“Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” Is a Master Class in Vintage Costuming
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Costume designer Lou Eyrich has worked alongside Ryan Murphy for 24 years. In that time, she has dressed some of the most spectacular television of the last two decades, from Glee and Pose to American Horror Story and The Politician. You’d think she’d have run out of ways to costume Murphy’s signature baroque, over-the-top productions by this point—but her choices continue to thrill and delight.
Take her and Murphy’s latest production, for instance. Feud: Capote vs. the Swans offers a peek behind the curtain at infamous writer Truman Capote’s relationship with the “society swans” of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and fashion plays more than just a supporting role. As we watch New York transition from the 1950s into the 1980s, these delightful women of the 1 percent remain steadfastly committed to keeping up appearances the way they always have. Perfectly coiffed hair, handbags more costly than the average American mortgage payment, and yes, even gloves are a part of their everyday routine—quiet luxury long before “quiet luxury” would enter the lexicon. There’s a scene where the women try to purchase gloves at an upscale department store, only to be told by a young associate that gloves have been discontinued. The horror!
We caught up with Eyrich to learn more about how she brought the infamous Swans to life, and what it was like to costume an all-star cast of iconic actresses in the process.
There are a lot of 20th-century fashion icons represented in your principal cast—and amongst the actresses, too! How would you describe the overall “look” of the show?
In a lot of shows, your focus is all over the place, because there’s so much to see, it’s almost sensory overload. But with Swans, we really used a clean palette. We didn’t do a lot of prints. Like actual swans, the costumes have an elegant grace. This was a time when women really dressed to leave the house. They were the influencers of that period.
How did you do your research?
This is my 24th year working with Ryan. The process always starts with Ryan—he will list books and movies that he wants us all to read and watch. We talk about the tone and color palette. I spoke with our director Gus Van Sant and the writer, Jon Robin Bates. I also was looking at Swans: Legends of the Jet Society, by Nicholas Foulkes—this huge coffee table book that breaks down the jet set. We all agreed on this classic style. Ryan wanted to stay very true to the decades—from the 1950s through the 1980s—and to show how society started changing and loosening up, while the Swans didn’t. They kind of stayed in their arena while the rest of New York started doing disco, then punk.
How much of the costumes were built versus sourced?
We built quite a bit. Maybe 40 percent was built, because I really do love to find and use the vintage.
So how did you find the right pieces?
We hired this fabulous researcher, who did a big dive for us into which clothes still existed, like at the Costume Institute at the Met. She was able to get into the archives and send us pictures of what was there and actually worn by [Calista Flockhart’s and Chloë Sevigny’s characters] Lee and C.Z., and that helped us branch out from there. Then we put boards together for each character and sent them off to our vintage vendors. We came across one vendor, for instance, who had a huge collection of Courrèges. Another had a lot of Mainbocher. For jewelry, we worked with the fine folks at Verdura, and they have a lot of archives of [Diane Lane’s character] Slim, [Naomi Watts’s character] Babe, and C.Z., and are really educated on the jewelry of the jet set.
Sounds like a ton of vintage. Were there any favorite diamonds in the rough that you found?
The tricky part was that each Swan has a color palette. Our Babe doesn’t wear a lot of black, so we might look for something and find it in the perfect camel color—but then camel is more C.Z.’s color. For Babe, we did find this amazing three-piece Bill Blass tweed coat with a big fur collar—although we do faux fur, so we replaced the fur. We also had a beautiful YSL hat that Lee wears to a funeral scene. And we also found these gorgeous Lanvin earrings and pendant. Little things like that would make my day—these pieces are beautiful and don’t exist anymore and are exquisite, so I get excited.
Working on this show must have been a vintage lover’s dream.
It was. But the tricky part was, you’d think there was a very big budget. But it was very hard to keep it in check with this many Swans. It’s a big cast, with a lot of changes. And it’s not just the outfit, but it’s the hat, the jewelry, the gloves, the shoes, the coat, the sunglasses. It was tricky to keep that balance.
Many of these actresses are fashion icons in their own right. Were they collaborative?
I had worked with more than half of them already, so I wasn’t totally intimidated—but every one of them is collaborative in a different way. We’d talk before each fitting.
With Chloë Sevigny, I’m working with her now on Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and I’m always in awe every time she walks into the room. She’s got such style. She’s more methodical in fittings. Naomi Watts is playful in fittings, like, “Let’s try this! Let’s try this!” But Chloë is more like, “I think this works,” and she’ll pull out the exact skirt and the exact cashmere sweater. She just knows fashion really well and knows designers really well.
Diane Lane, poor thing, she was simultaneously shooting a show in Italy or Boston, I think, and she had to fly out on Saturdays, so we would do these six-hour fittings around her schedule. It’s more methodical with her, which is awesome—“This works on me, this doesn’t.” Calista Flockhart, it was my first time working with her, and she is just a ball. She would stand in the fitting and say, “Just dress me.” She’s just happy to be at the party, and we had a lot of fun.
Tom Hollander [who plays Truman Capote], when we started out, he was quite slim and slight, so Ryan wanted him to put on some pounds. We did our first fittings, then he went away—and six weeks later, he had put on some weight, so we had to start all over. And it’s Russell Tovey, who plays a closeted banker—he had a lot of studied opinions. His character doesn’t have much style until he meets Capote, so he starts with this idea of being conservative and uptight, and then when he hangs out with Truman, he starts to wear more fun suits.
Did all of this vintage make you nostalgic for a certain way of dressing?
Ryan was obsessed with costumes and history. He loves women in long gloves. Gloves started declining in popularity in the 1960s, but the Swans kept wearing theirs. Ryan included a scene where they go to a department store, and they’re looking for the glove counter, and a young store associate tells them it no longer exists, and the ladies are aghast.
Do “Swans” still exist today?
I think so, but this is just me guessing here. [Now] the mindset is not just to take care of the husband, throw fancy parties, and make handwritten seat assignments and keep up appearances. Today we have more “celebrities,” but these women wren’t doing it to be popular—it was just their lifestyle they married into or were born into. It was all about yachts and going to estates, but it wasn’t being put on Instagram for everyone to see. Maybe the closest we still have is a Martha Stewart—inventing and reinventing herself, but has that very wealthy lifestyle.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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