FX’s ‘Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll’ Costume Designer Jeriana San Juan Talks Dressing The Stars

Editor’s Note: Please note there have been some edits to this article due to misquotes on my part. My sincere apologizes to Jeriana San Juan.

If you don’t know anything about styling or costume design allow me to introduce you to Jeriana San Juan, an outstanding talent in the industry.

San Juan has designed costumes, worked as a Stylist, and was a personal shopper on everything from Broadway, to commercials, to television and film. You can see her work on Gossip Girl, Saturday Night Live, I Just Want My Pants Back, Legally Blonde: Broadway Musical, and The Big C just to name a few, her resume is ridiculous.

Her most recent work can be seen on FX’s upcoming series Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll. The show follows middle-aged rocker Johhny Rock (Denis Leary) as he attempts to reach the height of fame and fortune he’s always dreamed of. The anticipated series also stars John Corbett, Elizabeth Gillies, Elaine Hendrix, Robert Kelly, John Ales and Josh Pais.

I spoke with Jeriana just in time for New York Fashion Week and talked all about how she got started in costume design, all things Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll and Fashion Week of course. Check out some excerpts below.

On getting started in the costume design industry: “I got started in costume design at FIT, I went to college there and started to have interest in theater from there, so my first job was actually in costume shops, you know big costume shops around New York City. Literally, the first thing I did was pick up the yellow pages and call the first shop up and just offer up my services and tell them I would literally sweep their floors and do whatever I could do just to let me in the building and let me be close to the work I wanted to do and be exposed to the designers that were coming through there. That is really how I got my first initial start.”

On favorite show to work on: “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll for FX has probably been my favorite because I really had an opportunity as a designer to do some really unique things in a really great medium like in TV, being able to work with vintage clothes and contemporary clothes and even design new pieces. I was able to really invent and create a look in a world that doesn’t really exist and that was kind of a beautiful thing and a very rare opportunity as a designer and I had so much fun doing it. You know just digging through archives and going to show rooms, and just being able to use unique pieces in creative ways was really fun.”

Photo: Instagram

On designing for Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll: “There’s a bunch of pieces that I just absolutely fell in love with for particular characters. There’s a few pieces, the character Ava [Editor’s Note: played by Elaine Hendrix] who’s kind of our fashion clothing horse, she’s a groupie from the ’80’s and ’90’s and kind of never grew up so I wanted her wardrobe to kind of reflect that, and I wanted for a good portion of her wardrobe to look like it was collected over the years. Some from when she was in her hay day and able to afford these cool pieces including a very cool Moschino jacket that she still held on to to this day. She still rocks it and wears it with like a cheap pair of jeans and a cool tank top that she found at a juniors store. She is the type that would rework and wear things that are collected over time, so there’s a bunch of different pieces that are really fun. Look out for this great Moschino jacket It’s a black leather crop jacket with big gold oversized grommets, the jacket it’s pretty amazing! Then there’s this beautiful gigantic blue fur that a character GiGi [Editor’s Note: played by Liz Gillies] wears that I rented from a show room and that is sort of just glorious. It just oozes rock and roll.”

On dressing Denis Leary: “And then our main character Johnny Rock played by Denis Leary is kind of the same tune as Ava, you know he really had his hay day and then just never really let go and never really grew up, so he’s still rocking the same look he was back in the ’90’s which is sort of like this weird ’70’s throwback with some odes to Elvis, just basically he never grew up and is wearing his clothes the same way that he did. So there’s a lot of really great signature ’70’s leather jackets that he wears throughout the series and a lot of them I found at thrift stores and vintage stores and some of them were actually made. Later on in the season he wears an amazing, kind of vintage ’70’s shearling coat that I actually designed for him and had made out of this beautiful, cracked suede with like this crazy shearling inside.”

Photo: Instagram

On dressing Elizabeth Gillies: “Well Liz Gillies has an amazing body first of all, she’s so much fun to dress, she’s like a Barbie doll, you know everything looks good on her. So, we just had a terrible amount of fun, we really tried to find the character in the clothes and I use a lot of her own personal style as influence. You know, we did a lot of black which just looks beautiful on her skin and a lot of mix of Gothic tones and we tried to definitely flaunt her sexuality and use her assets, you know wink, wink (laughs), so there’s a lot of that and you know there’s a lot of just the fact that the character herself is trying to kind of discover her own voice and become this famous musician and trying to do that and we tried to show that in her clothes to you know that she still has a lot of youthful sensibilities that just try to dress the part and dress rock and roll.”

On dressing the character vs. the character creating the design: “I a hundred percent structure my costumes around the character that’s on the page. You know you first get a script and you read it and you interpret it and you kind of map out for yourself what this kind of person looks like, what kind of clothes they wear, and you really start to develop how they speak through their wardrobe and that’s how you start the process, so it’s one hundred percent lifted from the page.”

On New York Fashion Week plans: “The next week is very hectic for me. I have two projects happening at the same time right now and I’ve been invited to a bunch of shows so I’m going to try and do that. It’s so fun to see a fresh perspective, and see fresh clothes on the runway, and new things you haven’t seen yet because as a designer you start to feel you’re shopping the same clothes at the end of the season, you’ve seen the same things a million times, so to see fresh things it’s almost like plugging in your battery again and be able to feel like you’re excited for new things to come, and seeing how they’re styled. It’s like recharging my design battery.”

To check out Jeriana San Juan’s awesome career in costume design head over to her official website Jeriana.com and be sure to look her up on my one of favorite websites ever, IMDb.com. You can see her work come to life on FX‘s Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll this summer.

Follow Glambergirlblog.com on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @glambergirlblog