Stereophonic Jeans
A conversation with costume designer Enver Chakartash.
Last August, alone in New York City with one night free to do anything I dreamed, I bought a ticket to ‘Stereophonic’ at the Golden Theater. It had already won a bunch of Tonys, including Best Play, plus my very musical friend Clarissa had said it was really great. Will Brill from Arcade Fire wrote all the original songs, she told me, exclamation mark. This I had to see.
‘Stereophonic’ tracks the evolution of a British-American rock band as they record their next album in 1976. It is sexy and funny and Fleetwood Mac-adjacent, and the music – though it’s not a musical – is incredible. Watching it, I fell in love. In love, with everything and everyone (well, maybe not Peter, he’s kind of a narcissist), but the band’s whole world, especially the costumes: A masterclass in authentic 70s style, complete with the coolest and, it turns out, custom jeans.
I always say – the purpose of my newsletter is not to break news but to deepen our understanding and appreciation for jeans. I pursued this interview with ‘Stereophonic’s’ London-born costume designer, Enver Chakartash, for months because I suspected they could teach us all something about sourcing and re-making 70s-era denim. What a treat it was to speak to Enver, who also designed the streetwear-inspired costumes for Romeo + Juliet, now playing at the Circle in the Square Theater in New York. “I really tried to find clothes that felt lived-in and believable and not costume-y,” they told me about ‘Stereophonic.’ Easier said than done.
Excuse me while I fan-girl out – Enver’s work and this interview is full of resources, craft, and heart. I hope you like it.
Jane: I understand you did a lot of vintage sourcing for the show. What was that process like? And where did you go?
Enver: When we did ‘Stereophonic’ Off-Broadway, we sourced a bunch of vintage denim, but of course it was so small it didn't fit a lot of the actors. So, when we went to Broadway and we had a bit more money, I actually had five pairs of jeans made.
There’s this really great store in New York called Ritual Vintage, and I reached out to the owner, [Stacy Iannacone] because I had heard through some other costume people that she has an amazing collection of 70s clothing. [Stacy] invited me to her house in upstate New York where she has this garage full of 70s vintage, and where we found all of this amazing dead stock denim. A lot of the research I had done was of rock stars, and so I was really just looking for things that people who worked in the music industry would gravitate towards.
I actually found a lot of pieces that were the inspiration for what we then made. For example, I had a very specific idea for Charlie's jeans. In my research I had some great images of people in the 70s with patches on their jeans. And at this other vintage store called Seven Wonders in New York I found these jeans that had patches on them, but the fabric was so old that they weren't actually wearable for the run of a show. But they fit [Andrew R. Butler, who plays] Charlie, perfectly, and so I worked with a denim maker in New York called Jimmy McBride who does a lot of denim workwear for TV and film. He made those jeans (pictured below), the ones [that Charlie wears], that have the patches sewn on.
Jane: I’d have never thought those jeans weren’t vintage. They look completely authentic on stage.
Enver: Yeah, five of them are made from scratch. We just tried to copy the jeans we had shopped, and then distress them and make them look right, like they were from that period.
Jane: What about the pairs that the character Reg wears?
Enver: Reg, he has three pairs of jeans in the show. He changes his pants three times and they're all different – one is from a leisure suit set, one has these incredible seams in the front. We bought those because [Will, from the original cast] is so tiny. The vintage sizes actually fit him.
Jane: Did you make any other denim pieces?
Enver: We had some really beautiful costumes that we didn't use, things we made. Like I found a really incredible piano shawl that was purple and white, and we were like, ‘What would Stevie Nicks do?’ And we cut a hole in it and made it into a skirt, and that didn't make it into the show. There is a denim halter top in the show that we made. When I spoke to [the writer David Adjmi] about the character Diana, he was like, ‘I think maybe she makes some of her clothes.’ So I felt it was important to have one piece made in the vein of her making it for herself. We actually took an old pair of jeans – and originally I wanted to have the metal buttons as part of the design, but it didn't quite work for what we needed it to do – but I took an old pair of jeans and draped a halter top, and we lined it with a really beautiful 70s striped cotton so that it just felt really authentic. You can’t see the lining when she’s wearing it, but it’s there. We sewed these red buttons onto it. That was really thought about. Like, ‘What would Diana make?’
Jane: That's so smart. I'm wondering, making jeans is a science. Was there anything that you learned or that you picked up in the process of making those jeans with Jimmy?
Enver: Yeah. I mean, so Jimmy made two pairs of jeans, and then this costume shop called John Kristiansen, they made three pairs of jeans. The woman who made them, her name is Valentina. And then, honestly, once the jeans were in the building and on stage, we tweaked them a bunch. We took in the leg, we were like, ‘Oh, this needs to be tighter through the thigh.’ When you make anything for theater or for film or TV, you have to make every decision. What color is the thread? How wide is the stitch? How far away from the seam is the top stitch? Is the top stitch on the outside or the inside [of the leg]? What design do you want on the back pocket? So for each of those decisions, I did a lot of research to make sure that everybody's jeans looked different. We were building them, making sure no one had the same wash, no one had the same stitch color. I did research on Levi's stitch patterns from the 70s and decided, ‘Okay, who's going to have that detail?’ There was a big learning curve in that for me.
Jane: I love that so much. Each person had their own signature.
Enver: Yeah, totally. Simon's jeans, they have the top-stitching on the outside of the leg, and then Peter's jeans have the top stitching on the inside. I'm sure you know how jeans have one side [of the leg] that’s usually top-stitched and the other isn’t.
Jane: Yeah, one side's a felled seam and thicker. You can see it. It’s the inside seam that's usually felled.
Enver: Exactly. So for Simon, we did the outseam as felled. And for Peter, we did the inside felled, just to create some differentiation. And even the size of people's hems. To the wardrobe team at the theater, I was like, ‘Let's just change some of the hems so they're not all the same width.’ Getting into that minutia is always fun for me.
Jane: Do you wear jeans?
Enver: This is so wild. I don't. I never liked the way it felt, ever. Actually, I used to wear this denim jumpsuit that's like vintage JCPenney from the 70s that I used to wear every day, but I don't wear it anymore. I don't really wear denim.
Jane: Where did you study costume design?
Enver: I actually didn't study costume design, but interestingly, I studied drama and I had an amazing costume design teacher at my school. I went to Bristol University. And the department there is very theater-making-heavy. You make shows and then you have to design them. So I was making and designing costumes at school. My parents and my grandparents, they had a manufacturing factory in London. My grandmother is a very formidable tailor and my grandfather is a pattern maker. I kind of grew up in the whole world of making things.
Jane: And so how did you find your way then to costume design from studying drama?
Enver: Well, so I wanted to go to art school and study fashion, and my parents wouldn't let me because they worked in fashion and what they did had become kind of obsolete. You couldn't really manufacture clothes in London anymore unless you were doing something really special, like Blackhorse Lane denim or something like that. [My parents] were like, '‘It’s a dead end, you shouldn't do it.’ And so I went to drama school instead. And literally on day one we did little introductions to all of the design elements. And for costume we had to make a Victorian dress out of paper and trash bags in 20 minutes. That was the introduction. And so I made the dress. And then the costume design teacher, her name is Pam Tait, she was like, ‘You're a costume designer, this is what you're supposed to do.’ She really championed me and supported me all through my time in college.
Jane: How amazing to have found someone like that.
Enver: I know, I mean, she really changed the course of my life. I think she saw things that I didn't and that I might not have chosen for myself. I guess I just never thought of [costume design] as an option. But she really pushed me down that road. And in my last year of school, she helped me set up meetings with agents. She really pushed me to do it.
Jane: And so, how did you land and approach ‘Stereophonic?’
Enver: ‘Stereophonic’ was such an amazing project when we originally made the show Off-Broadway. The way that I work is very collaborative with the actors, and because of the budget limitations we had when we first made the show Off-Broadway, I really tried to do pulls from vintage dealers and fittings. I had obviously done huge amounts of research for the characters, but in the fittings we really discovered what the outfits were. I built everybody’s closets.
Even on the first day of tech, I told the stage manager, ‘I know what everybody starts the show in, but I don't know where they go from there.’ I have all the clothes for each person, and they've all been fitted to their bodies, but because of the way the show actually moves in the space, I had no idea when people were changing [clothes] until we were really building it on the stage. That's when we made all the decisions: Now you put this on, and now you wear this. I really tried to develop a personal sensibility for each of the actors and the characters they were playing. I tried to really think about where they would shop. And there's also, I don't know if you picked up on this, but the American members of the band, I think they have more of an American sensibility than the British members of the band who have perhaps some more European pieces. Like, maybe they went vintage shopping in Italy on holiday. That kind of thing. I was really trying to do a kind of nuanced storytelling through the choices in the clothes and the denim and the washes of the denim.
Jane: I just love that. I love all of the thought that you put into it. I didn't notice the difference between the Americans and the Brits, but I did feel how rich the costumes and the jeans were. I'm still amazed that so many of them were new. They all looked real. The other thing I love is the way Diana – I saw it with Sarah Pigeon – the way she walks in those jeans (pictured above), the way her body moves as she leaves the studio and goes through that door she’s slamming all the time.
Enver: So those jeans are vintage, and then we made a double of them. But those jeans we found from the owner of Ritual, and yeah, they're so great. And weirdly, the back is elasticated. It's a really funny pair of jeans.
Jane: Oh, weird.
Enver: Yeah, it looks like maybe somebody made them. But then [that character, Diana,] has two other pairs of pants, which are both vintage and they're both men's pants. And we kind of discovered in the fittings that she looked really great in menswear. So we ended up putting two pairs of men's pants on her.
Jane: Right. She doesn't wear the jeans the whole time, and then at the end, she's in a more glamorous dress. Her whole look evolves with her career.
Enver: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Jane: In fashion there’s a renewed interest in patchwork jeans, and in piecing and upcycling and people making new jeans out of old jeans. It’s all coming back to the 70s. I was just talking recently to the woman who is in charge of all the denim at Madewell, and she was saying how the 70s were such an important time for women and women's denim in particular, and women's liberation and women's voices. I think it’s really interesting and maybe not a coincidence that this era is trending again.
Enver: Totally. Oh, and one thing to say really quickly that you just made me think of by talking about this – when we were shopping for the actual denim for the jeans, I was like, ‘No stretch.' It can't have stretch in it. It has to be as much of a woven as possible because again, it felt like thinking about the kind of revolution of jeans at that moment and thinking even about women's bodies. It was like, ‘How do you make somebody's body look amazing in a pair of jeans when there's no stretch in it?’
Jane: That leads to very specific shapes, right? You had to have shapes that could move a little.
Enver: Exactly. And so then you come up with these really interesting fits. That first pair of jeans that you love so much for Diana, they were made out of panels and the seams are not on the side. They're in the front and the back. It helps the leg wrap around the body, I think.
Jane: That's so interesting. With denim, I never stop learning.
Enver: For sure.
‘Stereophonic’ is written by David Adjmi and directed by Daniel Aukin, with original songs by Will Butler and costumes by Enver Chakartash. It is now in its final weeks at the Golden Theater. Shows end January 12, 2025. Get tickets – quick! – here.
Feeling inspired? Here are four 70s-style flares – including the Stella McCartneys I personally splurged on this fall (best purchase and now 40% off) – to spark a groovy mood.
I’m flying home from London right now. November’s Jean-Adjacent is coming next and will include travel content. A huge thank you to Enver for sharing their creative process with us. As always, thank you all for reading and trusting me with your jean things. Denim forever.
Jane
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Wow, you always being us people, things and places we otherwise would never have encountered. Thank you once again! XX
Great interview! I love all the denim minutiae and hearing all the details and choices the costume designer had to think about.