Tailor-made for Broadway

At the back of William Ivey Long’s studio sits a chair stacked high with unopened birthday presents. It wouldn’t be so unusual, but his birthday was nearly two months ago.

“I haven’t opened them yet because I don’t have time,” says the 56-year-old costume designer. “I can’t wrap my brain around it. I can’t receive it yet. That’s the definition of busy.”

Maybe so. Winner of four Tony Awards, Long is currently creating, maintaining or otherwise fretting about costumes for seven Broadway shows, their touring siblings and Madison Square Garden’s 10th annual “A Christmas Carol.” Much as he poured gorgeous blonds into body-hugging dresses for “The Producers,” “Contact” and, most recently, “Little Shop of Horrors,” Long draped Harvey Fierstein in tasteful polyester housedresses for “Hairspray.”

For “The Boy From Oz,” which opened Oct. 16, Long put Hugh Jackman in sequins and Hawaiian shirts as entertainer Peter Allen, while the show’s fictionalized Liza Minnelli, played by Stephanie J. Block, wears styles Long observed clothing the genuine Liza. They join those chorus girls of “The Producers” and pastel-clad teens of “Hairspray,” as well as the barely dressed women of “Chicago” and “Cabaret” on Broadway. “Never Gonna Dance,” based on the 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film “Swing Time,” opens in December.

In the five-story, 19th century Chelsea brownstone that houses both man and mission, massive remodeling has left the place nearly bereft of furniture. Workers have taken over the parlor floor where last year Long held his first -- and thus far only -- fashion show of designer clothes, and upstairs too they’re remodeling, drilling and painting. He’s sleeping in the guest room.

The only places free of construction seem to be the backyard and his long, narrow office packed with employees, drawing boards, files and fabric swatches. Dyeing facilities are down in the basement, but Long spray-paints Broadway-bound shoes in the yard, not far from the clothesline used to air-dry “Cabaret’s” fancy underwear and slips after “aging” them. “There are endless Yuban coffee jars filled with every known shade and consistency of glitter,” observes longtime friend and playwright Paul Rudnick. “William lives in an eternal Santa’s workshop.”

But amid the chaos, Southern gentleman Long is as put together as the navy blazer, starched white shirt, khaki slacks and striped tie he nearly always wears. In his shirt pocket is a neatly typed file card indicating where he has to be all day and when, and assistants can instantly produce whatever sketch, clipping or factoid he requests. An early riser, he’s already read three newspapers at the coffee shop down the street by the time those assistants -- each assigned to specific shows -- take their places at 8:30.

A ‘CRAZY’ START

While Long’s Tony-winning costumes for Tommy Tune’s 1982 musical “Nine” first made him a star, it was “Crazy for You” in 1992 that made him financially secure. A miner’s pan attached to the wall outside his front door commemorates that show’s 848 Toronto performances. “This is the house that ‘Crazy for You’ bought,” he confides, “and its miraculous renaissance is occurring thanks to ‘The Producers’ and ‘Hairspray.’ ”

That’s how Long speaks, with phrases like “miraculous renaissance” and “genteel disarray” delivered in a Southern accent and usually followed by a dramatic pause, cherubic smile and roll of the eyes. Long, who Rudnick says “still refers to the Civil War as ‘the war of Northern aggression,’ ” is as theatrical as he is Southern.

Both traits are apparently inherited. The Long family has lived in and around Seaboard, N.C., for nine generations. His teacher parents were both involved in local theater, and Long has referred to himself as “a second-generation theater brat.” When he was growing up, he says, their front hall sometimes looked like a scene shop, and it wasn’t unusual for the dining room table to be used for cutting costumes. The family ate in the kitchen.

He also inherited his parents’ love of playwright Paul Green’s symphonic drama, “The Lost Colony,” which has been produced outdoors in Manteo, N.C., since 1937. Long made his acting debut there at age 8 and for many years has supervised its sets and costumes.

The designer has a degree from the College of William and Mary in history and did graduate work in art history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. He also received a graduate degree in set design from Yale School of Drama, where his housemates included Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep. Playwrights Rudnick and Wendy Wasserstein both worked on his Yale costume crews at one point or another, sewing costumes, and while neither was much of a tailor, they remain two of his close friends.

“William has always been at the top of his form,” Wasserstein says, “whether it’s his all-kaftan production of ‘Twelfth Night’ when we were at Yale or ‘Nine’ or ‘Guys and Dolls’ on Broadway. He’s also really scholarly, and to have that knowledge and wit is extraordinary. I never met anyone else like him.”

Long’s involvement with a show usually starts with a phone call from the director. Sometimes there will be a reading, he says, “when they ask if I’m interested in coming, and I’m always interested. Are you kidding? At this level? I’ve never seen an uninteresting project.”

MANY SOURCES

While Long’s primary reference point is a show’s script, something he says again and again, inspiration comes from everywhere. He drew on one of his great-Aunt Mary’s Sunday outfits for the caped dress worn by “The Producers’ ” sex-starved octogenarians. And to make sure his costumes for “Boy From Oz” looked authentic, he made several huge collage boards of Peter Allen photos showing the singer-songwriter growing up in Australia, with advocate Judy Garland and daughter Liza and performing at Radio City.

Long pored over Sears Roebuck catalogs and high school yearbooks to re-create “Hairspray’s” 1962 Baltimore, and he similarly drew on 1930s magazines and photos in making clothes for “Never Gonna Dance,” the Jerome Kern musical opening Dec. 4. “Picture those beautiful shapes moving through space to [those songs],” he enthuses. “I’m trying to re-create that wonderful elegance, that magical time in America when clothing was married to style and glamour. There’s never been anything better!”

In contrast, Long created what he calls a Salvation Army look for the Skid Row denizens of “Little Shop of Horror.” But to dress Kerry Butler as “Little Shop’s” shopgirl and blond bombshell Audrey, he bought vintage copies of Screen Gem and Photoplay “and tried to imagine how she would sit around and read about Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe and want to become them. Audrey’s clothes are her five-cent version of what Marilyn Monroe would be wearing.”

“Clothes for the theater should make the person wearing them be able to go out on stage and become the character. Simple. Not very complicated,” Long says. “You have to start with that.”

“Producers” co-writer Tom Meehan says that “William gives clothes a sense of humor,” and few places is this so true as with that show’s Art Deco, Chrysler Building-inspired dress for “renowned theatrical director” Roger DeBris. While Long’s first design got laughs in Chicago, Long wasn’t happy and redesigned it for Broadway, recalls actor Gary Beach, who won a Tony for portraying DeBris. Two days before opening night, Beach got the new gown, slipped it on and made his entrance. “It brought the house down,” says Beach. “But I had very little to do with that. It’s William Ivey Long’s laugh.”

There were 497 costumes in “The Producers,” and Long confirms that costume budgets on such big Broadway musicals can run a million dollars or more. While clothes need to be redone for tours or cast replacements, Long says, “I like to guarantee a costume will last eight shows a week for a year. Most last much longer.”

Almost everything is custom-made, to ensure such things as durability and movement. “Cabaret’s” frauleins each wear two more pair of underpants beneath the risque ones we see, for instance, while men’s slacks in musicals must be roomy enough to hide protective leg padding. “If you’re sliding on the floor, you need knee and shin pads,” Long observes. “And the pants have to be cut so that you don’t see the pads and wonder when they’re going to slide across the floor. It should all be a surprise.”

Some costumes are clearly more difficult than others. For the emblematic yellow dress Deborah Yates wore in “Contact,” Long created nine different versions before settling for the final design a week after the show opened. “It was that hard to get right,” he explains. “She was pulled across the floor, turned upside down, and lifted in the air. The dress couldn’t ride up, but all the underpinning had to be so effortlessly invisible. Each of those requirements took a lot of research and development, and each version had to be made and worn and danced in to be tested. I couldn’t just do it all as theory, or I would have done it once.” Then again, he says all that effort gave him a head start on his form-fitting white dress for athletic Swedish sex goddess Ulla in “The Producers.” “William understands character and movement, and he knows how to make an actor become a character through clothing,” adds Susan Stroman, who directed both “Contact” and “The Producers.” “Not only does he spend time with me as a director talking about what each character should wear, but he also spends time with each actor.”

Long is decidedly collaborative, concurs actor Fierstein, describing his first look at his future wardrobe as “Hairspray’s” oversized housewife Edna Turnblad. “William had fabrics, a color concept and one mock-up of a housedress. I said, ‘We need to cut off the sleeves, because if I’m going to convince the audience that I’m a middle-aged woman and they see the flab hanging under my arms, there will be no question.’ If you have ideas, he’s certainly willing to work with you. He likes challenge, and he likes having a good time. We had a lot of fun.”

Not one to be pigeonholed, Long has also costumed Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels tour, illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas and a Pet Shop Boys video. Manhattan Theatre Club’s upcoming “Rose’s Dilemma,” opening next month, will be his third Neil Simon play. And what the designer calls his “next semester” of assignments this season include not just big Broadway musicals but a Stroman premiere for the New York City Ballet and Rudnick’s off-Broadway comedy “Valhalla,” both due in January.

“William is one of those people who prides himself on constant challenges,” says Rudnick. “Almost all of his homes are never quite finished and that is part of the fun for him. There is always something to look forward to, and it’s the same with his shows. He loves the process, whether he’s for creating Broadway shows or touring companies. He never abandons any of his children.”