The Saturday Night Live Costumes That Keep Tom Broecker Up at Night

Saturday Night Live has been around for 50 years. Tom Broecker has been there for over half of them.

He’s been a costume designer on the iconic comedy program since the late ’80s: He started as an assistant in 1988, had a brief hiatus in New Haven (he was busy getting a graduate degree at the Yale School of Drama), and eventually returned as a designer in 1994. He’s credited on over 480 episodes, and has accumulated 18 Emmy nominations (and six wins) for his work on the show. (One of those nods was, funnily enough, for 30 Rock.)

Over the course of four decades, Broecker has helped bring to life some of the most memorable characters to come out of Studio 8H, from Stefon to the Art Dealers to Gene Frenkle (of “More cowbell!” fame), and re-created seared-into-our-brains pop culture imagery in a matter of days for the sake of a five-minute sketch. A single episode can really run the gamut, costume-wise: When Ariana Grande hosted back in October, for instance, he and his team had to dress her as Jennifer Coolidge, Celine Dion, a late Renaissance-era Italian boy named Antonio, a film noir hotel detective, a bridesmaid, and a mom hosting a game night.

“That one had this amazing dress—Wicked hadn’t even come out yet, and Bowen Yang is in the giant Glinda dress that Ariana wears in the opening of [the movie],” Broecker tells W. “We had to re-create that.”

Every single show is also different, in terms of how the costume team works. “It probably comes down to 65 percent found items, 25 percent built items, and 10 percent rentals,” Broecker explains. “Some shows require 40 percent of the [costumes] to be made because they’re very, very specific… You’re never quite sure what the journey is going to be for the week, and that’s one of the most amazing, greatest things about working at Saturday Night Live. There’s a system in place, but every week is unique to the host, so the energy and the writing is all centered around that.”

That structure has been long-standing (and well-documented), but that doesn’t make it any less grueling: pitch meeting on Monday, writing on Tuesday, read-through on Wednesday, production on Thursday, rehearsals on Friday and Saturday. “Time really is, above anything, the challenge of doing the show,” Broecker says. “In the beginning part of my career here, those kinds of things—how do we create this couture Beyoncé look, which took someone three weeks to make, and we have 24 hours to do it?—were anxiety-provoking. On some level, they would keep me up at night.”

Nowadays, though, he confesses it’s the more mundane looks—the ones you might not even clock as a viewer — that take up brain space. “Things like ties that senators wear,” he says by way of example, “because, if you think about it, most people who wear clothing in a contemporary way don’t buy whatever it is they’re wearing that day. A senator or even a President will wear a tie that was purchased four years ago.”

Broecker admits he’s not one for nostalgia—but the costume designer did indulge W by taking a trip down memory lane and sharing some tidbits about the most fashion-centric costumes he’s worked on over the last three decades at Saturday Night Live, as well as others that hold a special place in his heart.

Founding Fathers

“We always have this joke that [the costume] has to last for 10 minutes. Theoretically, the costume has to last the dress rehearsal. Then we can repair or fix it afterward, if it loses all of its beading we had just glued on, for instance. It’s not like a Broadway show, where you have to make a garment that has to last week after week after week. It has to last for 10 minutes. There’s a freedom in creating something that you can glue back.

“The costumes for the ‘Founding Fathers’ sketch with Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t arrive until Saturday morning, so we didn’t have time to make the alterations before air. They were made with black safety pins all through the back of the vests and the pants and the jackets. We had the cast members lined up before they went out, checking them to make sure everything [was good]. We literally were safety-pinning them into their costumes.”

Jennifer Coolidge for Maybelline

“One of the things that over the years has become amazing is the technology of our prosthetics, and our ability to change someone’s physical body within a commercial break. Like Chloe Fineman and Ariana Grande both are in fake Jennifer Coolidge chests—we had a minute 30 to get those chests, costumes, and wigs on. I work with magicians here.”

Björk

“Creating some of the Björk costumes was always fun because Björk has such an amazing sense of fashion…trying to not copy, but homage it and make it feel like it was something that was Kristen Wiig’s, but also Björk’s. What was the essence, the spirit of the costume? Sometimes, we’re asked to re-create very specific moments; sometimes, you’re just asked to create a feeling.”

Stefon

“There was a referencing of Ed Hardy, and it became a little more Melrose. We were skewing a bit [to] the California Melrose boy, mixed with a New York club boy. I ended up running down to Ed Hardy at that time in Meatpacking—if you look at it, the shirt is Ed Hardy, but because of the censors, we had to change the pattern of the shirt a little bit to make it not exactly Ed Hardy.

“That’s one of those things where you have to give credit to the hair department: Taking that wig off of Bill Hader, you don’t really have the character. He could be in those clothes, but it’s really the hair that sends the whole thing into perfection. That little dyed part in the front that’s attached to the front part of his bang is just heaven.”

The Art Dealers

“Nuni Nuni was always fun and weird—like, ‘Wait, is it foreign or is it American? Are they architects? Are they art gallery owners? Are they just weird people? Do they like fashion? Do they even know the fashion that they're wearing?’ What is it? It was an interesting exercise in theatrical fashion.

“I’m obsessed with Comme des Garçons, so that’s always, for me, an amazing jumping-off point, for anything. It’s an easily understandable visual that I can have with the writers and the actors, to get the conversation flowing, in a way.”

Donatella Versace

“That was always fun, taking the fashion of Versace, highlighting, and skewing it in a way to ride the tension line between comedy and reality. How you walk that tightrope is an interesting thing as a costume designer.”

Jeffrey’s Employees

“There’s a lot of Comme des Garçons in [the ‘Jeffrey’s’ sketch]—also Ann Demeulemeester and those amazing early ’90s Belgian designers who I’m still obsessed with to this day. I don’t live that far from Jeffrey—when Jeffrey’s was Jeffrey—so I would go there after work, and I became friendly with all those guys. Between the people who worked at Jeffrey and the people who worked at Barneys, there were very good references to pull from. Then you mix some of the Belgian designers into that, mixed with a little If and Margiela. That’s a sketch where it’s a perfect example of taking an idea, taking the visual, and then making it heightened in comedy.

“For a long time, we would call it the Carol Burnett School of Comedy. Then, there’s the SNL World of Comedy. I’m obsessed with Bob Mackie. The thing that was so amazing with Bob’s designs with Carol Burnett is that the costumes led the comedy, like the classic sketch with the [dress with] curtain rods in the back. You recognize it before anyone opens their mouth, You start laughing because the visual is so funny. The comedy comes after, a lot of times.

“On SNL, the writing comes first, and the visual comes second. But in this particular instance, with ‘Jeffrey’s,’ that fashion was so heightened that, as soon as the camera comes, you understand this is a world of exaggerated fashion people. And, come on, the fashion business, particularly at that time, was easily skewable. No costume is complete without makeup and hair, and the wigs are so funny.”

Gene Frenkle

“One I have love for, just because of the actor, is Will Ferrell in ‘More Cowbell.’ It’s one of those things—the performance and the costume and the way we changed shirts to go with a smaller one to give him more belly when he did his movement…. Working with Will was always a dream, because he could take something and make it more of his own—and it became a thing unto itself, like the ‘More Cowbell’ costume. It’s special to me because the costume was helpful with the performance, and the performer really used what he was wearing.”