How SNL recreated Kamala Harris’ white suit in under 90 minutes

When Kamala Harris took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday around 8:30 p.m. to address the nation as the newly elected vice president, she did so wearing a white Carolina Herrera suit that winked. eye to the suffragette movement.

In New York City, the cast and crew of “Saturday Night Live” were in the middle of a dress rehearsal for tonight’s show, leaving producer and costume designer Tom Broecker and wardrobe supervisor Dale Richards with little time to recreate the look of Maya Rudolph to wear for the open cold.

“A member of my team worked on each piece: the blouse, the jacket and the pants,” Richards told PopSugar.

Broecker added, “My assistant started capturing screenshots of everything [Harris] wore so we could get all the details – the shoes, jewelry, hair, makeup, blouse and costume. By 9pm we had gathered all of the ‘research’ photos and started browsing our inventory to see if there was anything that might work. All the shops in town had been closed for hours. There was no way to buy this look anywhere except in our back rooms.

Thankfully, the costume department had purchased a white suit the year before, ironically for a skit in which Cecily Strong played Melania Trump. It had never been worn, so the “SNL” team quickly got to work on the alterations and also made an identical ponytail blouse using a box of cream charmeuse fabric they had under the hood. hand.

“It would take an incredible job to recut a double-breasted suit into a single-breasted suit, but I work with the most incredible tailors in the world,” Broecker said. “They put the jacket on Maya’s mannequin in the office and went to work, like in the movie ‘Cinderella.’ Eighty minutes later, and four exhausted tailors, Maya had a fitting. It was perfect and she was ready to take the stage.

With the exception of one last detail: “As she left her dressing room, I realized she didn’t have her pin on her lapel,” recalls the costume designer. “Her dresser ran into the closet room to retrieve her pin. I will say this: nowhere else in the world could this happen.

And lest you think Harris’ team informed “SNL” of their victory speech outfit, guess again. “Even if we had a contact in the Kamala camp, by the time they told us who designed it, the stores would be closed and it would be far too late to get any,” Richards told PopSugar.

Broecker added that the challenge of creating a mirror image of the outfit in minutes would have been “an impossible task for any place other than ‘Saturday Night Live.’ We have the best people in the world. “