By Lauren Emily Whalen
“Where does fashion end and costume begin?” asks Paul Tazewell, projected onscreen next to a glass case featuring one of his most recent and iconic designs: Janelle Monáe’s red-carpet look at the 2025 Met Gala. In the past year alone, Tazewell made headlines for his Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Wicked, becoming the first Black man and second Black costume designer in Oscar history to win.
Now through September, Tazewell’s decades-spanning creations are on display at Chicago’s Griffin Museum of Science + Industry’s Crafting Character: The Costumes of Paul Tazewell. The 30-minute interactive exhibit features several of Tazewell’s best-known costumes from stage and screen. The designer’s voiceover narrates his creative journey and process, accompanied by vibrant video projections throughout the exhibit’s four rooms.
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Though Tazewell is now a household name, his multifaceted career spans decades. The Akron, Ohio, native learned to sew at age nine from his mother, with whom he also created marionette puppets and dioramas, several of which are included in the exhibit. Tazewell won Best Costume Design Tony Awards for Hamilton and Death Becomes Her, as well as an Emmy for The Wiz: Live!, each on display alongside written statements about the design process.
What makes Tazewell’s costumes unforgettable
As Tazewell explains, his priority for each project is to “honor the character’s journey throughout the whole story.” Not only does he take color, texture, and each character’s inner world into account, but he also thinks about how the individual costumes will move on stage or on camera.
While pieces like the Schuyler Sisters’ dresses and Glinda’s bubble-pink gown are gorgeous, my personal favorites included the evil Carabosse’s costume from Pacific Northwest Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty, which Tazewell designed to look like a monarch butterfly emerging from a chrysalis; and Anita’s “America” dress from 2021’s film version of West Side Story, which Tazewell wanted to look like “the sun around which the scene revolves.”
Crafting Character is a powerful glimpse into an artist like no other, and is well worth the trip for those with a penchant for exquisite detail, close enough to touch (but don’t!).
Fast facts: ‘Crafting Character: The Costumes of Paul Tazewell’
From Wicked‘s bubble-pink gowns to Hamilton‘s revolutionary threads, Paul Tazewell’s costume exhibit reveals why he’s one of the most influential costume designers working today.
- Griffin Museum of Science + Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Chicago
- Through September 7, 2026
