‘Wicked’ Oscar Winner Paul Tazewell on His Historic Win: ‘I’ve Been Designing Costumes for Over 35 Years and There Was Never a Black Male’
'Wicked' costume designer Paul Tazewell opened up about the significance of his historic Oscar, as the first Black winner in the category.
Paul Tazewell made history by becoming the first Black man to win the Oscar for costume design for his work on “Wicked.”
Speaking backstage after his win, Tazewell spoke about the significance of his historic win. He said, “This has been the goal of my career. I’ve been designing costumes for over thirty-five years, and the whole way through, there was never a Black male that I saw.” He added, “To realize that that’s actually me, it becomes no place like home.”
Variety asked Tazewell — who now has an Oscar, an Emmy award and Tony, and needs only a Grammy award to achieve EGOT status — what he would say to his younger self. His message was concise: “Hold on tight. It will all be fine.”
Asked about the costume designers who’ve inspired him along that journey, Tazewell named Iris Van Herpen, Ann Roth and Ruth E. Carter, the last of whom he saluted for “paving the way for designers of color.”
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Ahead of the Oscars, Tazewell spoke about his work on “Wicked,” explaining he resonated with Elphaba’s story on many levels because, “We’re talking about a young woman who was marginalized because of the color of her skin.”
In designing her costumes, Tazewell looked at how the character found solace in nature and her relationship to animals. When Elphaba arrives at Shiz University, Tazewell points out that her silhouette is very much defined by 19th century Victoriana. When she gets to the Emerald City, her dress is embroidered with fiddlehead ferns and he used hand felting to pull the texture out. Later, Tazewell looked to the underside of mushrooms and, inspired by that “pleating,” he re-created the texture on her classic witch costume toward the end of the film, when she’s evolved into her most powerful self. Pleating, gathering, crinkling and draping not only gave the black material texture but also reflected the growth of her magical power.
In terms of color, when audiences are first introduced to Elphaba, she’s dressed in black. Not only does it set her apart in this colorful world, but Tazewell also explains it’s a reflection of her mourning for her mother, who died in childbirth. “It’s a tricky color to represent on film because much of the detail gets absorbed into the black, so it was important for me to bring a richness to the choices,” he explained.
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