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It doesn’t hurt that author Bret Easton Ellis also liberally namechecked fashion throughout the 2023 novel the series is based on. With both men serving as executive producers on the series, The Shards is required viewing for fashion students seeking to learn about the decade’s silhouettes and details, from hefty shoulder pads to the New Romantics style popularized by Adam Ant and Culture Club music videos.

Episode five of The Shards, “Murder on the Dance Floor,” gives us a bit of everything style-wise, also because most of the hour takes place at the much-anticipated filming of Dance-Off! This American Bandstand clone pits three key characters — Kaia Gerber’s Susan, Hayes Warner’s Debbie, and Bella Valdes’ Cha Cha — against each other for the coveted title of “Groover of the Week.”

Ahead of the episode’s airing, THR spoke with the show’s costume designers Lou Eyrich and Joshua Marsh. Eyrich has worked with Murphy for almost three decades as both a costume designer and a producer on shows including Ratched and Love Story, as well as Nip/Tuck, Glee, and American Horror Story, affording her unique insight into Murphy’s creative process.

There’s a shot in episode five that sets the style tone perfectly, of the four key characters arriving at the Dance Off! studio, rounding the corner and walking between soundstages, and each of them looks pretty flawless. Were you on set for this shot?

LOU EYRICH Definitely, also because Ryan was directing that episode. He’s so visual, so after a rehearsal he might come in and say, “Let’s change this” or “Do you have a different jacket?” His notes also might ask for a character’s hair to be more curly, or that a filter needs to be changed.

JOSHUA MARSH Iconic looks come out of those moments with Ryan. Once we’ve met to discuss, an actor might run to the hair trailer, we run to our office and gather options, then we all reconvene in 20 minutes. They call rolling, and we all get to catch our breath and smile.

Let’s go back to before filming started — when you first received the scripts, what can you tell me about the early conversations and the inspirations for what you would be creating?

MARSH Bret Easton Ellis wrote an incredible novel that is chock-a-block full of details. In those 700 pages, I think there are hundreds and hundreds of references to clothes, cars, music, etc. So we had a document to use as a starting place, and from there it was about delving into the research and trying to get our minds in that world.

EYRICH Ryan was also very specific about the hair and makeup for each person, which then directly affected the direction we were going in for their costumes.

It wasn’t so much a look as it was a music cue that made me immediately think of American Gigolo — with Richard Gere, whose son Homer stars in the show — while watching episode five.

MARSH A few American Gigolo references came into play. The color palette of that film is very specific and rich, so it was definitely a source of inspiration. There’s a particular moment in episode four that’s a little homage to American Gigolo, too.

EYRICH A big part of it also was because [Giorgio] Armani designed the costumes for that movie, and it’s been referenced by so many over the years, because it was groundbreaking costume design. Josh mentioned the color palette, but also just that quiet luxury, the really soft silks. Ryan had referenced loving that tone and to study how Armani did that. So yes, we all bow down to Armani.

How big a role did music play while you were working on inspirations?

EYRICH That’s another shoutout to Bret Easton Ellis, because he listed all the songs in the novel. So Josh made a playlist, and we played it over and over while we were working, and it definitely had an influence on the clothing. You remember the first time you saw Adam Ant or Boy George, when everybody started wearing porkpie hats or wearing eyeliner. That absolutely influenced the fashion of our world.

It’s not a small cast, and the core characters have such unique personalities, so how did you address the disparate looks of, say, Debbie vs. Susan, or Debbie’s father, Wes Bentley’s Terry, vs. Jordan Roth’s Steven?

MARSH When we thought about Susan, she feels really drawn from Southern California iconography. You also feel like you really want to know her, so for her we leaned into Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and the iconic Brooke Shields ad from that era. So in some scenes it was about denim, great silk blouses, ala Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo, and then elevating everything a bit.

Debbie is kind of that other extreme, with the dawn of MTV as a big inspiration. This is a girl with tons of money and access, and she’s going out, going to music clubs. So with her we wanted to push that idea of rocker glam, late ‘70s, early ‘80s, with a splash of New Wave. For the guys, we had a lot of fun differentiating them: Brett [played by Igby Rigney] and Thom [Graham Campbell] are both preppy, but Brett feels very classic and California and West Coast, while Thom is more East Coast Ivy League style, so we pushed to get a little more color in there and punch his character up a bit.

Amid that Dance-Off! scene, with so many dancers on the stage, how important was it that both Debbie and Susan stand out from the rest of the cast? It’s notable that both their partners, Brett and [Homer Gere’s] Robert, wear dark looks in those scenes, while Debbie is in this electric blue and Susan is in an apricot silk jumpsuit that’s very reminiscent of Halston.

MARSH It was partially about making sure the ladies got to shine, particularly Debbie, because all she wants is for anyone outside her family to acknowledge her worth. But we also wanted Brett and Robert to feel a bit like they’re transitioning, so Robert’s in that great ‘80s New Wave silk shirt in navy, with his signature leather pants and a red belt, while Brett is also in more of an ‘80s fit than he usually wears. He’s been wearing super taut things, but this shirt’s a little looser, a little silky, and it’s unbuttoned a little low. He’s stepping into adulthood at “Dance-Off!” and he’s also wanting to be more attentive to Debbie, so we wanted to communicate that.

There’s a great moment early in the episode, when Steven has stepped in to style Debbie’s look for Dance-Off! and he mentions that Claude Montana would be perfect for her. You can’t get more 1980s than that reference.

EYRICH And [Thierry] Mugler, who also was an inspiration.

MARSH Mugler, Claude Montana specifically, but also [Azzedine] Alaïa, Valentino. We looked at their collections from that period a few times, but Claude Montana was a really exciting one because he also was namechecked in the script. When the kids arrive at the Dance-Off! studio, Terry is wearing a fabulous white leather Claude Montana suit, and [Bentley] wears some other Claude Montana pieces throughout the series as well.

EYRICH The whole look for Terry, per Ryan, was that big-shouldered, snatched-waist look, and that’s Claude Montana.

We have to talk about Jordan Roth, because we know how much he loves fashion. What was it like working with him to put together such a specific aesthetic?

MARSH Before I got to meet the incredible Jordan Roth, I had only known him from being a theater kid all my life. And we were a little intimidated, because he is so entrenched in fashion and has so much access to fashion. Our first meeting was a Zoom call, and Jordan had pulled stills from 10 or 12 fashion shows from between 1979 and 1982, just as a starting point for discussion. We wanted to understand from Jordan how he saw the character, and one of the things we all came together with was that it should feel like there should be a darkness and an elegance about his style. Then in an early meeting, Ryan used the term “sinister glamour,” and that became the defining piece of information.

In our first fitting, Jordan walked in with two giant suitcases — you know, “I brought a few things from home.” But the things he’s collected and picked up in his travels are just incredible: a beautiful vintage leather Alaia jacket, for example, or pieces by Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent, and that was really exciting. Our first two fittings were about playing and trying everything, and Jordan always wanted to push it further. What we ended up creating was this really cool New Wave, iconic gallerist look — but someone who could also take a life.  

So it’s time to talk about Cha Cha — who from the beginning of the episode, admittedly, I was pretty sure wasn’t going to make it out alive. She’s just so horrible from the first moment we see her, which also makes her red jumpsuit pretty perfect.

MARSH (Laughs.) Cha Cha’s look is inspired by that idea of the ‘80s does the ‘50s, you know? This is a young woman who loved Grease and loved that retro-‘50s look. You see that in a lot of the shapes she wears, so that was an initial starting point for us, as well as the Latina music artists of that era. I will say, when I watch the episode, mainly I think about the actress who plays her, Bella Valdes, who is an absolute delight.

EYRICH We also watched a lot of Soul Train when planning for this episode. You can really go down a rabbit hole watching those, because the girls are all wearing these great jumpsuits. That was really fun.

Because Cha Cha dances so much more provocatively than the other dancers on the show, how did that play into the design of her jumpsuit?

MARSH Bella is a trained dancer, and she was also doing all those moves in the fittings. We’d have her try on the look, and we’d say, “Can you do all your stuff?” So Bella would do a high kick into a split, so we had to make sure there was some give there. We also had multiples of that red jumpsuit, because it would get a bit worn out as she moved in it throughout the day, so we could swap in a new one.

EYRICH Josh picked a great dance shoe for Bella to wear, and then with the other members of the main cast, we were really excited about these cute shoes we’d picked out for them. Then they spent time in rehearsal with the choreographer, and they came back and said, “We can’t wear those shoes.” The outfits already had been designed around them, so we had to go in search of cute dance shoes.

How did you source other pieces vs. custom pieces made for the episode?

EYRICH The blouse Susan wears in the Hamburger Hamlet scene came from a vintage store, Another Man’s Treasure in Pasadena, and then we were lucky enough to find two more. So all of a sudden there was a dream scenario of having not only a perfect piece for Susan to wear, but photo doubles as well. Evan Rachel Wood [as Liz, Debbie’s mother] also wears a great vintage robe by Krizia in this episode.

MARSH I believe for the Dance-Off! scene, all of our kids were in head-to-toe custom.

EYRICH We were lucky to have an incredible tailor team, because they handmade almost all of it. That’s also true of the brown tuxedo that Anthony Ramos wore; I think they made that in two days. We also have to give a shoutout to the background dressing team, who had to singlehandedly shop and fit all those background dancers — I think there were 60 altogether — and they really nailed it.

How can we look forward to the style now that we’re past the midway point of the season?

MARSH You’ll see some really delightful moments in episodes six and seven; they may be my favorite moments in the series. And there will be some delights in the finale.

EYRICH As you watch, you’ll start to see the unraveling of everybody, both from what’s happening around them and what’s happening in their friendships, and you’ll see that in their costumes as well.

Lou, for you this also was quite a balancing act.

EYRICH You have to remember, we also were wrapping up [Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story], which was set in the 1800s. We were starting American Horror Story: 13, which was an amalgamation of all the seasons. We were starting The Shards. And then we also were starting the second season of All’s Fair, which is highly contemporary. And Ryan’s got that all in his head, but that’s part of the beauty of what he does. He’ll tell you something, and you can tell he’s been up all night, but then he’ll come in the next day and say, “You know, I’m actually thinking it should be this.” You get a bit of whiplash, but it’s always spot-on and always amazing.

MARSH We work so hard, but we are not going to sit here and say it was a grind. We genuinely pour ourselves into it, but we had a great time. We had a blast. We would be in those fittings for three or four hours, but there’s a lot of good work in there, so it’s a joy to us, a joy for the cast, and it’s a joy to see onscreen.