If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, WWD may receive an affiliate commission. If you spent any time at all on TikTok last May, you know all about Lululemongate (what us style editors are unofficially calling the conversation — and controversy — that surrounded the release of Lululemon’s 2-in-1 Dress). Users immediately divided themselves into separate camps based on whether or not they thought the dress was chic to begin with, as well as all the ways in which it could and couldn’t be styled: sometimes pairing up the hot-ticket item with sneakers and other times extending its elongating powers with block-heeled mule sandals. By the end of that month, the dress was sold out in most sizes and colorways — surprising, considering people were expressing negative opinions about its steep cost in context of the piece’s material being nothing fancier than a stretchy, athletic nylon-slash-Lycra blend with some mulberry sil...
Qween Jean Reimagines Feline Fashion for Broadway’s ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball,’ Inspired by New York Ballroom Culture
“My goal has been to allow every artist to shine, that their internal glow is the most beautiful thing about the design,” says Qween Jean from her costume studio in New York’s Garment District, seated next to a wall of her sketches. The costume designer is behind the roughly 500 looks created for “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” which officially opens on Broadway on Tuesday after a hit run off-Broadway last year at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. The new interpretation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber classic “Cats” is directed by Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch and reimagines the Jellicle cats in the world of New York City ballroom culture, with the cats vogueing, dancing and competing for the chance to ascend to a new life. The production has been a years-long “love story” for Jean, who made her Broadway debut with the costumes for “Liberation” last fall. Qween Jean Lexie Moreland/WWD “There’s been so many iterations that grew beyond our original ideas, that surpassed what our expect...