Baz Luhrmann's latest project brings back both early hip hop fashion and the disco glamour.
After months of waiting, Baz Luhrmann's highly anticipated Netflix show, The Get Down, is here. The series tells a historically inspired "mythical tale" showing the birth of hip hop in the late '70s at the hands of wide-eyed teenagers living in the gritty, dangerous South Bronx. Like Luhrmann's other masterpieces (Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby, Romeo + Juliet),the show is a feast for the eyes. That's thanks in part to Catherine Martin, Luhrmann's wife, executive producer, and designer, who, armed with a decade's worth of research done on the era, worked with costume
designer Jeriana San Juan to bring the era back to life.
San Juan (who has worked onSex&Drugs&Rock&Roll, Flesh & Bone, and The Americans), had only three months to create all the looks and, in Luhrmann's hyperreal world, took the liberty to go all-out. "I think the perspective of the show is really meant to make you feel fully immersed in the time period and meant to make it also feel very fresh, new, vibrant, and crisp–as if you're one of the kids there in 1977," San Juan says of the costumes, "We didn't want it to feel historical. Everything is through a heightened perspective, in the same way anyone thinks of their own childhood–things are always bigger and more colorful than you remember
them."
