An Interview with the Wardrobe Department (Doug James, Tim Alberts and Stephanie Brear)

Explain for those at home what you do.

Doug: Being part of wardrobe, we’re in charge of making patterns, costumes, altering existing clothes, and making sure that everything is ready for the 11 or 12 sketches that start rehearsing on Saturday, of which there could be anywhere from 80 to 100 costume pieces.

What are your biggest production challenges each week?

Doug: Usually just trying to get everything onto the actors, to get them when they have time between rehearsing, because we only have three days. For example, we're working on something from scratch for Keenan, and we keep trying to grab him to throw it on him. It’s not like they're just jeans and we’re hemming them. He’s becoming Chaka Khan with breasts and padding.

So that is a challenge just getting a hold of him to make sure it fits so that we don’t just throw something on him at the last minute on Saturday and it doesn’t fit or it’s uncomfortable or he can’t work in it. It’s one of the reasons we have a monitor and we make a point of watching all of the rehearsals while we’re working to give us a sense of what they do in their costume. "Do we see the back? Do we not see their shoes? Do they fly?" Although if they fly, they’ve hopefully told us beforehand, but they sometimes don't.

What SNL costume creation are you most proud of and why? Doug: Oh gosh there are probably a bunch. I mean we have done, this was a few years ago, we had done a Wizard of Oz sketch in three days complete with Dorothy, the Good Witch, Munchkins and tons of other stuff. And it looked pretty good!

Tim: I’ve only been here for three years. Doug has been here a long time. Hundreds of things he’s worked on. I’m most proud of the Jennifer Lopez runway dress. They had to cut from the actual photo of J-Lo to Maya in our dress. It was amazing. She looked just like Jennifer Lopez.

Doug: And we also copied Loretta Lynn’s Grammy dress when Hilary Swank hosted. So we copied both Loretta’s and J-Lo’s Grammy wedding dresses. And they looked pretty amazing.

The biggest project we had to do was copying Melania Trump's wedding gown. We copied her $200,000 Chanel wedding dress for Paris Hilton. We had a day and a half. She liked it so much she took it with her. The whole joke was that it was so big whenever she sat down, it actually went over her head.

Tim: It was made mostly with our favorite technique called “French gluing”

Doug: Yes, we do a lot of gluing.

Stephanie: It only has to last one show.

Doug: We did a spoof of Moulin Rouge a few years ago. Laura Flynn Boyle was doing the Nicole Kidman role. We copied the whole beaded and crusted bustier. And every bit of it was glued on. So it was like armor. People could have taken shots at her and she would have been fine.

When do you find out what you'll need to design for a Saturday show?

Doug: We don’t start anything until Thursday morning. They do a read-through Wednesday night. After the read through is when they choose what sketches they’re going to do. So we don’t get the go-ahead to start or spend money on anything until late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

Tim: We usually don’t have anything to work on till Friday actually. Sometimes for the monologue we don’t know until Saturday what it’s going to be.

Doug: For the cold opening, we don’t even know right now what it’s going to be until Saturday morning sometimes, when they write it Saturday morning. It’s Friday, and we’re just starting to make the patterns for Chaka Khan [this interview was conducted on Friday at 4:39 pm!].

During the show there are a lot of quick changes; how do you keep up?

Tim: Each actor has his or her own dresser. It depends on who you’re dressing. I dress Andy and he’s amazing. He’s so helpful – the two of us can get all the changes in time. You just have to know how to lay out your clothes and where you’re going to do your changes. You find out from the map where the sets are going to be placed. And you have to position yourself nearby for the changes. Sometimes you have to take them by the hand to where they need to go to change. It’s dark. A lot of actors aren’t thinking when they’re finishing the skit.

Doug: A lot them want to talk about how the sketches went. And we have to grab them and say “No talk now. Change now!”

Stephanie: Sometimes the change is so quick that you have to under-dress them, so for the skit they’re going into they’re already wearing clothes underneath for the next sketch.

Tim: Like for Update, the bottom set will all be for the next sketch since you don’t see the bottom.

How do you archive/keep track of ongoing characters' wardrobes?

Tim: Each actor has a closet in the other room. It’s just a small closet. And there’s a selection of shirts, jeans and pants that fit them. And they have a section called repeating characters. So any character they are doing again we keep their costume and stick it in their closet. So if they need to grab jeans they know where to go and they will fit.

Do all the classic costumes still exist? Is there a giant SNL wardrobe vault somewhere in New Jersey?

Doug: They still exist and they are in archives in New Jersey. Boxes 1 to 257. There are 257 numbered boxes in archives in New Jersey. And to try to deter theft, they’re only numbered so we have to check a list to see what’s in each number. But no one in the warehouse can tell what’s in them. Because there was a period of time when the box would just say “Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella costume” and oddly enough the box would be gone.

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

Doug: The hosts definitely. The musical guest sometimes. This week for instance, the host has a stylist who picks things for their look. His stylist will mostly choose. Our designers – Tom is sort of the main designer – will choose the main costume things. And they’ll coordinate together too.

What designers and/or costumers do you admire?

Doug: Tom Broeker, our costume designer, is the one I admire the most. Lots and lots of other designers, too.

Tim: David Robinson is a very creative house designer.

Doug: Patricia Field, who did the original "Sex in the City," is wonderful; there are many more of them.

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

Tim: Velcro – lots of Velcro – we do lots of rigging. Quick Changes.

Doug: Lots of bust pads – I’d say 105 this season.

Doug: Velcro – miles. If there’s a fast change and a shirt has buttons – buttons take a long time – we take the buttons off and put Velcro on and then put the buttons back on so they can be put on and ripped off. But that’s very time consuming.

Has anything ever gone wrong?

Stephanie: Sometimes when it goes wrong it’s funny.

Doug: But not often right at the moment. It’s not often funny at the moment.

Tim: I remember a 50 second change that made me nauseous.

Doug: I think there was a time that Rachel had to fly. They were in the pizza place with the wind and whenever someone opened the door, the wind would blow everyone around. She was supposed to fly, and a dummy of her was supposed to fly past. But something got messed up and she was flying at the wrong time and was on stage at the same time the dummy flew in. And that was a little embarrassing.

Tim: The turkey.

Doug: The turkey. There was a Debby Downer sketch where no one could keep a straight face. The turkey was a rigged puppet that was supposed to get up and walk away. There was this hilarious looking thing and it wasn’t working right. It was flopping and jerking and no one could keep a straight face.