An Interview with Costume Designer Eric Justian

What exactly do you do?

We design and pick out all the costumes that you see on the show – from crazy costumes like a giant pizza slice to regular clothes. We also dress the host for monologues, all the cast members, the digital shorts and the commercial parodies in the show.

What are your biggest production challenges each week?

The quantity we have to do in the time we have. What SNL costume creation are you most proud of and why?

I don’t have an answer for that. Good God... there are so many! Will Ferrell as the cowbell guy comes to mind as a pretty funny one.

It’s kind of rewarding when the costumes come back week after week. Those are pretty rewarding.

The Donald Trump wedding was also pretty great; Melania's dress was pretty amazing. It was a recreation of her actual wedding dress. It was kind of monumental.

When do you find out what you need to design for the show?

Wednesday night right after read through they pick 14 or 15 sketches and we start working on them pretty much at 10 o’clock that night.

How do you keep track of them?

Every cast member has a closet that we work out of; if they have characters that repeat or clothes that fit them nicely we keep them in the closet. If there are characters we may only see once but are memorable, we have an archive system that we ship them out to outside of the building.

During the show there are a lot of quick changes. How do you keep up?

Velcro is our best friend here. Everything is rigged in the show, every shirt. Even pants sometimes get rigged. Every actor also has a dresser that they’re assigned. There is one person that follows each actor on their track to do all those fast changes. Sometimes we have to cut things up the back, with Velcro, where the coat, shirt and tie are all one piece. It’s split up the back and goes on like a hospital bib almost.

Are you also responsible for the hosts and musical guests or just series regulars?

The hosts are dressed by our department. Tom Broeker, the other costume designer, is the person who deals with the hosts solely. As a department we get involved in the more costume-y things with the hosts.

As for the clothes, like the monologue outfit, it’s pretty much his vision. For musical guests our involvement is pretty rare but it does happen, especially when they enter sketches. But they usually come off a tour and have their clothes already.

What designers and/or costumers do you admire?

I admire anybody who can be in the business for a long period of time, like an Ann Roth, who has been working in the movie industry since the 1960s.

Any interesting statistics on materials you go through in a season/career?

Not really. But Velcro we must go through 20 spools a season. A lot of supplies.

Any memorable moments?

The thing that sticks out in my mind is Chris Farley going into a spaceship and his pants falling down because they didn’t fit right. He ended up mooning the audience. That was kind of an embarrassing moment for us, but kind of unavoidable.