Zac Posen spoke with Vogue about the process of working on the film 'The Outfit', the other projects he’s juggling, and why he sees technology and sustainability as the driving forces in fashion for the foreseeable future.
Zac Posen shuttered his label in late 2019, months before Covid ground the businesses of many of his peers to a standstill, but he did not have an idle pandemic. Thewas busy designing custom wedding dresses for brides-to-be, developing a brand that will exist partly in the metaverse, and shopping around a television series about the history of fashion with his producer friend Scoop Wasserstein. He also fell in love with the ballet dancer and choreographer Harrison Ball.
You know, really good storytelling is about dialogue and script writing, right? There has to be a bigger story than finishing the collection. The stakes have to be higher.The movie is set in mid-’50s Chicago and I think what’s interesting, what drew me to it, was this idea that it’s kind of right before ideas of futurism came into the culture. You know, it’s still traditional and he’s a Savile Row tailor working in Chicago in like the mid-’50s.
You know, we had to take things into consideration that I’ve never had to when working on fashion shows. Like how blood—I’m not giving anything away—how blood will absorb and filter through through white shirting.What was really cool for me was to see how clothing has a transformative quality in the filmmaking process to support the actors and their performance. This was not about making a costume-y period piece.