New York City based costume designer and multidisciplinary artist Christian Joy creates performance looks for musicians including Karen O, Brittany Howard and Childish Gambino. Her designs have appeared on stage at the Oscars and Grammy Awards, as well as music festivals around the world. Joy’s work has been exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Mode Museum in Hasselt, Belgium as well as galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Lori Messerschmitt : What is your process when you create a costume?
Christian Joy : I usually do a lot of research before I begin. It’s one of my favorite parts of the process. I have a lot of art and fashion books that I’ll look through to find inspiration. After that, I start thinking about color. What spurs me forward most is a color combination, as well as finding interesting textures. Movement on stage is always important to me, so I incorporate something like a cape or fringe or a big sleeve. I love all of the old rock n’ roll tropes. I’ll sketch out a few ideas and then begin on the garment patterns. I also love creating prints because I feel like it gives the look its own individuality. If I’m doing a print, I’ll create stencils. Usually, the costume comes together during the process. I don’t usually plan too much.
LM: Have you ever had any formal training?
CJ: No, I’m entirely self-taught. In the beginning I made pieces by hand sewing or even using paper, packing tape, and staples. Once the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started to blow up, I realized I needed to learn fashion design, so I started buying books on fashion history, as well as pattern making and sewing. In the beginning, I was pretty broke, so I spent a lot of time reading books in the Barnes and Noble store that was on Astor Place.
LM: You have a long history of working with Karen O. What was happening in your life when you met?
CJ: I worked at Daryl K in the East Village and I would get an outfit for every day I worked. I was in heaven. I had a really amazing wardrobe but no money. I lived on pizza and bagels. When I met Karen then, I had to be scrappy. I would find stuff to use everywhere. I didn’t know if what I was making for her would be a flash in the pan or really make a mark, but almost from the start, I knew they [The Yeah Yeah Yeahs] were going to become famous. It’s been a really nice thing to have someone totally trust my creative instincts and go along with it. When Karen became known for her wild look, I was pushed to think over and over again about ‘how am I going to make this really wild?’ and top it every time.
LM: I think it’s a very common thread among artists wrestling with the process of growing and changing. How do you keep your inspiration going?
CJ: I like to tell a story about a look. During Covid I made an outfit for Karen purchased entirely from the Dollar Store. The end product looked like a mom who got completely overwhelmed and frustrated then ran away from the birthday decoration aisle. Stories keep it tongue-in-cheek. You have to have a good sense of humor to see something one way and turn it into something entirely different. What else can I put into this thing that will tell the story? Leading you down the garden path and then…SURPRISE!
LM: Yes! It also serves to make the costumes incredibly tactile. You have an ability to transform the mundane into something extraordinary, a very specific characteristic of your work. The end results are so beautiful and wild. Do you remember when you first became interested in clothes?
CJ: I’ve always loved thrifting since I was a kid. Getting bags of hand-me-downs was so exciting! When I was in high school, my brother left for the navy. I was much younger than him and very skinny, but I wore all of the clothes he left behind, belted and super-cinched. I liked to play with shapes.
LM: Using what you had, you transformed it into something else.
CJ: Exactly. We didn’t have any money growing up. There were 6 kids in my family and my mom would have bake sales and always did things to save money. I learned how to be really crafty as to how to live my life. It’s the same way to live in New York City as an artist, but in New York you can find anything anywhere if you look.
LM: What was your childhood like? Did you have a religious upbringing?
CJ: My mom was Born Again Christian. She would never let me cut my hair because it was thought of as a covering for the Lord. When I graduated high school I shaved it all off. When I was very young, my mom would say, “Oh Christian Joy! I just can’t wait for you to be a mother!”. I was expected to get married, stay home and have children. I remember thinking that was absolutely insane. I had four brothers and was very boyish, I related more to them. My dad always wanted me to wear a dress and I would think,’What the fuck? I don’t want to wear a dress, I want to climb a tree!’. All of my friends wore pants. If I wore a skirt, I had shorts underneath it. Then he would get mad and ask me if I was a boy or a girl, and I was so confused. As I got older and wanted to dress more feminine, my mom was very against me wearing anything low cut or risqué, so I worked it into a thing where being boyish was sexy.
LM: It makes sense the costumes you design aren’t overtly sexy and have a lot of religious references. The first costume of yours I saw up close was the one Karen O. wore at Glastonbury. I was blown away. It was like seeing a shamanic pagan child’s finger painting on acid. That shrimp cape!
CJ: I feel more drawn to mens clothing. Women’s clothing feels too flimsy. Growing up I would look at male performers and they were so commanding. It was more of a power statement. Look at James Brown or Little Richard. Their outfits were completely insane. Who makes you feel more wound up than that? You get worked up into a frenzy over this person. Those performers make me feel the most alive, like I want to just scream my head off. That’s the kind of energy I like. James Brown coming on stage in those incredible outfits….
LM: Very compelling.
CJ: Yep. Women performers are always sexually objectified. I thought, why not give Karen [O.] this other layer? One where she doesn’t have to show her skin to be sexy. The costume also serves as armor. Can you imagine going on stage and being met with all those faces? In the beginning, Karen was a maniac on stage so I couldn’t put her in anything that was too fragile, it wouldn’t work with her movements. The costume had to fit so she wouldn’t fall and hurt herself. It was then I got really attached to the cape, you can do so much with it. I love the flourish of a cape! On stage it’s completely striking. I love putting Karen in red for the same reason. Someone once said to me ‘oh it’s kind of old-school’. I thought,’Yeah. But who fucking cares?’. Look at Harry Styles, he’s basically wearing stuff our grandparents wore.
LM: Your old-school is more like medieval times. Look at the motherfucker in the cape! Who wears a cape in the street?
CJ: Stage looks can’t really be translated into street looks. People in general wear classic pieces but I see how I can draw them in with familiarity then take it in a different direction.
LM: I like how you dressed Brittany Howard for the grammies. The white gown completely covered by a long white cape, it looked quite papal.
CJ: It is like a religious experience to see her perform.
LM: What do you think about up-and-coming artists making clothing with sustainable materials and DIY?
CJ: I like it. There’s some really cool stuff out there. I follow the kids on instagram painting their clothes, making hoodies out of towels and blankets etc.. I like that kids are experimenting without a lot of money. They are definitely more advanced than I was. For me, it was more of a project, conceptual art rather than a piece of clothing. The people I see now are coming at it with more of a fashion design perspective, making clothes rather than art. The ones that ride the line between fashion and art are the most interesting to me. I’m curious about what they will be doing in ten years.
LM: You keep creatively expanding over the years, your most recent project is in chinatown.
CJ: Yes, it’s called Neighbors. It’s in a Chinatown mall at 75 East Broadway collaborating with my husband, Jason Grisell, and our neighbors Al Deschamps and Heather Hatcher. We’re using it as an experimental space. Each month one or all four of us curate it. For the month of May, it was a shop, in June it became a gallery space. I’ve always wanted to have a space in NYC, so this is an exciting opportunity.
LM: The show up now is fantastic. Another project you embarked upon was using instagram, @Thrifyandnearlyfifty. For me, it was performance art where you were the subject turning the gaze back upon yourself after years of being behind the scenes. In each post, you had on different outfits that were an amalgamation of thrift finds and closet staples and captioned below was a story about each item. Showing yourself and overcoming your shyness must have been liberating.
CJ: Totally. I feel like this year has been about trying new things. I started thinking that I am not going down without a fight. At 49, it occurred to me that I should start wearing what I want because it doesn’t matter. There’s no one checking me out anymore. I wanted to keep it light and have a sense of humor, yet not be self-deprecating. The comediennes I grew up on, Phyllis Diller and Carol Burnett, were funny and weird and unafraid of being ugly. My mom was like that. These women represented the idea of having fun and being funny, without being too fussy. I like that Advanced Style thing, but I don’t relate to it because it’s a bit too composed for me. I ended up taking the account down. I felt a little too vulnerable as I started to get weird DM’s. However, the project did spur me on to do the shoot for this story and got me in front of the camera instead of behind it. It was a great experience, but I probably don’t need to do that again.
LM: That’s very punk rock to subvert the gaze and own your identity. Unfortunately for older women that idea is counter-culture right now.
CJ: I love the punk aesthetic but I don’t want to look like Siouxsie Sioux. To me, punk now is Commes des Garçons and Vivienne Westwood. You have to be rebellious to live the way you want to, rebellious to the very end. My mom taught me that. Even though she was a Born Again Christian, she was extremely rebellious, so was my dad. I knew from the beginning Karen [O] was going to be huge because I recognized her rebellion.
LM: When you started designing you were rebelling then too. Working at the height of minimalism in fashion, you gave people color and sparkle. Your natural progression is finding another rebellion at age 50.
CJ: I had to reinvent myself because no one wants to look at you anymore. I’m not the only nearly 50-year-old in the world. I am not an outlier. Every women at this age still wants to feel valuable. I see younger women and I don’t feel any different from them. There’s something fascinating about aging. I got to be this sexy, attractive, young woman and then I saw these things happening to my face. Somehow you have to figure out how to be accepting of yourself no matter what. That’s really what it boils down to. In order to live with yourself everyday, you have to look at yourself and feel good and make your brain follow. I don’t want to be miserable when I look in the mirror. I want to figure out how to make myself feel as fun and joyous outside as I do on the inside. I want other people to feel happy when they look at my art work and when they look at me. I’ve had people make fun of how I look on the subway and I think ‘how can you hate this?’. Isn’t it better you get see people doing this? I’m constantly looking for women to look up to. Kim Gordon is always someone I’ve always admired. She’s still going for it. As a young woman, I was looking for a role model and I’m still looking for that person now. I need to have that.
LM: Maybe that’s you, being your own role model?
CJ: Women can just be themselves and be funny and weird. I see videos now of older couples and they’re dancing and having a good time. The viewer comments are “awwww look at them!“ and clapping. The people in these videos aren’t babies, they’re grown people, so much smarter than you, even if they didn’t go to school or have a different experience than you. They are not children and they can out-dance you. Let’s take away the stigma of “look at that cute little old lady in her funny outfits”. I don’t fucking care if that’s me and I think our generation is trying to change that.