the four girls and four cats shredding in a suburban home, dressed in 1970s-inspired outfits.When she saw the video, Michelle An, now president of creative strategy at Interscope Geffen A&M, said she thought it was “so cute and so innovative and so appropriate for their age.” She was particularly taken with the illustrations of cats painted on the girls’ closed eyelids.The final 10 trainees rehearse an original song, “All the Same.” Their outfits, hair and makeup choices were directed by Mr. Leon and his team.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesMs. An’s job is to help her labels’ artists, like Billie Eilish, with “visual world building,” she said. “You make this music — what imagery do you want out there to help your fans understand what this song is trying to say?”Geffen had an unusual project in the works with Hybe, a Korean entertainment powerhouse. What began as a conversation about music distribution ended with Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman of Hybe, proposing that they build a group together. Hybe would bring elements of K-pop’s famously rigorous training and development program — the same system with which Hybe built BTS — to the United States for the first time, filling it with trainees from various regions, not just East Asia.One hurdle, though, was the Americans’ concern that the group could seem too factory-produced. “K-pop has a reputation of being manufactured,” Ms. An said. Even outside K-pop, the history of boy bands and girl groups reeks of “not being as organic and real,” said John Janick, the chief executive of Interscope Geffen A&M, pointing to glossy reality shows of the 2000s, like “Making the Band.”In order to make the group feel real, the executives said, the girls had to feel real. Their personalities couldn’t be forced; there would be no extreme archetypes, no Posh or Sporty or Baby Spice. They needed someone who could draw out the girls’ distinct backgrounds and abilities but also make them cohere visually as a group. They were convinced Mr. Leon could be that person.“In the entertainment business,” Mr. Janick said, “everybody wants to have taste, but not all people do.”‘A Curious Mind’Instead of going to fashion school, Mr. Leon likes to say, he worked at the Gap for 10 years.At 14, he was hired at a store in West Covina, Calif., and learned he had a skill for designing windows. He continued working on visual displays for Gap while attending the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating in 1997, he accepted a corporate job with Old Navy in San Francisco.In 2000, Mr. Leon left for New York, working at Burberry as the director of visual merchandising. Mr. Leon called Lara one of the most “fashion savvy” of the group.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesA selection of shoes. Some trainees were more confident performing in heels than others.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesIn 2002, he founded Opening Ceremony with Carol Lim, a college friend.“We have a similar approach to life,” said Ms. Lim, who was the business-minded chief executive to Mr. Leon’s creative director. “A curious mind,” she called him.A decade later, having cultivated a Midas-touch reputation for coolness, the duo became design directors at Kenzo, a LVMH-owned brand in Paris.At Kenzo, Mr. Leon took a particular interest in marketing visuals. Mr. Bang, the Hybe chairman, called a 2016 fragrance advertisement starring a frenetic dancing Margaret Qualley, directed by Spike Jonze, one of his “favorite fashion artworks.”Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim left Kenzo in 2019, then sold Opening Ceremony and closed its stores in 2020, moving to the same neighborhood in Los Angeles to raise their families.Around this time, Mr. Leon said he had an epiphany: Even if he was “good” at it, he didn’t have to keep working in fashion. “I was able to create a feeling, and a feeling can transfer,” he said. “I decided to open up my world a bit.”Sometimes Mr. Leon still designs clothes; recently he got a call from the choreographer Justin Peck about creating costumes for a spring performance of the New York City Ballet. But what appeals to him now is making things not for runways but for culture. For example, when Heidi Bivens, the costume designer for “Euphoria,” was working on the teen drama’s first season, she sourced several outfits from Opening Ceremony. The “‘Euphoria’ effect” became a phenomenon, inspiring trends in fashion and beauty.The label hoped that given Mr. Leon’s experience raising daughters, he would be sensitive in guiding the young women, here with Megan, through the competition.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times“I went to them, and I said, ‘For Season 2, let’s design this from scratch, so everything you see on ‘Euphoria’ is something we’ve never seen before,’” Mr. Leon said. Consumers could then directly buy the clothes they saw onscreen.That pitch didn’t work out, but it’s an idea Mr. Leon still wants to explore. .‘Trust Me’In November, Mr. Leon showed me a video of his twin daughters at their 10th birthday sleepover. In matching pajamas, the girls recreated choreography from a “Dream Academy” mission. (Missions were essentially live music videos in which the trainees’ singing and dancing skills were tested.) Five of the trainees had participated in a rump-shaking cover of “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls.The twins had become invested in who would win the competition. So had fans around the world, some of whom paid for billboards in an effort to drum up votes for their favorites, like Sophia (20, Filipina) and Manon (21, Swiss-Ghanaian).Still, during the 12 weeks that the competition unfolded on YouTube, “Dream Academy” did not exactly become an international phenomenon. Just three of the trainees’ 15 missions cracked more than one million views — somewhat underwhelming by K-pop viewership standards.Next year, around the time the six winners will release music under their new name, Katseye, the project has another chance to break through. In summer 2024, Netflix will release a documentary series about the competition by Nadia Hallgren, who directed the Michelle Obama documentary “Becoming.” This may be the ideal format for capturing the drama, major and minor, of the process.When the 20 contestants were introduced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for a group photo in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms.HYBE x Geffen RecordsThe six winning members of Katseye come from the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and Switzerland: Daniela, Yoonchae, Lara, Sophia, Manon and Megan.Kanya IwanaWithin just an hour on set, I watched a trainee in a silver paillette minidress with tendinitis in her knees fight back tears, take after take, while filming a video for an original song called “Dirty Water.” I watched another in a tube top and reflective wide-leg pants be told to exert better control over her hair flipping.I also watched the adults in the room engage in a delicate dance of evaluating, correcting and handling these young women, while trying to be sensitive to the fact that they were young women. (The youngest was 15.)“Tell the girls it’s us, it’s not them,” the director of one music video instructed an assistant during a technical delay.In hiring Mr. Leon for the project, Ms. An hoped his experience raising two girls would help in this regard. His first self-appointed task was interviewing each contestant individually before making any decisions on their new looks.“I wanted to look in their eyes,” Mr. Leon said. “I wanted to ask them the hard questions about their upbringing.”He told the trainees who came in wearing heavy makeup to take it off. “I want you to look gorgeous and beautiful, and I want you to be yourself,” Mr. Leon recalled saying.“I think it’s hard for people to see themselves,” Mr. Leon continued. “You need somebody to tell you that you look amazing without much.”To assist in the makeovers, he brought in stylists who worked on the “The Idol” — an HBO show about the relationship between a pop star and a cult leader. He brought in the hairstylist to Bella Hadid.To the 14 trainees who didn’t make the final group, he seemed to want to send a message: “I did the best thing I could for you. And you have to trust me.” More

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      in Movies

      Winona Ryder Fans Celebrate New Photo Book of the ‘Eternal Cool Girl’

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      Fans of Winona Ryder lined up outside Dover Street Market in Manhattan on a recent chilly evening to attend a launch party for “Winona,” a book of Polaroids and cellphone shots of the Gen X cultural idol.“She’s so famously private that any peek into her interior life is delicious,” Daniela Tijerina, a writer and editorial assistant for Vanity Fair, said. “I’ve molded so much about my own style after a woman I know so little about, and that makes her as cool as a person can possibly be.”The shots in the book were taken by Robert Rich, who started photographing Ms. Ryder soon after becoming friends with her more than 20 years ago. His images capture her in unguarded moments: eating pizza during a sleepover at his Hell’s Kitchen apartment; and smoking a cigarette in a bathroom, while the model Daria Werbowy quoted lines from “Reality Bites” to her.Robert Rich, whose candid shots fill “Winona.”Ye Fan for The New York TimesPortraits of the Gen X star from the book “Winona.”Robert RichAt the party, Mr. Rich, 57, signed copies of his book, as guests mobbed a merch table selling T-shirts, caps and tote bags, all of which read: “Winona.”“What we love about Winona is that you know nothing about her,” Mr. Rich said. “We love that she’s a mysterious woman. I used to never recognize her when I’d meet her. She’d always be wearing a visor or a pageboy cap. I’d walk through the city with her, and no one even knew who I was with.”He befriended Ms. Ryder when he was a manager of the Marc Jacobs store on Mercer Street in SoHo in 1999. The shop was a hangout for Selma Blair, Sofia Coppola, Parker Posey and Kate Moss, and Mr. Rich often took Polaroids of celebrity clients in his basement office.He got to know Ms. Ryder during fittings at the store and later helped dress her in Marc Jacobs pieces for parties, premieres and magazine photo shoots. After Ms. Ryder’s shoplifting trial in 2002, he became a confidante during a period when she retreated from public view.Joe Jonas, left, looks through “Winona.”Ye Fan for The New York TimesA shot from the new book.Robert RichA year ago, Mr. Rich found himself thinking about all the Polaroids he had amassed in several shoeboxes in his closet, and he texted Ms. Ryder about the idea of collecting them in a book. After she said yes, the London-based book dealer and publisher, Idea, took on the project. Marc Jacobs wrote the foreword.As the party guests sipped champagne and flipped through the book, Mr. Jacobs made an appearance.“She was our young Garbo,” he said. “A Winona sighting was always a big deal back then. She came to one of my shows at the time, and I still remember she was a little like a deer in the headlights. She’s not snobbish. She’s not the red carpet girl. And that has always added to her cachet and cool.”Francesca Sorrenti, who designed and edited the book, reflected on Ms. Ryder’s enduring appeal.“To understand Winona, you have to understand the youth movement of the 1990s,” she said. “There are only a few personalities quite like hers out there at any given time, and in her era, it was Kate Moss and Winona. You’d just see them and you’d want to know, Who is that?”Another of Mr. Rich’s shots from “Winona.”Robert RichAt the party, Marc Jacobs likened Ms. Ryder to the reclusive Greta Garbo.Robert RichMs. Sorrenti said that Ms. Ryder’s shyness added to her mystique.Robert Rich“I’ve hung out with Winona,” Ms. Sorrenti added. “And yes, she’s shy, and that shyness also projected itself into what her fans consider her mystique.”Hanging out by a rack of Comme des Garçons jackets was Inna Blavatnik, a creative director. “I’m of the Generation X era that Winona represented,” she said. “It was all about having a moody cool and not giving a you-know-what, and she became my role model as a teenager.”As the night progressed, the fashion designer Zac Posen and the musician Joe Jonas stopped by — and a question loomed: Would Ms. Ryder show?“I texted her about the party,” Mr. Rich said, “but I haven’t heard anything back yet.”The filmmaker Zoe Cassavetes offered: “I’ve known Winona for a long time, and when you get to know her, she’s extremely present and generous, but she’s also good at disappearing into the ether.” She concluded: “If she were coming, she wouldn’t tell anyone she was.”The filmmaker Zoe Cassavetes said Ms. Ryder was “good at disappearing into the ether.”Robert RichGuests at the “Winona” party.Ye Fan for The New York TimesMs. Ryder ultimately never materialized, but Jayna Maleri, a fashion editorial director, said she preferred it that way. “I almost never want to see Winona Ryder in person,” she said. “Not because I think she’d disappoint me, but because she occupies a place in my brain so rooted in my nostalgia that it would be jarring.”“She’s an icon of my youth, the eternal cool girl who embodied the authenticity of the ’90s,” she continued. “And I want to hold onto my illusions of her.”A Robert Rich collage.Robert Rich More

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      in Television

      A Hallmark Christmas Movie Costume Designer Shares His Secrets

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      Keith Nielsen, who oversaw costumes for four Hallmark Christmas movies out this year, shares his approach to dressing festively. (It does not involve ugly sweaters.)Several years ago, Keith Nielsen was feeling less than cheerful when a friend told him about an internship opportunity with the costume department of the TV series “Mozart in the Jungle.”After graduating from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla., in 2015, he had hoped to find a job that merged his interests in fashion design and entertainment. When he couldn’t, he started working in retail. He said he had begun to feel depressed about his career by the time his friend mentioned the internship.His only experience in costuming had been on student films, but Mr. Nielsen, who said his grandmother had taught him to sew, got the internship. “On the ‘Mozart’ set, I listened and learned,” he said.Mr. Nielsen, now 30, worked on the show through its final season, rising from an intern to a costume coordinator. Afterward, he started to get more costuming jobs, including for productions at the Westchester Broadway Theater, now closed, and for the TV movie “My Adventures With Santa,” which was released in 2019.The movie tapped into Mr. Nielsen’s longtime fondness for Christmas, he said, and since then, he has been hired as the costume designer for about a dozen TV Christmas movies.This year, he oversaw costumes for four films: “Mystic Christmas,” a romance set in Mystic, Conn.; “Where Are You Christmas?,” a largely black-and-white movie that imagines a world without the holiday; “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” which was filmed at a castle in Scotland; and “A Biltmore Christmas,” which was filmed at Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C. All were for the Hallmark Channel.In “A Biltmore Christmas,” the actress Bethany Joy Lenz, left, wears a reworked Carolina Herrera gown. Hallmark MediaWorking with the theater helped prepare him to take on films, he said, because he learned how to better manage fittings and deadlines while becoming more familiar with outfits from different historical periods.“Keith has a deep understanding of fashion, culture and history, and an uncanny taste and style, especially for period pieces,” said Dustin Rikert, the director of “A Merry Scottish Christmas.” Mr. Rikert also worked with Mr. Nielsen on “Next Stop, Christmas,” which was broadcast in 2021. Costumes Mr. Nielsen created for that movie included the outfits worn by a time-traveling train conductor played by Christopher Lloyd.The director John Putch, who worked with Mr. Nielsen on “A Biltmore Christmas” and on “A Holiday Spectacular,” a 2022 movie featuring the Radio City Rockettes, noted his love of details. “Keith is into the shoelaces and socks people don’t see,” Mr. Putch said.Mr. Nielsen, who lives in Manchester, Conn., said many of his costume ideas originate from what he jokingly described as “my 12-year-old gay-boy mind.” (He declined to provide specific wardrobe budgets for films he has worked on as a costume designer.) In the edited interview below, he discussed the aesthetic influences that have inspired his work and the ways he has conjured the holiday spirit through clothes.Christopher Lloyd, left, and Keith Nielsen on the set of “Next Stop, Christmas.”via Keith NielsenHow do you source costumes?I read a script about four times and let my imagination run. Many holiday films are made in three weeks or fewer, so I often only have a couple of days to get fittings done.When I was costuming for theater, I started seeing old Broadway shows and going to warehouses that I still use. The vendor Right to the Moon Alice is where I get vintage items. I also get them from Ann Roth, an Oscar-winning costume designer, who has amazing pieces at her warehouse in Pennsylvania.Hallmark likes color and saturation. To get that freshness on camera, sometimes I recreate a garment so it doesn’t look like it has been sitting in a closet for 70 years.Do you ever buy clothes off the rack?I shop at outlets and online. I like J. Crew, Banana Republic and, for suits and coats, Brooks Brothers. Kate Spade has bags in bright reds and greens. I don’t like ugly Christmas sweaters.One costume in “A Biltmore Christmas” started as a Carolina Herrera gown that was bought from the RealReal. We had several fittings to re-drape the skirt, add a double-tulle layer and create a gathered bust that draped around the back. When I turn an existing garment into something else, I call it Frankenstein-ing.What has inspired your approach to costuming?I am a sap and love nostalgia and old Hollywood. Bill Travilla’s costumes for Marilyn Monroe are some of my favorites, especially those for “How to Marry a Millionaire.” I also like Arianne Phillips, who has designed costumes for film and for Madonna. I admire her breadth of work. I never want to get pigeonholed.How do locations like Biltmore House influence your process?I walked through the mansion to get ideas from the space. I remember looking at the colors of the wood paneling and of the limestone. Window shades are kept at a certain level and rooms are kept dimly lit to protect the things inside from light. It’s very romantic and cozy, and I wanted wardrobes that communicated warmth and coziness using colors besides red and green.To create a gown and a kilt worn by the stars of “A Merry Scottish Christmas,” I pulled together a bunch of tartans that went with the tapestries, candles and dark wood at the castle. We settled on MacDonald of Glencoe, a tartan with holiday-like jewel tones. The pattern was digitally printed on the fabric used to make the gown, and the kilt was made with a traditional wool tartan.What are some challenges with costuming holiday films?It’s the little things. All clothing sizes have changed: Vintage shoes are narrower than shoes are today, jackets fit differently, and girdles are gone. It’s hard to find people to do embroidery and beading.But I like classic and timeless looks because Christmas movies are watched over and over. More

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      in Music

      Future Designs the First Lanvin Lab Collection

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      The LatestOn Monday, the French fashion house Lanvin will release its inaugural Lanvin Lab collection with Future, the rapper and producer. Earlier this year, Future was brought on, temporarily, to help design the collection for Lanvin Lab, the brand’s new design arm that will focus on rotating collaborations. More pieces from the unisex ready-to-wear collection, all designed by Future, will debut next year.Denim overalls feature typography from an old Lanvin perfume campaign. Joshua WoodsWhy It Matters: Fashion is strengthening ties with the entertainment industry.Lanvin, which was founded in 1889, has struggled to define its identity since Alber Elbaz was fired in 2015, and has cycled through a number of designers and owners. It is yet to announce a new creative director after Bruno Sialelli, who held the role since 2019, left earlier this year.The collaboration arrives at a moment when the love affair between music and fashion continues to flourish, most notably with Pharrell Williams’s recent appointment as Louis Vuitton men’s creative director. The entertainment industry also bolstered its ties to fashion after François-Henri Pinault, the billionaire and chief executive of the luxury goods company Kering, bought a major stake this year in one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency, through his family office.Future, who is known for his distinctive style and appreciation for luxury clothes, said in an interview that the line “is a perfect fit to introduce me to the fashion world on the next level.” The collaboration was “organic,” he said, because he loved the brand and had always wanted to design.“He was already in the universe of Lanvin as a customer,” said Siddhartha Shukla, Lanvin’s deputy general manager, adding that “it gave rise to a discussion around possibly doing something together.”The first pieces from the upcoming Lanvin Lab collection with Future.Joshua WoodsWhat It Looks Like: The collection is Lanvin with a touch of Future.The first drop includes pieces such as denim overalls, a studded leather jacket and a black bag with gold, feline-shaped hardware.“The vision from the beginning was to make sure we take the brand and make it about us,” Future said, “instead of just making it about me.”That approach can be seen in the collection’s light denim overalls and matching bucket hat, with an ear and neck flap, printed with typography from an old Lanvin perfume campaign . Eagle symbols, featured on a red and yellow blanket and on a pair of sunglasses, symbolized Future’s record label, Freebandz, he said.“I’m always thinking about how to incorporate the street style into fashion,” Future said, adding, “just from the neighborhood, with how people dress, just to bring that into the fashion world, man, that’s special.” (He said he was most excited about the tracksuits.)Mr. Shukla said he believed that Future had the capacity to animate the brand, “in a way that’s very, very personal and that will speak to the millions and millions of people around the world who are attracted to his universe, are attracted to his music, are attracted to his vibe.” More

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      Prince Wardrobe Items Go Up for Auction

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      The market for Prince’s wardrobe, guitars and other items has been robust since his death in 2016. Now more than 200 pieces are available for bids.Twenty years ago, Bertrand Brillois, a Parisian businessman, began contacting seamstresses, costume designers, fabric dyers, production assistants and others who had worked for Prince. He told them that he thought Prince was not only a musical genius but also a fashion icon, and he wanted to buy clothing, jewelry and other accessories designed or worn by him.The many items acquired by Mr. Brillois over the years included an ankle-length white cashmere coat that Prince had custom-made by a tailor in Nice, France, when he was filming the 1986 movie “Under the Cherry Moon.” The coat, along with more than 200 other items, is on sale as part of the Fashion of Prince, an online auction that is accepting bids through Nov. 16.The sale, held by RR Auction, also features one of Prince’s signature wardrobe items: a white, high-necked, silk shirt with elaborate ruffles, puffy sleeves and faux pearl buttons. Prince wore it, according to the auction company, when he performed a blistering rendition of “Purple Rain” during the American Music Awards ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Jan. 28, 1985.The shirt worn by Prince during the American Music Awards in 1985 is one of more than 200 items up for auction.American Broadcasting Companies, via Getty ImagesThe collection goes beyond outfits worn by the artist who was sometimes known as His Purpleness, including backstage Polaroid shots, notes handwritten by Prince and master tapes of the albums “Lovesexy,” “Batman” and “Diamonds and Pearls.”There are also concept sketches and a binder containing fabric swatches in various shades of purple that offers clues on how Prince and his wardrobe team created his singular style and image.“You can see the creative process by which Prince and these designers were making these garments,” said Bobby Livingston, an executive vice president at RR Auction.Mr. Livingston mentioned as an example the yellow lace suit with an exposing backside that Prince (in)famously wore to the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. “The butt suit — there’s fabric from that garment,” Mr. Livingston said. (The cheek-baring ensemble was later revealed to have panels that covered Prince’s bottom. The ensemble itself is not part of the sale.)A fan at the Chelsea Hotel on Tuesday, where the items on display included a purple guitar and an outfit worn by Prince.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesAt a preview party on Tuesday night at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, the displays and the accompanying catalog provided intimate glimpses of the auction’s subject. Prince’s hat size was 7⅛. The high heels of his custom boots — there are four pairs up for auction — were reinforced with hidden metal brackets, to prevent them from breaking during his exuberant stage shows.Tinu Naija, an editor of Shoeholics magazine, had come with the celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch. “Prince was one of the original influencers,” she said. “There’s got to be some shoes to check out, some jewels to gawk at.”Mr. Bloch eyed Prince’s gold cuff links that spelled “Sexy” and said he hoped Santa Claus would bring them for Christmas. “He was all about accessories,” Mr. Bloch said.Santa may need deep pockets. The auction market for Prince has boomed since he died in April 2016.A few months after his death, the Hollywood auctioneer Profiles in History sold a ruffled shirt and a blazer worn by Prince in the film “Purple Rain” for $96,000 apiece, well above the asking price of $6,000 to $8,000. In 2017, Julien’s Auctions sold one of Prince’s custom-made “Cloud” guitars for $700,000, far surpassing the $60,000 to $80,000 estimate.More Prince memorabilia on display at the gathering of collectors and fans.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesIn 2020, RR Auction sold a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer played by Prince for nearly $74,000 — three times the expected price. In June, the auction house sold the demo tape that won Prince his first recording contract, for more than $67,000.The singer’s estate, which was initially left in disarray after Prince died without a will, is not affiliated with RR Auction or the current sale. Mr. Livingston said Prince was known to give things to employees and friends, adding that he held garage sales at Paisley Park, his production studio and headquarters in Chanhassen, Minn.Mr. Brillois, the French collector, flew in from Paris to attend the Chelsea Hotel party and bid adieu to the collection he had spent years assembling. He never had any contact with Prince himself and said that former employees of Prince thought he was crazy for wanting to buy stuff they had stored in closets or considered throwing away. But as a Prince fan, he saw the value — not as a speculator but as a preservationist.“For me, I was thinking it has to be preserved,” Mr. Brillois said, adding that he consulted experts at the Louvre Museum and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs about how to set up a climate-controlled environment to store the vintage garments, jewels and paperwork.Mr. Brillois said that at one point he had hoped to one day open a museum to Prince’s fashion. But after Paisley Park was turned into a museum by the singer’s estate, he felt that Prince’s legacy was in safe hands and decided to part with his collection, which, though impressive, is far smaller than what is displayed in Minnesota.Mingling with guests at the party, telling stories behind this or that item, Mr. Brillois was in a happy mood. “My work is done,” he said.Two Prince outfits on display at the Chelsea Hotel.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York Times More

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      Kanye West and Adidas: How Misconduct Broke a Lucrative Partnership

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      A year ago, after producing hundreds of shoe styles and billions of dollars together, Adidas broke with Kanye West as he made antisemitic and other offensive public comments. But Adidas had been tolerating his misconduct behind the scenes for nearly a decade. B35309 2015 AQ4832 AQ2659 AQ4830 AQ4831 AQ4829 AQ4828 AQ4836 AQ2660 BB1839 AQ2661 BB5350 […] More

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      Inside Kanye West’s Fraught Relationship With Adidas: 7 Takeaways

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      The runaway success of the Yeezy collaboration between Kanye West and Adidas came at a price as the company tolerated misconduct by him for nearly a decade.When Adidas cut ties with Kanye West a year ago, ending their wildly lucrative shoe deal, the breakup appeared to be the culmination of weeks of his inflammatory remarks about Jews and Black Lives Matter. But a New York Times examination found that behind the scenes, the partnership was fraught from the start.Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, subjected employees to antisemitic and crude sexual comments and routine verbal abuse. As Adidas executives doubled down on a partnership that boosted company profits and made Mr. West a billionaire, they scrambled for ways to cope with the star’s demands and provocations.Interviews with current and former employees of Adidas and of Mr. West, along with hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records, including contracts, text messages and financial documents, provide the fullest accounting yet of the relationship. Here are seven takeaways.For almost 10 years, Adidas looked past Mr. West’s misconduct as profits soared.Mr. West’s first contract with Adidas, in 2013, had the most generous terms it had ever offered to a non-athlete. In the next one, three years later, Mr. West got more money, and Adidas got a morals clause — allowing it to end the partnership if he did anything that led to “disrepute, contempt, scandal,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.As the partnership earned billions of dollars, Mr. West’s behavior grew increasingly erratic. But it is not clear whether the brand ever considered invoking the morals clause before terminating the deal last year.Both Adidas and Mr. West declined interview requests and did not comment on The Times’s findings.Mr. West showed a troubling fixation on Jews and Hitler in the partnership.Shortly after signing with Adidas, he met with designers at company headquarters in Germany to discuss ideas. He was so offended by their sketches, he drew a swastika on one, shocking employees.He later told a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a portrait of Hitler every day. He informed a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own employees who accused him of repeatedly praising Hitler.Mr. West told Adidas colleagues that he admired Hitler’s command of propaganda. He also expressed a belief that Jews had special powers allowing them to amass money and influence.He brought pornography and crude comments into the workplace.Weeks before the swastika incident in 2013, Mr. West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment. He continued showing pornography to Adidas employees at work. Last year, he ambushed Adidas executives in Los Angeles with a pornographic film.Staff members also complained to top executives that he had made angry, sexually offensive comments to them.Big demands and mood swings weighed on the relationship.Mr. West contended repeatedly that Adidas was exploiting him. He sought more money and power, even suggesting that he should become chief executive.His complaints were often delivered amid severe mood swings, creating whiplash for employees. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury. In 2019, he abruptly moved his Yeezy operation to remote Cody, Wyo., ordering the Adidas team to relocate. He used “terms like ‘believer’ and ‘pilgrimage’” to describe those who would follow him there, an Adidas executive told colleagues in a group text chain. In a meeting with Adidas’s leaders that year to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room.Adidas adapted to Mr. West’s behavior: ‘We are in a code red.’Managers and top executives started the group text chain, the “Yzy hotline,” to address issues involving Mr. West.The Adidas team working on Yeezys adopted a strategy they likened to firefighting, rotating members on and off the front lines of dealing with the artist. “We are in a code red,” the team’s general manager texted colleagues in 2019. “The first line is completely exhausted and don’t feel supported.”The company assigned a human resources official to the unit and gave new hires a subscription to a meditation app. The staff regularly gathered for something akin to group therapy.Mr. West on tour in 2016, the year he and Adidas renegotiated their deal.A J Mast for The New York TimesAs the brand grew more reliant on Yeezys, it sweetened the deal for Mr. West.Under the 2016 contract, he received a 15 percent royalty on net sales, with $15 million upfront along with millions of dollars in company stock each year.The “biggest issue,” an Adidas document from contract negotiations noted, was “putting CASH in Kanye’s pocket to show him we VALUE him.” The partnership would propel him to Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people.And in 2019, Adidas agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that Mr. West could spend with little oversight.He still stands to make money from the Adidas deal.After the relationship ruptured a year ago and Yeezy sales came to a halt, both Adidas and Mr. West were hit hard. The company projected its first annual loss in decades. Mr. West’s net worth plummeted.But they had at least one more chance to keep making money together. In May, the company began releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys. A cut of the proceeds would go to charity. But most of the revenue would go to Adidas, and Mr. West was entitled to royalties. More