Zac Posen and his buddy Ryan Murphy had been itching to collaborate on a challenge for years. “We hadn’t actually discovered the best one,” Posen tells Vogue. However the stars finally aligned for episode three of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, which premieres tonight.

Murphy summoned Posen to set, the place he watched Calista Flockhart-as-Lee Radziwill movie a scene in a hair salon. “I acquired delivered to a again room and Ryan offered this challenge and stated, ‘I need you to recreate and reimagine the Black and White Ball, and it must be massive,’” he says.

The problem, Posen notes, was refashioning the ball inside historic parameters that additionally aligned aesthetically with the Ryan Murphy Cinematic Universe. “This isn’t a historic recreation piece,” he says. “This can be a completely different story that we’re telling via historic figures. Every girl had their very own historical past to carry.” Nonetheless, Posen dove into the period, meticulously researching the ladies who had been central figures to some of the talked-about events of the twentieth century. “I began off far more intently to historical past. I assumed, let’s get our historic base, and from there, then we will evolve, summary, and elevate,” he says. “[Ryan and I] had been in contact day by day via the method, however I used to be undoubtedly given an excessive amount of inventive freedom.”

Posen raced towards the clock to complete the Swans’ robes. “I had mainly half of November and December to construct these,” he says. “I don’t have an enormous studio; It is me, plus seven assistants, so it’s a a lot smaller staff than I’ve ever had by way of making one thing on the scope.” He additionally confronted the extra strain of designing for tv versus the runway. “On a runway, one thing wants to have the ability to stroll and are available again. If you’re working with actors, you’re coping with character growth on ladies’s our bodies.”

Regardless of the percentages, Posen managed to drag off a fleet of uniquely dramatic seems for the ladies depicting Capote’s Swans: Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Diane Lane, Chloë Sevigny, Naomi Watts, and Calista Flockhart. And he fulfilled a real bucket-list second when he designed Nina Faulk’s feathered “Black Swan” costume, worn by Jessica Lange. “To make a fantasy costume because the Black Swan for Jessica Lange will probably be a spotlight in my life,” Posen says.

Under, the designer takes us behind the scenes of how he original the Black and White Ball for Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.