Dressing Edna

This week: Rita Ryack, costume designer for “Hairspray,” talks about what went into creating John Travolta’s wardrobe as Edna Turnblad.

COSTUME design is an illustrative, interpretive, collaborative art. I think of costumes as foreground elements in cinematic paintings that change from frame to frame. Costumes define the characters within the special context of each film.

John’s Edna, unlike her previous incarnations, is a formerly shapely party girl who is deeply shy about her weight gain, and whose world has become limited to Edna’s Occidental Laundry in the claustrophobic Turnblad apartment.

With daughter Tracy’s encouragement, Edna breaks out and recovers her confidence and inner bombshell by the end of the movie, and her clothes tell the story of that journey.

John was passionate about his Edna being an authentic female character: No drag. No boas, gratuitous glitz, frills, extravagant focus-stealing details, cartoony prints or colors. And he didn’t want to be a dumpy grandma-type -- no florals, no shapeless muumuus -- although in his prosthetic, he was a size 12x. Not easy to find 12x pantyhose and 54 DD brassieres!

Dressing Edna within the limits of her prosthetic fat suit was a challenge. John’s prosthetic had to define Edna’s hourglass silhouette, and her clothes had to make her sexy without baring John’s upper arms or much decolletage. I actually corseted the fat suit to give Edna a figure -- albeit a 300-pound figure.

There’s a great reveal of her foundation garments in Mr. Pinky’s dressing room. Her house dresses are simple, utilitarian uniforms. Her clothes recede into the walls, then change from drab to colorful as Edna transforms. I was lucky to find real period fabrics for her housedresses.

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To view a scene, go to TheEnvelope.com.