"Elle" Costume Designer Sara Byblow on Storytelling Through Shades of Pink and the Legacy of Elle Woods's Style

0:10Kat Collings:Welcome to the Who Want Wear podcast. I'm editor-in-chief Kat Collings and today I'm sitting down with Sara Byblow, the costume designer behind the new Legally Blonde prequel series Elle. Elle takes place in 1995 and we follow a 16-year-old Elle Woods as she moves from Bel Air to Seattle. Today, Sarah shares how she sourced upwards of 70 looks for young Elle Woods, the way she used different pinks for different emotions, and how she founded a plaid to dress an entire cast of Seattle high schoolers. It's all coming up on Who What Wear.

0:50Kat Collings:Hi, Sarah. How are you? Welcome to the pod. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So to start, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got into costume design? When did you realize you wanted to work in fashion and costume design specifically? Oh my gosh. I mean, I've always kind of been in clothing, you know, when I was really young, like 13, I was as tall as I am now, which isn't very tall. I'm only like five, three and a half maybe, but I was scouted to model. So I did that for like a very short time. And then they realized that I was not growing at all. But I just loved being on set and like everything to do with that.

1:30So, you know, I went to school for fashion and I came out of it and, you know, started working in retail at a clothing store for a little while. I had a clothing line and it was actually while I was working one day, a friend of mine came in who worked in like the production side of things. And she was buying like multiples of everything. Like she was coming in and buying like three of the same shirt. And I was like, what are you doing? She had said like, I don't know, a designer friend of mine like needed help. I don't know what I'm doing. And I just said like, well, give her my number. Like I'm always down to come and help.

2:12You know, I had someone who was kind of running the store at the time. That's how it started. And then I got a call maybe a week later to come help out on a show. yeah, it kind of snowballed from there.

2:20Kat Collings:Yeah. Wow. Sounds like a quite a natural progression. So I'm curious how you got connected to the Elle project. It feels a little different from some of the costume work you've done previously. Definitely. I mean, I was so lucky. You know, I've worked with Hello Sunshine before, which is Reese Witherspoon's production company. Lauren Newstrader, who I love, is an executive producer. And she had reached out to me and basically just said, what are you doing next year? And she was the one that brought me onto the show. I was so lucky that I had the opportunity to not only be called for it, but to work with Lauren throughout.

2:56Immediately, I was blown away, so, so, so excited. The movies are so important. I fell in love with them 25 years ago and have seen them a million times since. So there is an expectation behind it where I really just wanted to try to live up to that legacy. And that's a huge undertaking. So it was a mix of both, like being so grateful and so honored and like so excited. But also, you know, there was definitely some nerves there on whether or not, you know, I could live up to the expectation.

3:30Kat Collings:Of course. I think Legally Blonde holds a special place in many people's hearts. So I imagine you had to do an enormous amount of research on the original Elle character and her wardrobe in the first movie, and then adapting 20-something version of Elle to a 16-year-old version living in the 90s. So what did that looked like for you? I mean, it was great. It was amazing. You know, I think for us, it was a matter of like, you're right, you know, no person is the same person that they are when they're 16 years old. Like the years that we're showing in the show are such formidable years, not only, you know, for young people in general, but like females, you know, for us, like, yes, it was amazing that we had this inspiration of like, this is who she's becoming, you know, It's so rare on a show that you have that final picture of them.

4:19Normally you go in and you read these characters and you're like, okay, well, I could take all these different paths. But with Elle, we had the picture. We knew who she becomes. So it was kind of fun in the sense that it was like, okay, well, let's find these puzzle pieces that paint that picture. So, you know, before I ever touched a piece of clothing or like grabbed a piece of fabric, the goal was to always try and like build out this world around her. So at 16 years old, I tried to really just get into the mindset of Elle Woods, like what she would have been inspired by. What posters would she have had up on her wall when she was 16?

5:00I did the biggest deep dive into like what was happening in pop culture at the time, like what music was popular, you know? I mean, supermodels were taking over the world then. Like everyone knew them by their first name. So it was kind of just, you know, looking at all these pieces and taking little bits of each of them to create this world for her. And from there, then I was able to really dive into like going and purchasing fabrics and starting to look for clothing and all that fun stuff. But, you know, I feel like we couldn't really do that without building this world for her first.

5:36Kat Collings:It's a similar process-ish maybe to acting where you're like really having to get into the mindset of the character and embody them a little bit to understand what the expression of their clothing looks like. In the first episode, Elle's wearing a Nirvana shirt, obviously, you know, a big music moment in the 90s and band that was so popular. So I definitely see those touches coming through. Yeah, so much research. And, you know, not only for Elle, but for everyone, like every single character that's there. You know, it was really important to do that research, you know, even with our grunge kids, too.

6:10You know, we were so lucky that we have both ends of the spectrum. We have the amazing pinks of Elle Woods, but then we also have, you know, the fun grunge of Seattle 1995. my assistant designers would laugh at me and my husband would laugh at me because every time I went to work on the show I would put my headphones on and I have an Elle playlist that I made that's all music that I think Elle would have listened to in 1995 and I would listen to this you know playlist while I was designing or like searching for things or researching or whatever because for me, it was like a brain switch, you know, like get into that time, get into that era.

6:49So Elle was

6:50Kat Collings:obviously going to wear a lot of pink. I'm curious, were there specific shades or were you just like within the palette of pink? It's so funny because I have obviously never worked with pink as much as I have on this show. I also didn't realize like how many pinks there are, you know, they're all over the spectrum. And so it was really fun because, you know, within those shades, we could really tell a million different stories starting out in her sweet 16 she's in hot hot pink you know this is where she's like her most confident self she's there she's surrounded by her family and her friends and like hot josh is there and like she is feeling herself and so we really wanted the audience to feel that you know seeing her for the first time in this like deep amazing hot pink color and then when she gets the news that they're going to seattle when she's saying goodbye to Madison, she's in this like really soft pink color and she has, you know, the like faux fur cuffs and like bruisers also in this like really soft pink that matches her.

7:53And, you know, that leads into her first day of school. Like she's wearing a very soft pink color in a satin. And that was supposed to kind of, you know, mirror the vulnerability that she's feeling. For me, it's a matter of like, how can we have the audience like feel what she's feeling without blatantly like saying it. So we really did try to tell the story of these emotions through the color choices and the textures that we used.

8:24Kat Collings:Aside from pink, were there any other like parameters for building out her wardrobe? Obviously very feminine, you know, shapes and items. What other things were top of mind for you? I mean, there wasn't necessarily parameters. I'm, you know, Elle Woods is realistically like a singularity, you know, she is so herself. And in a way, she's very like eclectic, you know, looking at the movies, like she wore things from all over the spectrum. I don't think that Elle was ever someone who looked at a designer and went, well, it's this designer, so I have to wear that. I think that she is drawn to anything that makes her like feel good.

9:02And so that was kind of the goal when we were like sourcing things was there's definitely archive designer pieces all throughout which are amazing but there's also just really cool vintage things that we found that you know we don't even know what the brand is for it but we were like this just feels so Elle Woods there's contemporary pieces in there there's obviously so many things that were designed and built specifically for her but you know I think it was more a matter of we were trying to like go on a treasure hunt and like collect things that felt true to her. And then, you know, we put the pieces together from there.

9:41So it was, it was really more about what can we find that would speak to a young Elle Woods versus like, I have to get this designer piece or I have to get this exact thing.

9:51Kat Collings:I'm curious in your treasure hunting, were there brands that you found, you know, really spoke to the character, made sense, whether they were vintage or new? I mean, there was definitely a mix. There was a lot that we found through our research. There's this amazing video that you can look up from 1993, the Vivian Westwood runway. Naomi Campbell is wearing this like enormous hot pink boa. And as she's walking, she trips and she falls. Literally the entire world like gasps. And she puts this huge smile on her face and she gets back up and she finishes the runway. And like, to me, when I saw that, I was like, this is so Elle-coded, you know?

10:35Just like the positive attitude and like picking yourself up when you're down and finishing what you've started. So there's a moment in the show where Elle is making this huge like life decision and she decides to finish what she started. And so in my mind, you know, Vivian Westwood, it had to be that for that moment. So, you know, we were able to find this incredible hot pink dress that was actually like a re-release dress, which is so Elle, but it had that like silhouette from the 90s. So, you know, there's a couple pieces in there for sure that we saw that we were just like, it has to be this.

11:14You know, at Cosmo, she's wearing this 1992 Yves Saint Laurent pink dress. And it's got like ruffles and it's got these like multicolored heart buttons all the way down the front. And as soon as I saw that piece again, I was like, Elle would have seen this and thought like, this is perfect for Cosmo. So, you know, there was definitely pieces like all along the way in our research that we were like, this needs to be in the show.

11:40Kat Collings:I also noticed a lot of tweed sets, collared polo tanks, which is so of the era, and like vest style tops. I'm curious how you landed on those as like the daily drivers of her wardrobe. I mean, so much of it too also comes from like the script itself. Like our writers are incredible. I love them so much. They did such a good job at like, you know, putting together this storyline for us. There is a comment that Elle makes at one point where she says like, you know, I love when people dress Tennessee, even if they don't play tennis. And, you know, for me, I was like, absolutely, that makes so much sense.

12:16So, you know, a lot of those silhouettes kind of started from that point of just doing our own kind of play on something that feels kind of Tennessee.

12:27Kat Collings:Do you know offhand how many looks you created for Elle for this first season? I counted at one point in time and I cannot remember for the life of me what the number was. I think it was like 77, something like that, that actually made it to camera. I mean, we fit thousands of looks on her truly. I think for each look, I probably had like 12 iterations that it could have been. There's some pieces that came about that we were like, it's this and only this. But, you know, I always like to build out basically a closet first. So when we're doing our fittings, we'll try on a million different outfits and we'll shoot it to see what it looks like on the body, how it shoots, how it feels.

13:11And then we'll kind of make our choices from there.

13:14Kat Collings:That seems monumental and colossal, the number of looks that you had on hand. There were large crowds of high school students in many of the scenes and all of their looks as well. So I'm curious if you can share a little bit about like how you go about sourcing, you know, costumes. Are you in like costumes warehouses? Are you looking at ordering stuff online, working with designers to create custom things? Can you give us a little insight into that process? It's everything you mentioned and everything in between. We truly did reach out to designers. Absolutely. We went to every vintage store we could get our hands on.

13:49I was shopping all through LA, all through Palm Springs, all through British Columbia. We have buyers who specialize in vintage shopping that would just go picking. We have buyers that specialize in contemporary. We have online buyers that specialize in archive designer pieces. So it really was everything in the kitchen sink. You know, we sourced from absolutely everywhere. It was such a cool era for Seattle. And like, it was the epitome of grunge music and street fashion. And so I did really want to stay true to that time. So, you know, like looking at like what bands were popular in Seattle grunge music and then, you know, sourcing specifically what albums would have been out in 1995 or prior and then finding those archive T-shirts from those shows.

14:43So there's like a moment where Kimberly comes to visit Liz at Bad Vibrations and she's wearing a Bam Bam t-shirt. Bam Bam was a super cool grunge band in the mid-90s. Their lead singer Tina Bell was known as the grandmother of grunge. So each piece was so carefully thought out and had so much consideration put into it. But, you know, it truly takes a village. There's truly a story for like almost everything that's on screen, you know, like our homage to the Breakfast Club episode. You know, Elle is wearing like this knit one shoulder top. And it was actually a vintage piece originally that we had found that all of us were like, this just feels so nostalgic.

15:29You know, like we had something like that in our closets in the mid 90s, but it wasn't the right color. So I immediately got on the phone with our knitter and our dyer and, you know, we remade a top that was going to say, you know, what we wanted it to say with the color tone. So with every single piece that made it to screen, there was just a lot of thought behind it or like a really cool story where, you know, we saw something and, you know, that's why we chose what we chose. Okay, so spoilers ahead.

16:02Kat Collings:The first time we see Elle in episode one is when she's entering her Sweet 16 party in LA before she moves to Seattle. There's obviously a lot riding on this first scene, right? It's first impression. The music is creating such a mood. Can you share how you landed on that pink dress in particular? So that pink dress is so special to me. I think it might actually be my favorite look for the whole season. Sophie Durakoff designed the original movies, and we actually came together when we were prepping the show to just chat about the character. You know, for me, it was so important to have an understanding of like why she and Reese, you know, chose what they chose for the movies.

16:47And so, you know, we sat down and just were able to like talk about the character together and we actually designed that dress together. It was before any of the costume team had started. So it was just her and I, we literally just like sketched and sketched and sketched and like showed each other pictures and sketched. And, you know, when we finally had like the formation of this dress, we were like, this is perfect. Like this has to be the one. But, you know, we did, I think like five or so iterations of like something she could wear on that day. We brought it to our producing team and our director and creators and every single person in the room immediately went like, that is the dress.

17:28And it was the same one that we were hoping for. So it couldn't have been anything but what it was. But it was just this like really special moment because, you know, like I said, it was such a big undertaking. And like, I was so nervous because the movie is so iconic that it meant so much to me to be able to have that like crossover time together. Reese is like passing the torch to Lexi and like really, you know, bringing Elwoods to a new generation. And in a way, I feel like Sophie was also passing the torch to me to take it and run. It was really important to me that I did justice to how incredible this like, you know, show that has stood the test of time.

18:11It's 25 years later, and we're still talking about it, and we're talking about it for a reason. So having that support really was so special.

18:19Kat Collings:We also have to talk about the iconic pink heart shoes that we see in the opening of Legally Blonde. Did you find those exact shoes? Did you have them remade? Tell me about those. So those were so hard to find. We hunted all over the freaking universe. We found the pair that we did. You know, they aren't an exact replica, but they were very, very close and we were like this just feels so l we were only able to find one pair and so we did actually send that one pair out to one of our like favorite shoemakers and they made multiples for us we were very aware that like she's a different person when she's 16 years old so you know i didn't want to look at the movies and like remake the exact same things we wanted to like take inspiration from it, but not necessarily like replicated.

19:13But there are some pieces that like we couldn't not bring in. So the shoes, absolutely, we had to, you know, there's another moment where in the movies, she's wearing this like red Bottega bag. And instead of just being like, oh, well, she wore it in the movie, let's just give it to her in the show. We were like, what is the coolest origin story we could come up with? And so we gave it to her mom. So her mom actually wears it in the pilot that we were like, oh, this could be a cute moment where like, for super fans, you know, they'd be like, oh my gosh, Eva must have passed that down to her as like an heirloom, which is so cute.

19:45The little tidbits and like Easter eggs that we put in, we didn't want it to be super obvious. You know, I think the shoes are like the most highlighted thing that was brought back in. But aside from that, like if, you know, we have super fans who are watching carefully, they'll they'll pick out like a few other things that are hidden in there.

20:05Kat Collings:What about Bruiser's wardrobe? What's it like making a costume for a small dog? Oh my gosh, I love him so much. He comes in for fittings like actors do. Like literally, we had like the cutest little size chart made for him. He came in, got full body measurements done. In the sewing room, we obviously have mannequins for, you know, every actor. And we needed to build basically a mannequin for Bruiser. So our sewing team was amazing. We got like a little stuffed animal dog. And they had to take him apart and like stuff him and unstuff him. We did custom builds for almost everything he wears. And he would come in for fittings and be so sweet.

20:47He would stand against our gray backdrop and like pose for photos, you know, and we would pin his little clothes and, you know, let him take little breaks to have zoomies throughout the fitting room and then come back in. But he's like such a, he's so cute. And then, you know, I just laugh, like our sewing team loves it. Like he had more patterns than anyone else in the first season, which is so crazy. I'm so tickled by all of these details. And you know what? It's so nice because on set, you know, he has his own little green room tent. So when he's done working or like done a scene, he'll go into his green room and that's where all his toys are.

21:27and, you know, he just goes, that's his playtime. So like when he goes into his tent, no one's allowed to bug him. He just plays and has his zoomies. He has naps and whatever. And then, yeah, it's so funny because as soon as he comes out, he'll put his costume on and it's like he knows it's time to work when his costume's on.

21:45Kat Collings:Yeah, Doreen, I wonder if he got to take anything home. I assume he has a great wardrobe. Well, every costume that we make for him, we want him to feel super comfortable in it. so I'll always make two of each costume I'll do it in like a different fabric but I make a separate costume for him to take home to practice in so he has his entire wardrobe but in different colors at home so I guess he's a bit like Reese in the sense that he gets to keep you know he's got a piece of every single one of his wardrobe at home I'd love to hear a bit about the character of Shannon, because she's the only other girl at L School who loves fashion.

22:24Kat Collings:I'm curious how you differentiated her to sort of stand out from the rest of her classmates in this like sea of plaid. We did quite a few fittings for her to really land on like her style. At the time, it was all about like anti-establishment, anti-fashion, and like their anti-fashion became fashion. You know, we wanted her to have a little more of like a New York Street style to her. So doing, you know, the research for the kids, it was very much like grunge based. For Shannon, it was a lot more of like New York street fashion at the time. So there's definitely some crossover between the two.