If you watched this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, perhaps you caught the performance by the famous Radio City Rockettes, clad in gold minidresses with festive red, blue and green swoops evoking old-fashioned electric Christmas lights. The dresses glittered, they fluttered, they flashed, and they gleamed as the dancers spun and kicked across Herald Square. And behind the scenes, designer Emilio Sosa remembers, the design approval process involved a degree of seriousness and ceremony more often seen in electing a pope.
Every costume prototype has to be presented under the lights onstage at Radio City Music Hall, as the venue’s bigwigs look on from the auditorium seats, their feedback coming out of the dark. “It’s kind of like the voice of God — ‘Could it have more silver?’ ‘Let’s add more chain.’ ‘Maybe less satin ribbon.’ — until we get it perfect,” Sosa says, “which can mean a long, grueling series of do-overs. But once it’s perfect, it’s magic.”
The Rockettes, founded in St. Louis in 1925, are rounding out their 100th season with the annual blockbuster eight-week run of “Christmas Spectacular.” For most of December, the dancers perform five shows every single day, and the demand for seats in Radio City’s famed auditorium is mostly thanks to the Rockettes’ legendary precision, uniformity and million-watt, toothpaste-commercial smiles. But the costumes — glamorous, ornate and over the top — are a tradition in their own right, with names like Bob Mackie, Erté, Gregg Barnes and Vincente Minnelli among their storied contributors. The most recognizable dance troupe on the planet wouldn’t be so recognizable without their signature sparkles.
In their early years, the Rockettes often wore costumes that reflected the dapper fashions of the era. Sketches of costumes for the 1920s and 1930s “Roxyettes” — an earlier name in tribute to their first home, the Roxy Theatre — include top hats and canes, as well as turbans, and a cheeky play on men’s business suits. In 1933, however, the Rockettes debuted what remains their most famously elaborate routine (and their most recognizable costume): “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers,” with cartoonish toy soldier uniforms designed by the celebrated director Vincente Minnelli.
In the 1940s, the troupe was often called in to perform at patriotic and U.S. military events, typically wearing a variety of red, white and blue uniforms. But on their occasional trips abroad, the ladies adopted the customs of the locals, including kilts on a tour of the Scottish Highlands.
Starting in the 1950s, Frank Spencer became one of the Rockettes’ most prolific costume contributors. His designs included an unforgettable zebra getup with a hot-pink accent and the 1965 “Star Bright” costume. With its ice blue bodysuit and bubble helmet, the deconstructed astronaut tribute “was this whole, ‘We’ve gone into space, and look at us! The future!’” says Julie Branam, the director and choreographer of the Rockettes’ “Christmas Spectacular” since 2014.
Throughout the 20th century, costumes were “a little more revealing than what we wear now,” says Branam, who became a Rockette in 1988.
Of course, not every performance called for a plunging neckline or a bare midriff. In 1999, the Rockettes debuted Deborah Newhall’s dark-blue “Velvet March” costumes for patriotic and government-adjacent events. In 2001, they wore the star-spangled velour jackets and matching blue garrison caps to perform at the presidential inauguration of George W. Bush.
Over the years, costume technology has advanced dramatically. For instance: In the 1990s, the Rockettes debuted tap shoes with built-in microphones. Before that tech was introduced, “I’ve heard stories that they had some Rockettes have microphones [woven] through their fishnets,” says Bailey Harding, a 33-year-old Rockette in her 14th season.
And nowadays, the wooden soldiers’ bright-white slacks are made of a tarplike material so stiff the pants can stand up on their own — and, crucially, never need ironing.
Improvements in performance fabrics have also made costumes more comfortable — the better to keep up with a Rockettes program that’s only gotten more demanding for its dancers. Traditionally, Harding says, a dancer has to have mastered ballet, tap and jazz to make the Rockettes. But these days, “we are so versatile in the different styles that we have: commercial jazz, contemporary jazz, hip-hop. We really come from all different backgrounds, so we’re able to push the envelope.”
In this year’s “Christmas Spectacular,” one transition involves all 36 performing Rockettes leaving the stage in their “Wooden Soldier” costumes and reappearing in their red and green “New York at Christmas” outfits — a coat and pillbox hat that fall away to reveal a sparkly minidress — 78 seconds later. It’s a change that makes Branam shake her head and puff her cheeks out just thinking about it.
“Before we even get up from the floor, we’re unzipping the jacket of the lady in front of us,” Harding explains. “The organized chaos backstage is just as choreographed as everything you see onstage.”
In addition to his golden Christmas lights dresses, Sosa designed one of the most recognizable looks in modern Rockettes lore: the gold fringe dress, which has appeared in the Thanksgiving Day parade and at other off-site performances.
The Rockettes at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! #TheRockettes #MacysParade #kickline #macysthanksgivingdayparade
“One thing I always say that I learned at Radio City was how to decipher luster from shine from glitter, because they’re all different elements,” Sosa says. (And if you recognize his name, yes, Sosa was runner-up on “Project Runway” in 2010 and its “Allstars” edition in 2012.) “This dress has the luster of the base fabric, then it has the shine of the satin ribbon, then it has the sparkles of the crystals on there.” Each dress is one of a kind, thanks to the flesh-colored netting that’s carefully matched to each dancer’s skin tone. And while many of the Rockettes’ costumes use repurposed Mardi Gras necklaces in their beading, Sosa’s fringe dress features metal chains.
“They’re a world phenomenon,” Sosa says. “If three people start kicking in the line, the first thing they’ll say is, ‘The Rockettes!’” Now, he says, his name is listed alongside many of his own costume design heroes who have dressed the Rockettes, and “it’s the biggest dream I’ve had in my career.”
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