Still Trending: Friends Style with Costume Designer Debra McGuire

Highlights:

• Because of Debra’s fine art background, when designing the look for the “Friends” characters, she thought of them as a tableau: their look together was way more important than what they looked like individually.
• Debra explains how this special time of COVID-19 has helped her connect with her artistic side: she has delved into painting and sculpting.
• The importance of being careful when dressing the actors, because the clothes have to support the script, not the visual: you don’t want to ever detract from the joke or the point of each scene.
• Debra’s freshness and uniqueness led her to design the most iconic looks on the show, which made her different from other designers.
• The difference between working as a costume designer for TV shows and for movies: they are two industries that move at different paces.
• Debra gives her own definition of beauty which consists of getting at the deep essence of self, and finding a way to project that externally.
• There’s a difference between what a stylist and a costume designer does: one consists of dressing the external aspects of self, and the other is more about finding the essence of self
  Debra tells an inspirational story about the importance of allowing our essence to come out and how life changing this could be.