Iconic doesn't even begin to describe this walk down fashion memory lane with Sarah Michelle Gellar. Ahead of her new series Wolf Pack, the actress gives us the scoop behind some of her most memorable on-screen looks from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, Scooby-Doo, and more. Get your Buffy boots ready to go Behind The Looks!
Director: Stephanie Romero
Cinematography: Matt Burke
Video Editor: Collin Hughart
Producer: Ari Vega
Camera Operator: John Vogt
Sound Mixer: Jason Flaster
Associate Video Producer: Kellie Scott
Executive Director, Creative: Alexa Wiley
Executive Director, Entertainment: Jessica Baker
VP, Social: MacKenzie Green
Director: Stephanie Romero
Cinematography: Matt Burke
Video Editor: Collin Hughart
Producer: Ari Vega
Camera Operator: John Vogt
Sound Mixer: Jason Flaster
Associate Video Producer: Kellie Scott
Executive Director, Creative: Alexa Wiley
Executive Director, Entertainment: Jessica Baker
VP, Social: MacKenzie Green
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Sarah Michelle Gellar, and today we're going behind the looks with Who, What, Where?
00:06 Oh my gosh!
00:12 That was I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was my very first big feature film.
00:19 And Helen was from a small town that wanted to get out of her small town and had big New York dreams.
00:26 And her wardrobe reflected the fact that she had never been to New York City.
00:30 It's really hard because you have to be able to run away from the bad guy.
00:34 But if your outfit says, "I'm about to run away from the bad guy," then they know you're about to run away.
00:39 So usually you're in something that is not conducive to running away.
00:43 In this instance, it was a dress that she wore in a parade, which was a green satin that wrinkled a lot.
00:53 It was my first experience ever with a leaning board, which is basically what they give you on set
00:58 so that you don't wrinkle and you don't sit down. You just lean backwards. It doesn't help at all.
01:02 And then the shoes were so bad that at some point I actually just lost the shoes in the fight sequence
01:07 and ran barefoot through the streets of Wilmington, North Carolina. Or Southport, North Carolina, actually.
01:12 Buffy's costumes were a huge part of who she was and what she was experiencing at that moment.
01:17 When you first meet her, she's this traditional, essential Valley girl, California girl,
01:23 that doesn't want the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she dressed accordingly.
01:27 But as she accepted the power and the responsibility, her outfit sort of progressed with that.
01:33 But Buffy was always fashionable. I think it was one of the first real female heroines that you saw
01:37 who did not sacrifice fashion for killing.
01:41 The boots. The Buffy boots.
01:44 We used to say when the boots went on, you know the fighting was going to happen.
01:48 I still have a pair of those boots in my house that I still fit into.
01:52 But I was devastated because at one point, I think for a big fashion spread, I don't remember what it was,
01:57 but our costume designer sent one of the pairs of the original boots to be photographed,
02:02 and she never got them back. And I was devastated because we didn't have that many of them,
02:05 and that was the iconic Buffy boot.
02:08 What did I keep from my Buffy wardrobe? I wish I would have understood to keep more of it.
02:12 Not that necessarily that was an option, because the studios like to take it back,
02:16 but you don't realize the sentimental importance that you'd have on something like that later.
02:21 A lot of times at the end of an episode, you're so sick of looking at an outfit that you don't always take it.
02:25 Again, if the option is available. Now I don't make that mistake anymore.
02:29 But I do have the boots still.
02:32 The dress in season one where Buffy gets killed for the first time
02:37 was a copy of a dress that I won my Emmy in, and I still have the original dress that it was the copy of.
02:44 I think I still have the jacket she wore in the last episode, but I don't have a ton.
02:48 I wish I had more.
02:50 Oh, I have a steak. I have Mr. Pointy.
02:52 Aw, Scream 2.
02:54 That was just such a highlight for me, getting to be part of that franchise.
02:58 I had just done the very first year of Buffy.
03:01 It hadn't even aired yet when I got cast in that movie,
03:04 and it was all of these icons at the time.
03:07 Courtney Cox and Nev Campbell.
03:10 We just had a great time.
03:12 That outfit, thankfully, was more conducive to being the girl that was killed.
03:17 In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I actually had sneakers and stretch pants.
03:20 So that was amazing.
03:22 But I always remember in particular, it's not fashion-related,
03:25 but that scene with the phone, which also is funny because now you look at that scene and that phone is so ginormous.
03:30 But I remember that Wes Craven gave me one of the best acting tips.
03:36 It was just such a minor note, but whenever you ask who it is when you're on a phone, cell phone, whatever,
03:41 you tend to look at it and say, "Who is it?"
03:43 Which is such a weird thing because you can't see them.
03:45 I guess now you can see them, but in those days, it was FaceTime.
03:48 When I see that outfit, I always think of that.
03:50 Cruel Intentions.
03:52 Denise Wingate was our amazing costume designer, and we had all of these ideas,
03:56 and she just made these visual dreams come true.
04:00 The famous corset was built at a very famous Los Angeles shop called Trashy Lingerie,
04:06 which is pretty famous, but they also do some of the most amazing, intricate bodice, corset, costume work.
04:13 And I had never been in the store.
04:15 I was 20 years old, I think.
04:18 I remember the first time she told me we were going there, I got all blushy and shy.
04:22 By the third fitting, I was like, "Yeah, I'm here."
04:26 You become a member when you go there because I don't want people just coming in to look and ogle the clothing.
04:31 But they really do amazing craftsmanship, and that's where the corset came from.
04:35 And then the kissing scene in Central Park was another one of those odd visions that I had.
04:41 I saw this big hat, not quite Breakfast at Tiffany's, but ginormous.
04:48 They're not very common, and so we called it the church hat,
04:52 and we had to go to a store that specialized in Easter Sunday-type outfits.
04:57 But then all the hats were blue and pink, and it was definitely like we went all over Los Angeles
05:02 to find the perfect black hat for that scene.
05:05 But her costume was so specific and New York-specific, and it was a character in and of itself.
05:11 When I first saw the crucifix, I just kept thinking, "It's so ginormous."
05:15 First of all, that's a lot of cocaine in that cross, but I guess Catherine was very wealthy.
05:19 We can digress on that. Probably not appropriate.
05:21 But I just kept thinking, "Can we make a smaller one?"
05:24 Because how do you make that fashion?
05:26 And it was the same thing we went through on Buffy with the cross,
05:28 because Angel gives her the cross in episode, I think, seven maybe of the first season.
05:33 And obviously I was going to be wearing this cross forever,
05:36 and it was just made by a prop master, and nothing against a prop master,
05:40 but you want your costume designer to design something,
05:43 and you have to wear it with every outfit, and the thing is, you know,
05:46 I have a tiny torso, and the thing is like this big.
05:48 It felt like the Mr. T cross. They both did.
05:52 Lisa Evans, the costume designer from Scooby-Doo.
05:56 That was such a great costume experience.
05:58 Again, almost every costume in that movie, in both films, were built from scratch.
06:04 Those boots were a copy of a pair of Louboutins that we loved,
06:08 but did not come in Daphne purple, and were custom made to match the original Louboutin.
06:13 And I think they had purple undersoles also as an homage to the original shoe,
06:19 but those costumes were epic.
06:22 And the second one in the big opening sequence, which was like Daphne's red carpet moment,
06:26 we made this feathered jacket, and it was great in theory,
06:29 because we needed a coat, because it was so cold.
06:31 We shot the second one in Vancouver in the winter,
06:34 but the feathers just kept going up my nose,
06:37 and if you watch some of the scenes, you can see me kind of doing this when I'm speaking,
06:41 because I have feathers all up my nose.
06:44 Seeing my husband in an ascot. Ridiculous.
06:47 Oh, the grudge. Yes.
06:50 That was such an interesting experience, because we did, if I remember correctly,
06:54 all the costume designing and all the meetings in America,
06:58 and then everything had to be shipped out to Tokyo.
07:00 And a lot of it was dressing for warmth, because we shot the movie in the winter,
07:06 and it gets very, very cold in Tokyo.
07:08 But what I very much remember about that outfit in particular was that
07:12 we wound up having to do some reshoots in the summer.
07:15 Well, Tokyo summers get very, very warm, and I was roasting.
07:20 And so I had this great idea that I would tape ice packs all over my body,
07:24 because I had a sweater, like I had layers, so they wouldn't see them,
07:27 and it would keep me cool, which was great, except then the ice would start to melt,
07:31 and it would like drip and fall, and the sound people would pick it up on the mic,
07:34 so they very quickly took all my ice packs away.
07:37 Ringer, that was such a fun fashion show.
07:40 When you're playing twins and you get to really create the characters,
07:44 and obviously one of the main ways to differentiate between the two sisters
07:47 was their wardrobe, but Siobhan was wealthy, living in Paris.
07:51 We had some fun with that.
07:53 In fact, people used to really do full commentary on the outfits on that show.
07:57 Do Revenge. That was such a great experience.
08:01 Jen Kate Robinson, who was the director, had a very specific vision
08:04 for the entirety of the movie.
08:06 That went for fashion, that went for costume design.
08:09 It was all a big aesthetic.
08:11 She even sat down with me to approve what the office would look like,
08:16 how the wardrobe would fit, and that outfit may or may not be hanging in my closet currently.
08:22 Did I have any advice on how to play bitchy, iconic high school?
08:25 You know, I think if you've been a female in high school,
08:27 you know how to be a bitchy high schooler, whether you were one or not.
08:31 You experienced it.
08:33 My one costume from Wolfpack.
08:36 This was a running joke because I think I literally wore my arson jacket.
08:41 Not literally, I think I actually wore my arson jacket through every episode
08:46 and would change my tank top and my cargo pants.
08:50 It was the greatest because I never had to take time out of my day for wardrobe fittings.
08:54 But Barbara Vasquez, our costume designer, is one of my favorite people on earth.
08:58 I absolutely love her.
09:00 So we made up for it with her shoes
09:02 because you have never seen an arson investigator that wears Ferragamos
09:06 like my character, like Kristen Ramsey does.
09:09 Every boot shoe moment was its own world.
09:13 And it's also a nice give back to my fans
09:17 because it is a genre that I haven't been in a long time.
09:19 And you do sort of think about Buffy and the boots,
09:22 and this is my modern homage take to the Buffy boots.
09:26 She wears shorter boots, they're ankle boots.
09:28 She has a Miu Miu pair, a Chloe pair.
09:31 But I mean, she's an arson investigator in Los Angeles.
09:34 She has some fashion sense.
09:36 Thank you everyone.
09:37 This has been really fun reliving some of my favorite characters and their looks.
09:41 [music]