BY DESIGN : Q&A;: DELTA BURKE : ‘My Goal Is to Provide Every Aspect of Dressing’
Actress Delta Burke plays TV’s Suzanne Sugarbaker, the saucy, oversized Southern belle who jumped from “Designing Women” to the CBS series “Women of the House.” Burke’s weight--she has gone from Size 6 to Size 22 and back to Size 16--has been gossip-column fodder for years. Her difficulty finding attractive clothes in large sizes propelled her to sign on as design director for New York-based Delta Burke Design. The collection is expected to hit stores in November.
Burke confesses to having an eclectic aesthetic. She’s as passionate about flea markets and garage sales as she is about her collection of 19th-Century jewelry and antiques. “I have a white trash streak,” she says. “I can appreciate beauty on all levels.”
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Question: What is it that designers don’t get about large-size apparel?
Answer: You get to be a certain size and automatically you aren’t a real person anymore. You have no sexuality, no individuality. It’s the same outfit in two colors. It’s boring.
Q: The pieces in your collection run from $30 to $200. Sounds more like JCPenney’s than a re-creation of Delta Burke’s own closet.
A: I don’t want this to be a hoity-toity thing, to be so outrageously expensive that no one could afford it. My goal is to provide every aspect of dressing. We start with denim, dresses, suits and soft dressing. I also want to do jewelry.
Q: What’s different about jewelry?
A: You have to have larger bracelets and you can’t find them. You need chokers that don’t choke and long-length necklaces.
I also want to do sexy lingerie because these women are still sexual beings and there isn’t anything out there for them. Foundations need more support on the bra strap, but not some old lady thing. These women want to be attractive, and there are men who love them. My husband (actor Gerald McRaney) loves me very much and thinks I’m sexy.
Q: So beauty and weight are not mutually exclusive?
A: There’s so much of this that’s a mind-set. You get dumped on by the way the world is now, bombarded by thin images that people can’t live up to. People get so down on themselves.
When I was putting the weight on, I had to go through all the emotional changes. It was very ugly for a while. But then I would get all these letters from women who’d read interviews I’d done, saying how I’d changed their lives. I was still trying to figure it out myself.
Suzanne Sugarbaker got more interesting and more complex the larger I got. Her whole attitude changed. She was a beauty queen who felt she was God’s gift to man. But when you put the weight on, you can’t hide behind a camera angle or a clever A-line skirt. Suzanne would still believe she was beautiful. She would still strut across a room. But her walk, her delivery, her voice changed. She became this great broad. I loved her more.
Q: It was reported that a squabble over weight made you leave “Designing Women.” Is that true?
A: It got kind of twisted around. It was more some other stuff. I was told by other people that I was going to be fired if I gained weight. The Thomasons (producers Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason) never said anything like that. There was a great communication problem. Weight wasn’t as much of an issue as the press made it.
Q: Weight actually prompted some of the best dialogue, especially in episodes like “They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They?” in which your character attended a school reunion. What did you learn from that episode?
A: That people want to label you no matter how you look. If you’re pretty, they think you can’t possibly be smart. You put on weight, you cease to be a human. Look at what people say about Elizabeth Taylor--they forget all the wonderful work she’s done as an actress and humanitarian, and they try to run her out of the country because of her size. They don’t understand that what you look like physically is not what you are about as a human being.
Q: But you continued to struggle.
A: I took a year off from work. I couldn’t stand to watch me. It was hard to go out in public when I felt so bad about myself.
Q: This was at your largest?
A: Yes. But you know, I felt that way all my life. Whatever size I was I always thought I was just awful. When I was a Size 6, people would complain because I had curvy hips or my legs were bigger. I bought into the whole thing that society, casting directors tell you. I’d get up to 123 or 133 (pounds) and think, “I’m such a cow,” and I look back now and say, “No, I was a beautiful, curvy woman and I was never aware of it.” So I try and be aware of it now.
I have to work on it every day. I have to say, “Delta, you’re going to get older and you’re going to look back and regret you didn’t live your life fully because you felt like a dumpling some days.”
Q: Do you have any design experience?
A: I’ve drawn since I was in grade school. When I put on the weight, I went out and couldn’t find stuff. I was getting married, going to the Emmys. I wound up designing my own gowns.
Q: You worked with (costume designer) Bill Hargate on those?
A: Yes. It was a collaboration. He taught me more about fabrics. He’s been supportive and helpful and a great inspiration, as has Cliff Chally (“Designing Women” and “Women of the House” costume designer).
Q: What makes these clothes truly yours?
A: I’m hoping for a style. Most of my own things have been so personally fitted to me that my trouble in giving that same look to women is that they’re all different shapes. We don’t all get big in one shape. There’s pear, round, hourglass, and then there are petite or tall women who are larger. Only one big shape has come out for all of them.
Q: Are you using any particular fit tricks?
A: I don’t like that whole elastic business. There are different things you can do to make jeans fit around the waist and still curve at the hip. I like fitted things, fitted bodices.
Q: What taboos can you break?
A: I’ve never paid attention to length and I’ve always been criticized for that. I say provide options and let women decide--long and short. Boxy jackets and fitted jackets.
People also criticize me because of the bright colors I wear, but I like them. Clothes that are sexy and sassy make me feel empowered.
Q: Does the real Delta Burke dress like Suzanne Sugarbaker?
A: I’ve always liked that dramatic approach. I’ve always liked my capes--flowing-in, sweeping-in kind of dramatic clothing. Boots, swashbuckling looks, the riding habit look. And then I go for ball gowns. I like different eras, romance.
Q: Neither you nor Suzanne Sugarbaker wears tents or muumuus or other covered-up clothes.
A: You’ve got this body. You’ve got these boobs. You’ve got these hips. Put a tent on me, and I’m going to look like a tent. I don’t want to hide. So OK, I look like a big, curvy woman. But I look like a woman.
