Gere admitted he didn’t know much about the style. He was more familiar with the music, as he listened to a lot of rock and post-punk bands of the day like The Clash and The Cure. “The fashion was really something that I had to learn,” he said. “I’m mostly only wearing leather pants in the show. It took some convincing…I wasn’t so confident, but over the course of six months of shooting, I became attached to leather pants!”
Campbell was pretty familiar with the era’s pop culture, cinema, and music thanks to his family. “It’s my parent’s generation so it was an enormous influence in my house. But for reference, I remember mostly poring through old photo albums—embarrassing as they may be—and joking about their looks to my parents,” he said. “As soon as I sent them photos from the set of me dressed in ‘80s clothes, they made fun of me right back. I’ve become pretty fond of the clothes and got very accustomed to the head-to-toe ‘80s apparel.”
Evan Rachel Wood, playing Debbie Schaffer’s alcoholic mother, indulged in the chance to wear more glamorous and vintage ensembles than any other cast member. “My character is an amalgamation and she’s an homage to the late ‘70s style, so we weren’t quite into the bright pastel radical part of the ‘80s yet, and I loved it,” Wood told Vogue, clad in an archival Dior gown by John Galliano. “I wore vintage Saint Laurent and Chanel. The costume [designers] knocked it out of the park. They really had to pull the most chic clothes because my character is an ex-supermodel. She’s dressed to the nines even when she’s sitting at home.”
“The hair is a main character on the show,” Gerber added. “Everyone had the most accurate hair thanks to Valerie Jackson, the head of the hair department.” For Warner, she even dyed her hair to resemble Debbie Harry’s iconic platinum blonde color. “I was a platinum blonde before, but I went extra, extra platinum. I have blonde blindness now. I’m like, ‘I’m not blonde enough. I need more bleach,’” she laughed. “My scalp is definitely in pain, but it’s worth it.”
Roth, the fashion trailblazer and seven-time Tony Award-winning producer, is unrecognizable in his television debut as Steven Reinhardt, a personal assistant who dutifully facilitates his sleazy Hollywood movie-producer boss’s schedule and extracurricular activities. Roth donned a striking wig that he created himself, inspired by David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth number and David Sylvian, the lead singer of the art-rock band Japan. Roth also collaborated with Murphy on designing a look that nodded to the New Wave movement and old runways. “I printed out every runway show of 1981,” Roth said. “I like to do my fashion homework. We started with Saint Laurent—the human, not the brand—and then it evolved.” The result sees some sublime jumpsuits, in particular. “I love creating characters and I think of them as all facets of me,” Roth continued. “We are not pretending, we are revealing different aspects of what’s in me. That’s what I do in my fashion life, but this is really a completely different experience. He’s a different human than me. He looks different, he talks differently and playing this character has been the dream of my life.”
