Vanity Fair: Rocking the Runaways Look

Vintage fanatics in Los Angeles: if you’re wondering who’s responsible for the serious drought of rocker tees and skinny leather goods, look no further than Carol Beadle, costume designer of the upcoming film The Runaways. Really though, you can’t blame her. How else to recreate the wardrobes of style icons Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, and their band mates?

Glam rock is something of a sartorial specialty for the Canadian, who grew up as the youngest of four in a musically inclined family. “I was watching The Midnight Special when I was six,” Beadle told VF Daily, referring to the weekly musical variety series that followed Johnny Carson’s show. Staying up past her bedtime paid off: as a stylist for music videos, she’s worked with artists as varied as Kanye West, The Killers, Christina Aguilera, and even Ziggy Stardust himself, David Bowie.

But the challenge of pulling together a wardrobe for an entire film is more daunting than clothing a band for a 3-minute clip. With a scant four weeks to assemble a wardrobe for the rockers, Beadle wasted no time. “I started by finding every single possible photograph of the Runaways,” she said. As part of her research, Beadle made stops at L.A.’s hallowed music emporium, Amoeba Records, where she picked up back issues of Cream and Rolling Stone, and at the library of Western Costume Palace, a veritable Mecca for L.A.’s costume industry. But Beadle then stormed the vintage market. “Every store we could find we popped into,” she said. “I was pretty particular that it had to be really amazing pieces.” Once the perfect raggedy tee, faded bell bottom, or star-studded blazer was found, it went through a seamstress for fit, and an “ager,” who specializes in giving each garment that special smudge or hole to make it just so.

Certain looks, such as the band’s ensembles for their Tokyo appearances, were just too iconic to find a similar substitute. Beadle commissioned replicas of Jett and Currie’s otherworldly wedge boots—black and silver, respectively—from Andre #1, the same custom shoe shop that serviced Kiss and the Runaways themselves, back in the day. (Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, who play the two rockers, got to keep the kicks.) Other custom looks designed by Beadle include Jett’s leather look—a turning point in her bad-girl transformation—and the corset Currie wore in the video for their hit song Cherry Bomb.
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