Christian Cowan manifested his Broadway debut.
“It was a dream of mine,” says the fashion designer, standing on the mezzanine level of the St. James Theatre. “I was going around town for two-and-a-half years basically telling everyone, ‘I really want to do a Broadway show.’”
One of those people was producer Bill Damaschke. “And then two years later he was like, ‘Hey, can I call you? I think I have something that would be perfect for you.’”
That something perfect was the new musical “The Queen of Versailles,” inspired by photographer Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 documentary of the same title about billionaire Jackie Siegel. In the mid-2000s, Siegel and her husband David Siegel were in the process of building America’s largest private residence in Florida, modeled after the Palace of Versailles. And then the 2008 recession hit, and things went awry. Almost two decades later, the house is nearing completion.
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The hit documentary inspired the creation of a musical stage version of Siegel’s story, attracting some major star talent along the way. Following the musical’s world premiere in Boston last year, “The Queen of Versailles” lands on Broadway with legendary actress Kristin Chenoweth at the helm and F. Murray Abraham costarring as David Siegel.
Cowan, known for his love of showstopping creations, relished the chance to bring Siegel’s over-the-top sensibility to the stage. In fact, the looks are woven strategically into the plot.
Chenoweth’s first of many costumes in the show is a hot-pink feathered minidress. “I wanted it to be like, bam, here is Jackie Siegel,” says Cowan, pulling the opening costume from a rack. “It’s pink, it’s tight, it’s cleavage, it’s sparkly, it’s short. It’s just everything Jackie is,” he continues, before turning attention to the back of the garment: three oversize clamp clips down the back of the dress.
“She turns around, and I think it gives a snippet into some themes of the show where the dress is unfinished. It’s got clamps on the back, because she never got it fitted,” Cowan adds. “And everyone in the audience laughs.”
The musical is set in the grandeur of Jackie Siegel’s world and told through her lens. “She’s kind of this exotic bird amongst normal birds,” says Cowan, describing the supporting characters who flesh out the vision, including a fleet of builders, plastic surgeons and her own family. “You really play off the contrast throughout the show. To show that she’s so deep in the non-reality of what she’s after.”
Case in point: Jackie’s construction site costume is a bright green bedazzled and fringed short jumpsuit with matching high-heel boots, and a bedazzled orange hard hat bearing a rhinestone “J.” “She’s brimming with the vision, even though everything’s still plaster boards and steel girders,” Cowan says. “She is living the fantasy no matter what, and she’s focused on building that brand of Queen of Versailles.”
When Siegel pays a visit to the real Versailles in the show, she travels in full Parisian cosplay, complete with a beret and a — fake — Birkin bag rendered as the French flag with blue, white and red rhinestones. “It’s just everything you could imagine an overly excited American tourist visiting Versailles would wear,” Cowan says, as the bag is displayed on a chair surrounded by other accessories and ephemera from the show, placed during load-in and waiting to be relocated to the costume shop backstage.
A few of Siegel’s outfits in the show do reflect reality: the hot pink fitted gown with gold “Queen of Versailles” sash is a riff of the dress that Jackie wears in her Sundance documentary, and there’s a version of Siegel’s actual wedding dress.
”You want to epitomize the character, and you also want to make it Broadway friendly. We amp it up a little bit, while also being respectful and genuine to the character who’s going to sit there and watch it,” says Cowan, adding that he got an approving cosign from Siegel herself. “We are kind of cut from the same fabric of the things we love,” he adds.
In the lead-up to creating the costumes, Cowan visited Siegel at her Orlando, Fla., home and got a tour of her closet, which features two floors, a bed, paintings everywhere and a stripper pole.
“It was a massive inspiration to be able to delve into her closet,” Cowan says. “She’s a lover of texture, which I really tried to show in this show. She’s a lover of animal prints and tweeds and crystals and feathers, and she loves maximalism.”
Outfits span high to low, with 2000s-coded denim shorts, tank tops with exposed neon bra straps and platform flip-flops. “I wanted to toe the line of reflecting the real-life character and her intricacies that we have come to love from studying her, but then also making sure that applies to Kristin. And then also making sure it works on stage,” he says. “You see her in many different time periods throughout the show, and so I really wanted them to feel believable and real.”
In addition to spanning Siegel’s more sartorially demure younger years, the musical also takes a detour into a totally different period: the 18th-century world of Marie Antoinette’s French court. “Two periods, and somehow the 2000s feel more jarring than that,” says Cowan, adding that creating those ornate period costumes were a project highlight.
After the Boston debut last summer, Cowan has been fine-tuning the looks in anticipation of its Broadway run, leaning into more of a high-low sartorial contrast, and eliminating some of Siegel’s more fashion-forward looks.
“None of the outfits can be too chic or too fashionable, because that isn’t the character,” Cowan says. “She’s a lover of fashion. She’s a lover of luxury, but it’s not someone who’s editing everything perfectly. So that was also something that I wanted to tweak and be like, no — we need to put more wild necklaces with that outfit, or giant pendants.”
Just like the House of Versailles, it’s still a work in progress.
Launch Gallery: Backstage with Christian Cowan and His Designs for “Queen of Versallies” on Broadway
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