--Creating the world for the stage adaptation of the 1990 movie Pretty
Woman was a juicy task for set designer David Rockwell and costume designer
Gregg Barnes. They had to find a way to honor the film's Los Angeles locations,
wink at the famous get-ups, and also make their designs theatrical and original.
Here's more about the look of Pretty Woman the Musical from the frequent
collaborators.
--I think the main challenge in designing Pretty Woman has been to
meet people's expectations so that they're not disappointed in this film
that they've come to love, but yet to reinvent it to make it feel new.
--In the
case of Pretty Woman, you're creating your own world. You're creating a
theatrical world, so the movie has not much help to us as designers because I
think quoting from a movie is unsatisfying, and doesn't really get at
what the the key idea is.
--We get to meet people from all different walks of life,
we get to meet the people that inhabit the seedier side of Hollywood Boulevard.
We go to Rodeo Drive where we give an homage to Versace and Christian Lacroix
and Chanel. There's a lot of different kinds of life to the story, which I find
thrilling.
--Rockwell and Barnes reveal what inspired their own creative spin on
the world of Pretty Woman besides the movie. --I did spend a lot of time in LA
and Beverly Wilshire and sort of walk those locations. The visual look at the
late 80s in LA is not that different from what it looks like now other than
some of the retail locations have a kind of 80s extended curved line. The
challenge was: How do you put fragments on stage that would suggest the idea the
Beverly Wilshire? And we have one laser-cut layered gate, which we use is
the primary setting of the Beverly Wilshire with pairs of palm trees that
can move throughout the show so they almost can create an iris, so you can
close in these palm trees around the Beverly Wilshire sign, and then iris open.
--Recently my go-to process is to go to Pinterest, and I just make a Pretty Woman
file. Anybody in the world could access it if you look me up on Pinterest.
And I just put anything in there that seems like it looks like Pretty Woman to
me. So I have Joan Collins in their from Dynasty, but I also have him Amal
Clooney. Garments that are from the 1950s that are very classic that I thought
could translate into what we think a really well-dressed elegantly turned out
women would wear. So, I assemble all of these images that are really just
intuitive and then I start to go through them and just conjure up our version of
the look. The look that be most closely, I don't want to say copy, but that we
really really do bow to is Vivian's Street look. And it has the classic ring
it's like a little t-shirt. Everybody knows it. We put our little touch to it.
it has the mesh bits, and I think the one in the film scoops up in the back. I
think there's a second ring, and ours is just backless. But but really it's pretty
much the film. The thing that's amazing about the character of Vivienne is that
she really, like all good characters, goes on a real journey. When we first meet her
she's dressing for a purpose. It's to seduce. And as the story unfolds, initially
somebody else picks the dress that she wears. Then we see her pick her own dress.
the final garment that Vivian wears is a pantsuit, and it has a very very classic
silk charmeuse halter top, but it also looks a little rock and roll. So, it has
its elegant but it feels current and also timeless. --The duo has previously
collaborated on screen to stage hits like Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde, Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels and more.
--David Rockwell is a person that I've also, like
with Jerry Mitchell, we've collaborated many times. And it's a very important
collaboration, and it has to do with color, and but but also just with the
mood, the shape, the movement, how much scenery there is. --An example of where we
really collaborated is when there's a sort of color idea that's happening in
the physical world, like the Opera. You have to take into account that costumes,
the actor, and what they're doing in some ways need to be supported and offset by
the physical world. We knew she was going to be wearing a stunning red dress
in the Opera, so the curtain that comes in front of it is actually a translucent
copper curtain, and you see her against that, so we clearly had to stay away from
the red she was wearing, but wanted to create other color schemes like a jewel
that would offset that.
--The opera dress is legendary. When I looked at the dress,
which is a magnificent dress, the first thing that I really noticed was that
it's very very structured. It's a gown and it's very of the period. The skirt is
quite sculpted. It has those legendary, if I may,
swags off the shoulder. We realized a lot of times the dresses now currently that
are on the red carpet are very romantic and flowing. It's not at all really the
Julia dress. So, what we did was we took inspiration from this part of the dress
and then mix mastered it with a lot of other dresses to come up with our
version of it. --Though Pretty Woman is a
movie audiences adore, Rockwell and
Barnes share why this project works so well on stage.
--Sometimes a project
comes along where, not that I've ever given birth, but you feel like some
births probably are easier than others. This project, where the baby just came
out all shiny and beautiful, every moment of it was joyful. --What excites me about
this show is it takes 1,200 people and puts them in the same space and creates
a kind of community around this love story, and I think that is something
theatre does better than any other art form.
--See Pretty Woman The Musical at the
Nederlander Theatre.