From Sketch to Stage: Inside the Minds of the 2025 Tony Nominees for Best Costume Design of a Musical

From the dancers and musicians that lit up the social clubs of 1950s Havana, to robots sitting idle in a near-future South Korea, to undead divas with a thirst for glamour, this year's Tony nominees for Best Costume Design of a Musical have dressed characters that span continents, travel through time and even defy the laws of physics.

Clint Ramos (Maybe Happy Ending), Paul Tazewell (Death Becomes Her), Catherine Zuber (Just in Time), Gregg Barnes (BOOP!) and Dede Ayite (Buena Vista Social Club) have all found striking ways to tell vastly different stories in fabric and color, and they've offered Broadway.com a peek inside the creative process that got them a ticket to the big show. Read on to learn their sartorial secrets.  

DEDE AYITE - BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB

Tony nominee Natalie Venetia Belcon, as Buena Vista Social Club’s Omara, appears on stage lit up in Dede Ayite’s bright yellows, purples and greens, accented by her hair’s signature red flower. It’s a look that makes you ask, who is that woman? “The costume's able to capture a sense of dignity, a sense of resilience and a sense of joy before we go on the journey with her,” says Ayite. “Overall, what was important for me was to provide a sense of home using the colors, textures, silhouettes, just so it sets you in a specific time and place.” Havana 1996, to be exact—when the real Omara Portuondo lent her legendary vocals to the beloved Buena Vista Social Club album.

“She's such a vibrant person, so I really took the time to look at her performances and how she dresses in real life,” Ayite says of the real Omara. “At the same time, it's important for me for the clothes not to feel as if it was a documentary piece as much as to feel alive and to move and swirl, and for you to feel the energy coming off of the bodies as you watch them in space.”

She highlights a costume worn by ensemble member Angelica Beliard for the same reason. “I love this garment for its flow, for the effortlessness of the silhouette, for the details.” She’s particularly fond of the elements that add a human touch. “If you look at the bodice, you'll see these fabric strips that are connected by tiny threads. That's called the ‘faggoting detail,’ and that is important to me because the garment is able to highlight, in a subtle way, the beauty of a pastime where things were hand touched.”

From the colors to the movement to the smallest stitches, a dress that could fade into the background tells an entire life story. “It captures what it means to be human; what it means to fight for what you want; what it means to fall in love; what it means to have softness and sweetness; what it means to be people who want to have their voice heard.”

GREGG BARNES - BOOP!

BOOP! opens in the black-and-white world where Betty reigns as queen of the silver screen. The tall task for designer Gregg Barnes was making a Broadway stage pop in greyscale. “When Jerry Mitchell—the director and choreographer—and I began our collaboration on BOOP!, one of the first numbers we tackled was the opening number, 'A Little Versatility,' says Barnes. “Jerry was interested in exploring a black-and-white world that paid homage to Max Fleischer’s animated shorts where Betty was first introduced, combined with the early Busby Berkley musical films that featured elaborate production numbers.”

Betty’s look (worn with flare by Tony nominee Jasmine Amy Rogers) was inspired by an original Fleischer Studios image of Presidential candidate Betty donning a top hat. "I guess I should say ‘loosely inspired,’" says Barnes, "because we didn’t stop there as you can probably tell. About a zillion beads later Betty was ready for her closeup!”

Betty draws the eye, but if you take in the full stage picture, you can see a complete narrative told in dueling color palettes. “A version of these costumes reappear in the finale—same design, but drenched in color,” Barnes notes. “I love that they play a part in the arc of the storytelling where our heroine learns about color and how in our production it is a metaphor for love.”

CLINT RAMOS - MAYBE HAPPY ENDING

In the robot love story Maybe Happy Ending, Clint Ramos’ costume designs reflect the models and personalities of the show’s two robot protagonists, Oliver and Claire.

An older model Helperbot, “Oliver’s outfit is intentionally cohesive,” says Ramos, “as if every piece came in a complete set that arrived alongside him.” His jacket is constructed with a houndstooth wool whose rust and turquoise hues rhyme with his rust-colored tie and turquoise pants. Oliver’s silhouette is also inspired by that of the classic ’50s crooners he so adores, like Nat King Cole and Chet Baker.

Claire, a more advanced Helperbot, has a more expressive wardrobe. “Unlike Oliver’s set, each piece from Claire’s wardrobe stands on its own,” says Ramos. “I imagine this more advanced model is capable of complex sartorial choices as it goes with her ability to understand and produce more nuanced human traits like irony and sarcasm.” In the world of the show, Claire’s past owner has also bestowed her with designer pieces and ultimately a sense of personal style. Her traveling outfit has a more complex color story, adding a magenta coat and an orange sling bag to her base costume.

There are still elements of her design that suggest her mechanical heart. “Her skirt is made of a pleated synthetic leather that is able to simultaneously hold a mechanical rigidity while also being able to flow with her movement.”

PAUL TAZEWELL - DEATH BECOMES HER

There are two indelible, unforgettable “looks” featured in the 1992 horror comedy Death Becomes Her: Goldie Hawn with a hole in her torso and Meryl Streep with her head detached from her spine.

As the costume designer for the new Broadway musical adaptation, Paul Tazewell—who recently won an Academy Award for his costume design work on the Wicked movie—knew he had to honor those outrageous moments of cartoonish body horror. “There's a very strong fanbase for that film,” he acknowledged. “I wanted to hold onto that absurd element and really dip into theatrical magic. The challenge was, how do we get these to theatrically work for a live audience night after night?”

When it came to creating the gaping hole in Simard’s character Helen, one of the early ideas was to embed an LED screen into the costume that would read as a “literal” hole, creating the illusion of “see-throughness”. The problem with that solution was that it was difficult for the whole audience to discern what had happened all at the same time. “Especially if you're after a joke, you want the audience to catch that joke all at the same time—otherwise you're not telling the story in a clear way.” Ultimately, the team realized it was sufficient to imply the hole with a circular opening in the dress, revealing a circle of black material. Smoke, emitting from a concealed mechanical apparatus, further sells the illusion.

As for Madeline and her gruesomely twisted neck: “The illusion starts with a body double doing an athletic tumble down the stairs. That sets it up. We get this broken body that falls to the very bottom of the stairs.” After a body swap, Madeline rises from behind the couch with a prosthetic twisted neck on. “She’s also in a rigged coat that has a mechanism in it that then allows for the head to fall basically—suggesting that her head is no longer attached to her spine. We do a head drop that closes the end moment of the first act.”

In short, “we elevated everything. The comedy is pretty broad!”

CATHERINE ZUBER - JUST IN TIME

Careers rise and fall with the tides in the Bobby Darin musical Just in Time, and eight-time Tony winner Catherine Zuber is an expert at crafting character arcs in clothing. Darin’s Act-One love interest Connie Francis is the first to climb the charts and Zuber adorns her accordingly. “The costume the super talented Gracie Lawrence wears as Connie Francis on Ed Sullivan represents her ascent to super stardom,” Zuber says. “The beehive is higher, the dress shinier. The design was inspired by fashion illustrations of the time.” (See Lawrence wear the costume in her recent appearance on Good Morning America.)

Darin’s own rise is illustrated with a subtler aesthetic. “This costume appears after the only 90-second pause in Jonathan Groff’s brilliant performance,” Zuber says about her leading man’s layered ensemble, complete with a plaid raincoat (“a popular item at the time”) a sweater vest (knit by Maria Ficalora) and a one-of-a-kind vintage skinny patterned tie, sourced from Etsy. The latter is a small, but treasured item that tested the costume team’s devotion.

“The staging involves Jonathan taking off the tie on stage after the scene,” says Zuber. “During our third preview, the tie slipped through the tracks on the stage, lost in the recesses of the automation of the set. It took the crew an hour the next day to rescue the tie before the next performance. We have since had the tie replicated by printing it digitally.”