The Genius of Deborah Vance's 'Hacks' Wardrobe
An interview with the costume designer behind one of television's most enjoyable shows.
In today’s issue of Back Row:
An interview with Kathleen Felix-Hager, Hacks’s brilliant costume designer, on dressing Deborah Vance.
Where Felix-Hager found the ugly-glam yellow dress that kicked off the season (hint: you could maybe even find one for yourself online).
Loose Threads, including the Internet’s favorite nepo baby hard-launching in W magazine; the Zac Posen for Gap shirtdress gown you can now buy; Jennifer Lopez promotes bottled margaritas — and more!
Why aren’t there more shows like Hacks? Chronicling the divide and commonality between Deborah Vance, a comedian in her seventies in the vein of Joan Rivers, and Ava Daniels, the writer in her twenties she hires to help freshen up her act, the show is that refreshing combination of funny, smart, easy-to-watch, and female-centric (I’ll note that my husband enjoys it, too). Hacks doesn’t condescend to its audience. The writing is pithy, self-aware, in-step with today’s culture while also appropriately skewering it. And the clothes, particularly on Deborah, are delightful to see each episode. Streamers ought to order up a dozen more shows like Hacks for those of us who lack interest in zombie gore, succumb to ambient television out of desperation, and can’t turn away from And Just Like That, despite our abundant better judgment. I truly can’t understand why shows like this are so bizarrely rare! Hacks, which airs its season three finale Thursday on Max, hasn’t officially gotten picked up for season four, and if it doesn’t, well, screw Hollywood.
To learn more about how Deborah Vance, played fabulously by Jean Smart, gets dressed, I called LA-based costume designer Kathleen Felix-Hager, who has styled all three seasons of the show. We chatted about how she worked with Jean to craft Deborah’s look, where she finds her clothes, and much more.
Warning: Light spoilers ahead for season three.
The Deborah Vance character is so unique on TV — we don’t see many women in their seventies in any shows. How did that affect how you thought about styling her, if at all?
When I was approached about doing the project, I read the first three scripts and I've never wanted a job more than I wanted to get this job. The way that they wrote these two women, and particularly because one is an older woman and one is younger, we see two people at the beginning and the sort of twilight [of their careers]. I just found it so refreshing and so interesting to see writing that really addressed how women approach work and life and relationships at two very different points in their lives.
I don't know if it makes me approach the work differently, but I certainly am so in tune with how these women are portrayed in the world, especially Deborah Vance. Jean’s herself in her early seventies, and [the clothes] were important for her character development, and to portray how vibrant she is, and how alive she is, and how still ambitious she is. She’s not resting on her laurels. She's still striving, she still has goals, she's still working, she still wants to be attractive, she's still sexual. All the things that we discount in women over 60, really. You're sort of lumped into this category of senior. You're supposed to be quiet and not be seen and not be heard. And so I love the fact that Deborah is how she dresses — she wants attention, she wants eyes on her, she wants that kind of notice, still.
How would you sum up her look?
There's always some hint of maybe an animal print, the mixing of colors and patterns, the jewels — she loves a shiny, sparkly thing. But I also don't think she's tacky or vulgar. I think she has a sense of style and taste, but she has a certain flamboyance to how she dresses and is very unapologetic. She wears what she wears because she loves it. It might not be the trendiest or the most fashionable look of the day, but it's timeless, works for her, and she just goes with it.
The Deborah Vance character was inspired by comedians like Betty White, Phyllis Diller, and Joan Rivers. Did you research them to inform the costumes?
I had long conversations with Jean Smart at the beginning. I know that that was the inspiration, Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers and those women comedians. And I sort of wanted to lean away from that because in talking with Jean, her inspiration for the character was comedian Sam Kinison. And so we leaned into a more masculine silhouette for her. She wore a lot of pants on stage, a lot of long dusters. She had a lot of sparkly suits that seemed to work better for her particular look than being derivative of a short sparkly dress and a little bolero [like Phyllis Diller wore].
Where do you get her clothes?
Costume shops in Los Angeles, where I live, vintage stores, the Dillard’s in Las Vegas. The Real Real. And I get a lot of things made custom.
Do brands loan to you?
I actually don’t borrow. Jenny Packham reached out this season and asked if we’d ever want to borrow something, but I haven’t heard from any brands otherwise.
That’s interesting – I would think that brands would want to be worn by Deborah Vance! What about her jewelry?
I have a pretty big collection that we pull from, and Jean sometimes brings things in. She doesn’t have pierced ears, so if I find something in a costume shop that I want to use, we take the posts off and turn them into clip-ons.
The yellow-and-black dress that Deborah wears in the beginning of season three was a very specific look. It had to be both be able to pass for high glamour but also ugly.
I got that on The Real Real. It was a Bill Blass vintage 1988 dress, it cost less than $1,000, I think somewhere between $500 and $800. I just ran with how ugly it already was and added some more of that horse hair crinoline detail and tulle to the shoulders. To me, there's something very ugly about the color yellow. Most people don't look good in that color, and it’s very specific. Yellows can be beautiful, but this was not a beautiful yellow.
I also bought the dress in pink from the Real Real. I thought maybe Deborah’s daughter could wear it but we didn’t end up filming it.
Season three opened with that wonderful scene of Deborah’s big closet warehouse, from where that infamous yellow dress originated. Did you have to fill it with clothes?
That was a big collaboration between myself, the production designer, and the set decorator. We didn't pull all those clothes, but I pulled a bunch, which gave them a direction. All the mannequins that were in that scene, my team and I dressed, and there was a really sweet shot when she's looking through the clothes and she sees the yellow dress. If you look behind her, there's a mannequin wearing a short pink chiffon dress. That dress is actually the dress that young Deborah wears when she did her first late-night taping. All of those things on the mannequins were pieces that we’d seen in the show before, and a lot of those that we'd seen Young Deborah wear in video clips of her doing standup.
And how did you come up with her hiking look?
When we were filming it was actually very cold. And Jean gets cold so she was wearing a cashmere sweatsuit under the coat, which you couldn’t really see that well. And the leopard fleece she was wearing underneath, I added a gold liner to.
What about the golf attire? We see her when she’s in a good mood wearing a lot of color, and then she switches to black after she gets some bad news.
In that scene, she’s being sort of flirty with the affiliates. When she’s wearing the black golf clothes in the scene with Tony Goldwyn, she has a black lace bodysuit underneath. And underneath the pink look, she was actually wearing a fuchsia lace body suit to match, but we didn’t see it. But that was important for Jean’s character.
It sounds like you’re doing a lot of customizations of her looks.
We do a lot of customization for her character, which is something I always do. Her collars are always popped so we add reinforcement to the collars so they stay up. The Christmas pajamas we bejeweled and bedazzled. Deborah Vance loves Christmas, so why wouldn’t she have sparkly Christmas pajamas?
And how do you think about dressing Ava? Obviously she exists in contrast to Deborah and we see that very much in their clothes.
She’s a vintage lover, she doesn’t have a lot of money. I repeat clothes for her. We saw her elevate her style a little bit in season three. She started adding blazers and wearing pants that were a little bit more tailored. She started wearing loafers instead of her Dr. Martens. I wanted her to feel like a real LA person who’s struggling and working and trying to make their name in the writing world. I live in LA, so I get a lot of inspiration from just seeing people in the coffee shops. In season two, sometimes we would see Ava put a silk blouse on, so there are touches of Deborah’s influence on Ava's style. She is trying to learn from Deborah, in a sense.
What’s your favorite Deborah Vance look from all three seasons?
There have been so many. I do really love in season two when she's going to the cruise and she's in that big pink hat and the sunglasses and the pink pants with that duster [jacket].
I really love this season, when she was doing that photo shoot in episode eight, when she's in that white dress with the big, poufy bubble skirt with the black opera gloves. It just said in the script that she's in a high-fashion look for this photo shoot. So I wanted to get something that was Deborah Vance, and I wanted it to be a shape that would catch your eye right away. It’s by Christopher John Rogers and I got it on Net-a-Porter.
It was sort of a panic situation because I think I had two days when they said we need to shoot it, and I did a mad search online. I overnighted so many pieces to myself, and that dress — she put it on, she loved it. We added the gloves, which we made because Jean’s arms are actually quite thin. Also, her hair and makeup in that scene were very Deborah Vance, so that was fun to play with, that slicked-back look with the smoky eye. I thought the whole look was really pretty.
Loose Threads
Seventeen-year-old Romy Mars, daughter of Sofia Coppola and Phoenix lead singer Thomas Mars, soft-launched on TikTok when she posted a video — against her parents’ wishes — about being grounded for chartering a helicopter to see a friend for dinner and not knowing the difference between an onion and garlic. Now, she’s hard-launching her music career in a W magazine story, styled by Grace Coddington. “My peers thought it was dumb,” she told Lynn Hirschberg of her viral moment. “It wasn’t a big deal among my friends. Then my phone went ding-ding-ding-ding. It was crazy! I didn’t think it was going to blow up.”
Owing to the success of Rare Beauty, which has a reported valuation of $2 billion, Selena Gomez covered Time for its issue featuring the most influential companies. She said she was unsure if she would ever go on a tour again, explaining to Lucy Feldman, “It is very emotionally draining for me. And then you realize you’re just surrounded by a bunch of people that you’re paying.”
That Zac Posen for Gap shirtdress that Anne Hathaway wore to Cannes is now for sale on Gap.com for $158. Well, maybe the Gap customer really is woefully underserved when it comes to gown versions of basics.
Here’s the cover of French Vogue promoting Vogue World Paris. Cover star Gigi Hadid, the magazine says, “embodies audacity and athletic elegance.” As happens every year, I still don’t get what this Vogue World even IS, but French Vogue Head of Editorial Content Eugénie Trochu calls it a “celebration of fashion and sport.” Which could describe any tennis match, the Tiffany Nike collab, Tom Brady’s clothing line, and a million other things, but I’d not be mad at watching gymnasts wear, I don’t know, Schiaparelli leotards.
Proenza Schouler collaborated with Vans on a puffy leather slip-on that costs $200.
Apparently if you spend two hours in the shower on washing, skincare, exfoliating, shaving, and maybe doing other stuff, TikTok would call that an “everything shower.” Like an everything bagel, it may or may not involve a butter.
You have to hand it to Jennifer Lopez: in the midst of a storm of not-great press over the rumored looming end to her marriage and low ticket sales to her tour, she will not stay silent when she may be contractually obligated to convince us to buy her new bottled margaritas from her Delola cocktail line. From her interview with Harper’s Bazaar:
…I mean, people—including myself—also love to have a cocktail while getting ready for an event or a night out. Is that something that you do?
I have done it, yeah.
I devoured this one...I honestly don't hate yellow as much as everyone else. I still think Michelle Williams' Vera Wang Oscar dress was sublime...💛
Amazing interview! I will probably start a petition if it doesn't come back!! I saw Jean in a million different things and was able to appreciate her appropriately during Samantha Who?
I love that jlo very publicly attributed her appearance to not drinking....until she launches her own cocktail line. I just......I mean....what else could you ever expect