Next year “Debutantes” will premiere in cinemas, revealing Christian Cowan’s first efforts as a costume designer on a feature film.
Written and directed by Stephen Meier, the movie follows a group of debutantes seeking revenge after one is wronged and features actors Paris Berelc, Ruby Snowber, Daniella Taylor, Heidi Grace Engerman, Samantha Lorraine, Gabriella Palminteri, Mason Versaw, Gunner Burkhardt, Tyler Lawrence Gray and more.
“The most I’ve done for a film [before] was I did design one dress for the ‘Barbie’ movie, so this was my first time being an end-to-end costume designer,” Cowan said. He also designed the maximalist wardrobe for last year’s Broadway production of “The Queen of Versailles,” which similarly to his new project came to life through mutual connections.
Although Cowan has created dozens of ready-to-wear collections, he told WWD his creative process as both costume designer and as executive producer for the film was “completely different.”
“I am obviously bringing my own creative perspective, but also I am in service of someone else’s vision. Stephen’s vision is the one that I’m helping bring to life,” Cowan said of reading the script and collaborating with his team to understand each character. “With these being kind of very planted in real life style characters, you’re basically basing it on women you know in the real world.”
For the film, Cowan dug into the idea of the modern debutante dress, looking to the annual Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris for inspiration, while working in ample femininity and polish.
“Obviously debutantes wear white dresses, but I didn’t want it to feel bridal, so I brought little flecks of stuff into it. What people normally wear to debutante dresses is pretty painful; I wanted it to be cuter than that — not these meringues that people wear,” he said of his designs, which evoke a more youthful, light, soft and floaty feel. “More contemporary, but still rooted in the characters,” he added of offering a range of styles per personality and imbuing each white dress with different textural elements ranging from smooth and sleek and classic corsetry to sensual tiered lace and airy chiffon.
“Some of the characters are a bit more confident and sharper. There’s a lot of intentional breaking of debutante dress code rules in one of them, like you’d never really be allowed a cutout, but for some of the characters it made sense,” he said of his skin-baring, body-con ensemble.
“We wanted to still provide the viewer with a specific visual identity for each woman, rather than just getting confused when you’re meeting all these people at once,” he said.
To round out each characters “real life” wardrobe throughout the film, Cowan not only designed the debutante dresses, but the entire cast’s wardrobe from start to finish.
“It was fun to do all the stuff that was less custom and gag-worthy,” he said of researching and developing everything from era-specific garments to footwear and kitschy accessories to build the film’s world.
“I did ‘Queen of Versailles’ before and obviously a lot of the focus was on all of the big crazy outfits I did. But one of my favorite, if not my favorite, part of doing the [movie] was the daughter characters’ outfits because I basically based it on my sister’s from back in the day. Of everyone wearing Owl pendant necklaces, we dug into those hilarious details that are so specific to that time,” he said of the 2010s nods.
Cowan, who joined the project early on and said he had a very seamless and glorious time throughout the course of filming on set, added that what he also loved about the project was traveling to a new destination — Paducah, Ky. — and being inspired by his new surroundings.
“It takes a minute as a designer to kind of remind oneself that like my job here is to not make everything look as beautiful as it can. You have to pull back because I like I can’t have all these debutante girls look like they’re going to the Met Gala. They have to look like real young women who have been shopping and bought dresses, so that was also a funny exercise,” Cowan said.
An avid cinephile of everything from horror and period films to classics and sci-fi, Cowan said he’d love to work on a range of different projects in the future.
“I think there’s a huge amount of merit to people where they really pick a linear aesthetic that they go down, but I would love to do everything from Tudor England to a storm trooper. I’m sure I’d like to do some films that are very like ‘fashion, fashion,’ but that’s also what my day to day is, so I want to challenge myself.”