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By Kathleen O'Steen
The last time Las Vegas was this in vogue, Frank, Dean, Sammy and Peter were swingin’ at the Sands.
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| Lucky's Gardell and Robinson |
The year was 1960, and the infamous Rat Pack — Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford — were living la vida loca, filming the high-flying casino caper Ocean’s Eleven by day and performing at the Sands Hotel by night. Las Vegas was the ultimate time-out for bad boys, and these dapper dudes did it like no one else, oozing charisma and espousing an easygoing, elegant élan. To this day, their style — snap-brim hats, ties slightly loosened, bourbon-on-the-rocks-if-you-please — have done as much to imbue the city with its sultry, black-tie character as have the scorching desert winds.
Forty-three years later, Las Vegas is still the royal domain for rascality, but it has gone to great expense to reinvent itself. Casinos now compete with museums, family attractions, shopping and restaurants galore. Which in turn begs the question, if not naughty, what is Las Vegas style?
With two prime-time shows currently set in Vegas — CSI and Lucky — and a third premiering this fall, appropriately titled Las Vegas, it is a question that many have had to answer, expecially those in the ranks of costume design and supervision.
"The creators of Las Vegas wanted viewers to see the city as the melting pot that it is," says Amy Stofsky, costume designer on the new NBC show, which stars James Caan and Josh Duhamel. "You’ve got old women in sweatsuits standing right next to high rollers in tuxedos, kids in T-shirts next to ladies of the night." And those are just the folks at the quarter slots.
To give the show its melting-pot aura, Stofsky took great care in dressing the casino dwellers, but her primary concern was the leads: how would she make them stand out? It came down, she decided, to an air of sexuality with a sense of sophistication.
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| CSI's Marg Helgenberger |
Caan, as Big Ed Deline, an ex–CIA man running casino surveillance, and Duhamel, as go-to guy Danny McCoy, work the crowds in perfectly cut suits by Hugo Boss and Armani. "Okay, maybe these guys couldn’t really afford these designer suits," Stofsky allows, "but for our purposes they have to look as put-together as possible."
Pit boss Nessa Holt, played by British actress Marsha Thomason, "is both smart and savvy," the designer says. "Nothing gets past her — she is able to get by in a man’s world." No dresses and heels here — Nessa rules her realm in a white, form-fitting tux. "That gives her an ice queen effect," Stofsky says.
Then there’s Nikki Cox as Mary Connell, Duhamel’s gal pal. As a hotel escort — not a hooker, Duhamel explains in the pilot — she has to look fabulous and sexy. Dresses leave little to the imagination. Stofsky puts it this way: "Let’s just say she’s the very, very hot girl next door."
Pushing the boundaries of sexuality is key to Vegas style, designers say, whether they’re dressing casino denizens or detectives.
Marg Helgenberger, who stars as investigator Catherine Willows on the CBS hit CSI, plays a professional who is very polished, very serious and, in the same breath, sexy. "This is a woman who’s no shrinking violet," says CSI costume designer Eileen Cox Baker. "She does very well in a line of ready-to-wear clothing from Dolce & Gabbana. We put her in jackets, pants and shirts that, together, look effortless."
Helgenberger’s costar, William Petersen, also dons designer labels, including Tommy Bahama and Ermenegildo Zegna, in his role as senior forensics officer Gil Grissom. "The ensemble pieces are put together to look like these characters just pull them out of their closet every day," Cox Baker says. "But obviously they’re the best-dressed crime scene investigation unit ever."
CSI is mostly shot in the L.A. suburb of Santa Clarita, with occasional trips to Vegas, but Cox Baker can’t always count on casino razzle-dazzle to help her create the Sin City look. "There have been two times when I’ve had the opportunity to outfit showgirls," she says. "For one of them, I bought silver bikinis and found these bead necklaces that I then applied to the bustline and crotch. When we were done, it looked like it had been hand-beaded."
With added boas, gloves and jewelry — including tiaras — Cox Baker had only one wish when she was done — that the outfits made it into the final version of the show.
Aside from the bust-and-crotch detail, the most challenging aspect of her job, Cox Baker says, is outfitting corpses. "When someone dies — and usually someone does in every show — that corpse needs six to eight versions of the same costume, each in varying stages. Several need to stay clean for the opening stunt, then we need two to three bloody ones after the killing. No one realizes what a hidden cost that is."
The costs of gambling — financial and emotional — are at the heart of the FX series Lucky. A recent addition to the lineup of the basic-cable net, the half-hour serio-comedy stars John Corbett as a compulsive gambler who wins $1 million in a poker tournament but loses it — and his wife — within a year. Lucky, as he’s known, wants to beat his addiction, but the lure of the tables is sometimes too strong.
"Lucky has to look totally unique," says costume designer Jyl Moder, "because he is a unique person."
Trying to take him far away from his previous series role as Sarah Jessica Parker’s laid-back boyfriend on HBO’s Sex and the City ("He was too T-shirty on that show," she says), Moder decided to give Corbett a sleek, Elvis-like appeal. All the shirts she designs for him have high collars; she pairs them with dark, straight-lined pants and jackets. Colors are not the typical desert mauves and tans, but those of a man who frequents the night: burgundy, blue and black.
"He needs to look cool and he needs to look lucky," Moder says. "He’s got to have a bit of flash."
Of course a guy who is often down on his luck could not afford such hand-tailored outfits, nor would he necessarily wear wool-and-silk ensembles in the desert — but, hey, this is television.
"We try to make the characters look real, but viewers want to see them in clothes that make them look great," Stofsky says. "In Las Vegas, I even designed the hotel uniforms because when I saw real hotel uniforms, I thought they were a little too old-fashioned. So I updated them. For the women who work in the casino, I put them in little halter tops and added sequins to their short skirts to give them a little oomph."
For the car jockeys, Stofsky had a brainstorm. "I thought, if a guy is getting all of these tips, he needs cargo pants [with lots of pockets] to put the tips in. So I dressed my valets like that, which gave it a hipper feel."
Perhaps, as the city continues to reinvent itself, Vegas could learn a thing or two from Hollywood.
KATHLEEN O’STEEN is a Los Angeles writer. |
