Designing Excellent Costumes For A Whole Cast Of ‘Hacks’

“I take a lot of inspiration from my grandmother,” Kathleen Felix-Hager told me when I asked her about the origins of Deborah Vance, one of the main characters in the HBO Max series, Hacks. “My grandmother was a very flamboyant, over-the-top, larger-than-life woman. And it couldn’t be too bedazzled, too sparkly or too colorful. Her hair was done, her nails were done, her makeup was done. She always had a drink in her hand and a cigarette; she was just a big lover of life. When we were first envisioning Debra Vance, we didn’t want to make her derivative of any other women comedians of the time, though there have been references to Phyllis Diller. We really wanted to make her her own being. I did take a lot of inspiration from my grandmother. She’s no longer with us, but I have a collection of her costume jewelry and I often use some of them on Debra.”

Vance, portrayed by the fabulous Jean Smart, is someone who straddles the line between clothing and costume in her personal and professional lives, very much to the viewer’s benefit, after speaking with Felix-Hager, I know that this is the result of a ton of work behind the scenes.

“The show is really grounded in reality,” the designer continued, “we don’t ever skew towards quote-unquote costumey things unless the script specifically calls for a moment that is describing something Deborah’s wearing, like that yellow dress she wore in season three. But even that, I tried not to make it too jokey because I wanted you to believe that Deborah would actually have at one point bought it, worn it, and thought it was pretty.”

As my regular readers doubtless know, I am very interested in the line between clothing and costume. Any artist who performs their own work, as themself on stage, must have an opinion about the point when what they are wearing stops being clothing and becomes a costume. I’ve been able to explore this idea with some exceptional musicians (and more of those conversations are coming) and I believe this applies to comedians as well. The question of who they are on stage vs who they are privately, it seems inexplicably linked to the clothes. I was very lucky, because Felix-Hager, who also costumed Dexter (2011-2013) and Veep (2014-2019) was able to meet with me to discuss her work on the show, and ask her all my nosiest questions about her impeccable work. Of course I started with Deborah Vance? How could I not?

“I do think that she tries on different personas. She’s tried on different personas throughout the series. You know, when we first meet her, she’s a Vegas comedian, and that has a very specific show look; lots of sequins, long duster jackets and soft silhouettes. And then as she moved forward in her career and her life, she started wearing more tailored things on stage, more structured things. Especially in Season Four, she still wore pantsuits, but they were much more structured than we saw in Season One. We also put a lot more dresses on her in Season Four for her show looks, so you could see her great legs. But when we see her, like, when she’s not performing, I think her go-to is luxurious casual. She wears lots of silk and lots of cashmere and lots of drapey things. If she wears a blouse, it has a looser structure, but she does like a collar pop. She does dress for herself, I think, more when she’s off stage. When she’s performing or doing an event, I think she thinks of the persona that she’s selling, so to speak.”

This show is filmed (mostly) in Los Angeles but, in the world of the series, is fairly evenly split between Hollywood and Las Vegas, and the cities are effectively characters, as distinct as any spoken role, and I wondered if the location, even if it was on a set, made any changes to how Felix-Hager dressed the characters.

“I love both cities and both looks,” Felix-Hager told me, “but I’m also a born and bred Los Angeles girl. So, this is my city. We do film the show in LA, even though we do go on location to do some Vegas stuff. The majority of our show is filmed in Los Angeles, which is a treat these days. But to shoot LA and have it be LA in the show this season was really lovely. It’s kind of, you know, a love letter to our city. And even with all the fires and everything that happened this year, it was bittersweet that we were able to portray LA as like people that live in Los Angeles County, which I think was really nice. I enjoyed that a lot, not having to pretend we were somewhere else, but we can embrace everything that LA has and show it to the world.”

Ava, the brilliant Hannah Einbinder, Deborah’s partner (when they aren’t pissed at each other) is very much a Los Angeleno, much in the same way that Deborah is very much a Vegas lady. Under the watchful eyes and careful hands of the production’s costume designer, there are details about every character embedded in their apparel, little clues left for anyone curious enough to start digging.

“I mean, Hannah herself is just a really beautiful being,” Felix-Hager said. “I think that when people have that sort of light inside them, you really can’t dim it. She’s a really wonderful actor to work with. She’s grown so much from season one to season four, I think, as an actor and as a character. It was nice to see, especially for me this season, the growth of her. She’s head writer. She’s buying more ‘important pieces.’ She’s investing in different brands and trying on the more professional look. And I think it just helps because she doesn’t wear her sexuality overtly, but she is queer, she’s talked about this in life and in the show, I think it’s been nice to work with someone who’s embracing who they are in reality and also bringing a little bit of themselves to the screen too.”

Jimmy, the wonderful Paul W. Downs, grows up this season too, maybe as much as Ava does, and we see it in his wardrobe as well. Every character feels flushed out, well rounded and attended to. There is zero about anything that feels rushed or forced.

“It’s interesting, because I think about Jimmy’s backstory,” Felix-Hager explained, “and we as an audience don’t know very much about that. I have to take little clues from the tidbits that are in the script. And I mean, I do have access to Paul who plays Jimmy, so I do ask questions, but we don’t really have a backstory of his personal life. I think he really does want to step into his father’s shoes. Now that he and Kayla have this business together, he is really, you know, trying to be the boss, but he’s also trying to balance that with being a partner. And, this new dynamic of the wonderful Robbie Hoffman as the assistant. It was really fun to work with her this year also. I loved her style, and we really took a cue from her personal style in creating Randy. That was nice too. I think she felt really comfortable and it just helped her performance. I think we talked about it, that she was really happy with the choices we made for her character.”

Oh, how I wish I could have seen Kayla’s episode of Super Sweet 16, even if they cut whatever that dolphin did that convinced Kayla to kill it. The character, a wickedly funny Megan Stalter, has a feral energy which becomes more frenetic and frightening when those she interacts with begin to understand the level of chaos her entrance promises. And how incredible she’s going to look while burning whatever bridge or slaying whatever mythical beast. Kayla, the heart (and fists and wallet and mouth) of the agency and her ferocious mama bear energy is so beautifully echoed in her costumes.

“I love the character Kayla and working with Meg has been amazing,” Felix-Hager told me. “Meg is someone that becomes Kayla the minute she puts those clothes on. You have to be careful sometimes like not making someone a caricature, but in this instance, I think it really works. Like, the clothing complements her outrageousness and it makes sense because as a character, she is unfiltered. She’s a free spirit. She doesn’t really care what people think of her. Kayla’s her own being and she walks through the world very confidently and just like, ‘here I am, I’m fantastic, this is what I felt like wearing today.’ Her style is a little bit all over, the silhouettes vary, but the one constant is that she’s always the loudest in the room because her character, her persona, is loud and outspoken. So I think it matches very well.”

There is a lot to love about Hacks, but it’s the little bitty details that I always appreciate most. Helen Hunt joins the cast as Winnie in Season Four, which absolutely adds dimension to the power dynamics of the series. When I caught on that Winnie’s wardrobe, all these wonderfully loud and sometimes clashing prints, was proof of her executive strategist skills, I made some very on-brand, fashion-nerd notes in anticipation of our conversation.

“It was really amazing to work with Helen,” Felix-Hager told me. “I love her as an actor, I’ve always been a fan, and she’s so smart about character. It was really, really just a wonderful experience working with Helen. When she first came on, we had a lovely conversation on the phone. The first time I met her, I actually did the fitting at her house. And we were on the same page. YShe’s this high-powered executive and the reality is that a lot of those high-powered female executives in Hollywood wear very muted tones, very simple, classic navies and browns and black, very simple silhouettes. And for some reason, we just wanted to make her pop. I love the idea of these really strong blazers that had a very severe structure to them, but had a very interesting texture or a pattern. And she was very open to playing with pattern on pattern. It was not something that I think she gravitates towards in real life, so I think it was really helpful for her also to step into Winnie’s shoes with these powerful, strong silhouettes.”

When the patterns on Winnie’s clothing clash, it feels like a sign that she is on the hunt, that she smells weakness or blood in the water.

On the complete and total opposite end of the sanity spectrum there is Julianne Nicholson, who I cannot help but think of as ‘Dance Mom’ in this context. The actress is phenomenal, and I loved seeing her in a role like this, where she could play against type and go wild with abandon. Hacks is probably the most joyful series a person could become obsessed with and the costumes consistently become a refrain against the larger themes of an episode or season. Dance Mom is an excellent example of this designer’s prowess.

“I have to tell you,” Felix-Hager said to me, “that she was one of the most fun characters for me to have done on the show. She was so wonderful to work with. You know, Julianne’s serious,and known for such serious, dramatic roles. Her work is so incredible and she was so excited to be able to have the chance to play this complete wackadoodle character and just go all out in the comedy world. She was really game. There were a lot of TikTok videos that we looked at. And when we first meet Dance Mom, she’s very earnest and dorky and a little cliche in a way.”

“But then her evolution was really fun when she went off the rails. I mean, that fitting was bananas and we just put together outfits and laughed. There was so much joy in that fitting room. We had a ball, but she was great and she’s one of my favorite characters this season on Hacks. I take fitting photos, but we were doing videos too because she wanted to be able to make sure she could dance. So I have all these fun little videos of her on my phone, they’re little treasures for me.”

I’ve written a lot about how costume design can be a tool for the audience, the many ways that clothing can provide information to the viewer when words cannot be trusted to do so. But please understand, costume and character design are a bipartite instrument.

For an actor going to a fitting, what could be more helpful than to look into a mirror in costume, and even for a fraction of a second, to not see themself in their reflection, I asked Felix-Hager if she could talk to me about being part of that experience.

“There’s this little magic moment in the fitting room,” the designer told me, “when you’re working with an actor, especially a new character that’s coming in. You’re trying on clothes and all of a sudden the clothes become the character, or they help the actor see themselves as the character. And just all of a sudden, body language will shift and they’ll walk a little different. It’s just so informative, for me, helping to create the character and also for the actor to find the character. I guess that’s when clothing becomes costume, or when costume becomes clothing, that is when magic happens.”

All four seasons of Hacks can be seen on HBO Max. Kathleen Felix-Hager’s work on season four has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Costume Design in a Comedy Series for the 77th Emmy Awards.

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