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Meet the Kentuckiana fashion designer behind some of Chappell Roan’s best looks

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Meet the Kentuckiana fashion designer behind some of Chappell Roan’s best looks

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Southern Indiana and Louisville native Gunnar Deatherage is the talent behind some of the popstar Chappell Roan‘s most spectacular costumes.

The “Project Runway” alum and online content creator revealed how Roan’s extravagant burlesque-inspired “Saturday Night Live” ensemble, which wowed audiences in November, came together on his TikTok and Instagram accounts, and how creating for Roan has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

He said it’s been a gift to create for the “Pink Pony Club” singer and to have his work seen by such a wide audience. The green and teal embellished burlesque ensemble worn by Roan to promote her SNL appearance was the most complex ensemble Deatherage has worked on and took more than a month to assemble.

“I tell people it took 500 hours but that doesn’t account for at least 15 days of scouring shops in Los Angeles for the perfect fabric and embellishments,” Deatherage told the Courier Journal. “It was a lot.”

The look audiences saw on NBC was originally meant to be worn during Roan’s summer concert tour but once the costume started coming together, the popstar’s stylist, Genesis Webb, suggested it would be more practical to wear in a more static situation.

“I spent a really long time making sure it was made beautifully inside and out but no matter how well you manufacture something, getting such a large look with so many moving pieces to work in harmony on stage is a feat,” Deatherage said. “I think (the costume) got to the point that it would have inhibited her movement on stage so we decided to pivot and use it on SNL.”

A seamstress named Katie Maimi, who also has a tie to the Kentuckiana area, assisted Deatherage during the construction phase of the ensemble.

“I put out an ad to find someone to help with the sewing and I ended up hiring Katie,” he said. “We didn’t know each other but realized after talking that when I left Louisville to move to Los Angeles in 2016, Katie took over my job, which was working on costumes for a film production company in Kentucky.”

While Deatherage and Maimi were putting in long hours sewing the garment for Roan’s SNL costume, Deatherage’s boyfriend, Christopher Minafo, created the dramatic headpiece.

“He’s incredible. He’s a multi-media artist but he can do anything. He’s the craftiest person I know,” Deatherage said during a phone interview. “If you hear banging in the background, he’s tearing tile out of the living room of our new house.”

Deatherage called seeing the Grammy Award nominated performer dressed in his design “unreal and breathtaking.” The Nov. 2 episode featured Roan as the musical guest and comedian John Mulaney as the host. The designer also created Roan’s White Swan look for her “Good Luck, Babe,” performance on “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.”

“That was a look I have dreamed of making my entire life and then this perfect opportunity just kind of popped out of nowhere,” the designer said. “I had this idea of making the dress appear as though Chappell was wrapped in large swan wings. I think the end result felt very high fashion.”

Creating for celebrities has been a lifelong dream but where Deatherage is making his biggest mark is online. To date, he’s got more than six and a half million followers across all his platforms and his work as a content creator is seen worldwide.

“During the COVID pandemic I started making DYI sewing videos and it took off,” he said. “Previously I had thought people only wanted to see a finished product but turns out they love the process. and that put me on the map.”

The popularity of revealing the process of creating beautiful clothing on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube led Deatherage to launch an education-focused Patreon, where people pay for his regularly updated library of how-to-sew videos, his hand-designed clothing patterns (sizes double zero to 32), and access to a Discord community of fellow fashion enthusiasts.

“It is life changing, if I am honest,” Deatherage told the Courier Journal. “I was on a Times Square billboard for a week, it was crazy.”

Having recently moved to New York with Minafo where the two are remodeling a home, Deatherage now has his sites set on designing for Broadway.

“Things that I have always wanted are literally happening right before my eyes.” Deatherage said.”I plan to continue what I am doing but now that I am in New York I’d say the next step is designing costumes for Broadway, and I want to win a Tony. That seems like the next big goal.”

Reach features reporter Kirby Adams at kadams@courier-journal.com.

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