Wicked's renowned costume designer returns to Oz

Tony Award-winning designer Paul Tazewell first created costumes for The Wizard Of Oz in a high-school production

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NEW YORK - Paul Tazewell was 16 years old and living in Akron, Ohio, the first time he designed costumes for The Wiz.

It was a high-school production of the 1978 movie, and much of the work happened in his family's dining room.

He has been summoned back to Oz several times since that first show - a workshop here, an NBC broadcast there.

So, when American director Jon M. Chu asked him to design the costumes for the long-awaited film adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, there was little learning curve to speak of.

A prequel of sorts to The Wizard Of Oz, Wicked centers on two reluctant roommates at Shiz University: Galinda, an effervescent daughter of privilege who goes on to drop a vowel (that first "a"), and Elphaba, a green-skinned outcast who goes on to pick up a title (the Wicked Witch of the West).

By the time actress-singers Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo were brought on board to play the film's lead witches, Tazewell, 60, a Tony Award winner for his work on the musical Hamilton, was already off to the races on his own preparations, collecting images of mushroom caps and bisected seashells for inspiration.

For all his familiarity with the extended Ozian universe, including Susan Hilferty's Tony-winning costumes for the Broadway production of Wicked, Tazewell said it was clear from his conversations with Chu that there was little appetite to recreate any previous vision of Oz.

"It was important for Jon to reimagine what this world was going to be," he said.

Here, Tazewell goes over sketches, swatches and fungus photos for three pivotal costumes from part one of Wicked.

2. ELPHABA'S EMERALD CITY LOOK: 'DARK IRIDESCENCE' While working with Erivo on Harriet, the 2019 Harriet Tubman biopic, Tazewell got to know her for, among other things, her love of clothing.

"That's really where we bonded," he recalled.