photographed by Norman Jean Roy
"When
Glee started, I had no idea who Marc Jacobs was. In no way
was I a fashion person!” confesses Chris Colfer, who won a Golden Globe
Award in 2011 for his depiction of the out-and-proud high school
chorister Kurt. “I did all my shopping at my small-town Target. Maybe
if I dressed better I wouldn’t have had such a hard time in school,” he
says, laughing a little ruefully. “Now, as Kurt, I get to wear all
these amazing things, by people whose names I can’t even pronounce.”
Those “amazing things”—the singular looks that the cast sports both
on- and, increasingly, offscreen—have led, to the thrilled amazement
of Colfer and his costars, to the cast’s current role as spokespeople
for this year’s
Fashion’s Night Out,
the annual fall ritual that celebrates style and shopping, the joys of
inventing your own look and having a ball while doing so.
Admirers of the show (Gleeks, in current parlance) know that their
beloved characters express themselves not only through music—there is
also the matter of their deliciously quirky relationship to fashion,
which makes them the perfect collective headliners for FNO. “From the
beginning, I asked the costume designer to give each of these kids an
archetypal identity,” recalls Ryan Murphy, creator and executive
producer. “We didn’t want them to look like generic mall kids. Now
their looks are being copied! On the show, they don’t get to wear
designer clothes, except for Chris. In fact, people ask me all the
time, ‘Where does he get those clothes in Ohio?’ ” (Answer: He orders
them online.)
When you talk to Colfer or Lea Michele or the
other cast members, you find yourself curiously inhabiting two
worlds—one populated by successful young actors who are building their
careers with purpose and sophistication, and the other a universe of
incredibly compelling fictional characters who attend a surreal high
school somewhere in an imaginary Ohio, struggling to find their place
and defining themselves through the poetry of popular song, the way so
many of us define ourselves, especially while we are growing up. At a
sold-out
Glee Live Tour performance at the Meadowlands in New
Jersey early this summer, the audience was bursting with Gleeks proudly
exhibiting the nerd-cool (and frankly, sometimes just nerd) signifiers
of the show—thick glasses, suspenders, and T-shirts that say things
like "Bad Attitude." Many of these fans seemed—how shall we put
it?—far more like struggling New Directions recruits than lithe,
blithe Cheerios. (But then again, the two cliques mix and match on the
show with abandon, which is part of what makes
Glee so delectable.)
Don’t
expect to see off-duty cast members looking like their fictional
doppelgängers. “I would never wear a sweater with an animal face!”
laughs Lea Michele, who plays driven baby-diva Rachel, and who
confesses that she has lately developed a serious crush on Oscar de la
Renta. But Murphy puts Michele’s current sartorial confidence in
clearer perspective. “When I met Lea, she was only sort of interested
in clothes—but in the last two years she’s become a red-carpet star.
I think what happened is Lea went to an event, and someone said, ‘Oh,
you look pretty.’ It was an interesting moment for her.”
Murphy,
who admits that for him Fashion’s Night Out is “all about grooviness
and fabulousness and excitement!,” says that it is empowering for kids
all over the country to see the cast donning gorgeous ensembles and
having the time of their lives in the FNO public-service announcement
because “aspiration and integration are so important.” Kurt may be the
show’s avowed clotheshorse, but Colfer says you won’t find the
see-through ankle-length Dolce & Gabbana trench that he flaunts
during one broadcast anywhere near his closet. Actually, he says,
chuckling, it is Kevin McHale—who plays the wheelchair-bound Artie, a
character who favors grandpa sweaters and pleated mom jeans—who is the
standout style aficionado off camera. “Whenever Kevin sees me in an
outfit, he feels the fabric and looks at the label, then goes and buys
it!” Colfer says.
Sometimes those shrieking Gleeks who throng
the stage door after a performance, desperate to spy their favorites in
the flesh, are taken aback by the difference between art (or in this
case, Artie) and life. When McHale became obsessed with what he
describes as a Marc by Marc Jacobs “half-kilt thing,” he searched
boutiques until he turned one up. “I wore the hell out of it last year,
and I had it on after our show at Radio City. When I came out, the
crowd went from ‘Ooooh!’ to ‘What are you wearing?’ ”
CREDIT: Licensee shall accord Fox credit which shall appear on each use of the
Property in the following form: '"GLEE" .
& © 2011 Twentieth Century Fox
Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.'"
