Before he designed costumes for \u201cHamilton,\u201d \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d Paul Tazewell made puppets. One of them \u2014 a handmade version of Little Red Riding Hood \u2014 sits near the beginning of “Crafting Character: the Costumes of Paul Tazewell,” the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry’s new retrospective. It’s a fitting introduction to a designer whose career has always been rooted in storytelling.<\/p>\n
Running through September 7 in the museum’s Griffin Studio, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Dr., the exhibition traces Tazewell’s creative journey from childhood experiments in Akron, Ohio, to some of the most recognizable stage and screen productions of the last three decades. Costumes share space with sketches, research materials and personal artifacts, all accompanied by Tazewell’s own narration.<\/p>\n
Born in Akron in 1964 to parents who worked in the arts and sciences, Tazewell studied at Pratt Institute, the North Carolina School of the Arts and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before beginning a career in costume design in the early 1990s. His work on \u201cBring in ‘Da Noise, Bring in ‘Da Funk\u201d earned his first Tony Award nomination. He would later win a Tony for \u201cHamilton\u201d and, most recently, become the first Black man to win the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for his work on \u201cWicked.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibition, the first of its kind for Tazewell, is less interested in celebrating his awards than in tracing the path that led him there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to tell the story of Paul Tazewell\u2019s creative arc \u2026 that whole journey of where he began to learn to be creative, what sparked his interest in working on costumes and how he himself evolved as a costume designer,\u201d said Voula Saridakis, the exhibition\u2019s curator.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The exhibition opens with a video of Tazewell explaining the difference between fashion and costume design while posing a simple question: \u201cWho am I?\u201d That question hangs over much of the show, which is as much about garment construction and costuming as it is about history and identity.<\/p>\n
The first gallery reinforces that idea through Tazewell’s early work. Alongside drawings and marionettes, visitors learn how his mother made toys from fabric scraps, paper and other available materials. The practice not only normalized creativity in the household but inspired Tazewell to begin making puppets of his own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, the exhibition’s biggest draws are the costumes themselves. Glinda’s pink bubble dress, worn by Ariana Grande in \u201cWicked,\u201d and Elphaba’s Emerald City gown, worn by Cynthia Erivo, are among the show’s highlights. Finished garments are paired with sketches, research materials and design notes, allowing visitors to follow a costume from concept to screen or stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shape how you see someone before they speak a word\u2026That\u2019s what fascinates me: how simple a fabric can tell us who is a hero and who is wicked,\u201d Tazewell said in a TED talk about his practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garments are designed not only to communicate character but to withstand the practical demands of performance, from rapid costume changes to physically demanding choreography. Elphaba’s black gown, for example, draws inspiration from the flora and fungi of Oz, helping establish her connection to the natural world while setting her apart from the gleaming Emerald City around her. The exhibition also shows how the costume had to function under unusual strain: Cynthia Erivo sang \u201cDefying Gravity\u201d live while suspended in the air on a broomstick, requiring a garment engineered to carry the weight of both the performance and the illusion.<\/p>\n
A recurring theme throughout the exhibition is how often Tazewell has worked on stories centered on belonging, exclusion and identity, from \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cThe Wiz\u201d to \u201cHamilton\u201d and \u201cWest Side Story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Discussing his approach to Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d Tazewell explained that he wanted the costumes to communicate the cultural differences between the Jets and the Sharks without reducing either group to a stereotype. His designs draw from working-class New York, Latin American textiles and the distinct visual identities of both communities while emphasizing the larger social forces shaping their conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the Jets, I leaned into blue-collar toughness \u2026 the uniform for boys rooted in concrete,\u201d Tazewell said in his TED talk. \u201cFor the Sharks, I turned to Latin textiles, vibrant florals, colors inspired by sun and sea \u2026 I let the colors bleed together because even in conflict, cultures mix \u2014 the borders are never as fixed as we pretend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As remarkable as the costumes themselves are, what stands out is Tazewell\u2019s unwavering relationship to his identity and glimpses into his creative process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The question that greets visitors at the beginning of the exhibition \u2014 \u201cWho am I?\u201d \u2014 lingers throughout the show. By the end, Tazewell’s story invites a broader question: Who are we? \u201cCrafting Character\u201d offers a cache of tools and possibilities, modeled after Tazewell’s ability to draw inspiration from his immediate surroundings. In doing so, it encourages visitors to begin crafting definitions of their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrafting Character: the Costumes of Paul Tazewell\u201d is on view at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry through September 7, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source hpherald.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before he designed costumes for \u201cHamilton,\u201d \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cWest Side Story,\u201d Paul Tazewell made puppets. One of them \u2014 a handmade version of Little Red Riding Hood \u2014 sits near the beginning of “Crafting Character: the Costumes of Paul Tazewell,” the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry’s new retrospective. It’s a fitting introduction to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2450776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[349474,354760,374394],"class_list":["post-2450775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-arts_and_entertainment","tag-evening_digest","tag-exhibitions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Griffin-MSI-exhibit-traces-Paul-Tazewells-career-Arts.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2450777,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450775\/revisions\/2450777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2450776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}