Roxane from 'Great Performances: Cyrano de Bergerac'
As Roxane in Great Performances: Cyrano de Bergerac (airing Wednesday, Jan. 7, on PBS), Jennifer Garner is lovely as a 17th-century French noblewoman. Standing on the balcony in the famous love scene, she's radiant.
Cyrano (Kevin Kline) devises love poems, hiding under the balcony. Christian (Daniel Sunjata), the hunky number, is dim, so the swashbuckler with the schnoz, Cyrano, thinks for him.
They look terrific in this odd ventriloquist act of pitching woo, and the costumes are why.
"One of the challenges with costume design is not falling into the trap of doing something traditional we have all seen before," says designer Gregory Gale from his Manhattan studio.
In the gown Garner wears on the balcony, "I was trying to give it a real French flair in chic simplicity," he says. "In talking with David (Leveaux, the director) about it, he was as concerned as I was."
Gale began by searching for the perfect material, which he found at B+J Fabrics.
"I love that store, and they have imported fabrics from all over the world, including a large number of French textiles," Gale says. He also shopped a block away at Mood, "which was made famous by Project Runway, " he says.
Gale wanted fluid gowns. Usually, women wearing these stiff dresses look as if they can't bend.
"We didn't want to make it seem like an actress caught in a costume," he says. "I wanted a light quality, a fashionable quality. When she runs across the floor, you can see a body in there rather than a big, heavy quality. It's an airier quality."
Women of Roxane's class and time were heavily corseted, and many actresses complain about feeling constrained when they do period pieces.
Gale says he debated whether to have one corset made for Garner or separate ones fitted into each gown. He opted for the latter so that each dress would fit perfectly.
The men's costumes are also custom-made. The hats alone are works of art, with enough plumage to give a feather dancer her props. These came from another store in Manhattan's garment district, American Plume and Fancy Feather.
"They import feathers from all over the world and custom-dye and curl, wax and bleach them," he says. "They dye them in glycerin so the way they move is really interesting, and they make boas and fringes."
As luxurious as these costumes are, it's the teal gown Roxane wears on the balcony that people talk about. On TV, its painstaking handiwork is evident.
Gale drew a pattern, and Long Island City's Penn and Fletcher hand-embroidered it.
Incidentally, not all of Gale's creations have historical elements. He recently designed a Barbarella outfit -- in chocolate! It was for a chocolate fashion show.
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