Qween Jean Explains Her Vision

“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. 

“There’s been so many iterations that grew beyond our original ideas, that surpassed what our expectations were and that really culminated with the collaboration with our performers,” Jean says. “This cast is undoubtedly the best performers I’ve ever worked with in New York City and they all bring determination, vulnerability and such exquisite curiosity and unbound imagination.”

It’s a few days before the show’s opening night, and Jean has just arrived at the studio from the Broadhurst Theatre after a few tweaks for understudies in the matinee. The night before, the team had added two new looks to the show, including a dramatic purple suit and feathered hat for Old Deuteronomy, played by Broadway legend André De Shields. The power of a reveal was crucial to many of the looks for the cats as they compete in ballroom, Jean says, and she did lots of research into the history of New York ballroom culture. 

“That for me was really diving deep into and understanding the fundamentals of New York City ballroom culture, where it emerged, the pain of Black and brown, queer and trans people not having space, not being respected in a lot of the other pageants and ballrooms in the late ’50s and ’60s, therefore forcing them to create their own,” Jean says. “And that being just as valid, just as important, as necessary, and as we now know, has become a global movement for solidarity, resilience, and individuality.”

Her research also included lots of time logged at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the picture collection at the New York Public Library, as well as studying “Paris Is Burning” and the work of Chantal Regnault, a photographer who worked closely documenting the ballroom culture of the 1980s and 1990s. 

“A lot of the details and richness of our creativity was truly honoring the myriad of balls and the categories that our ancestors created,” Jean says. “So for me, it was just really to pay homage and to uplift every part of the beauty that has allowed us to exist today and to stand proudly knowing where we’ve come from.”

Jean calls the project “the most exciting thing I’ve been able to contribute to,” and highlights the tapestry outfit as a piece she’s most proud of. 

“There’s a tapestry costume that is woven up of portraits of matriarchs, founding mothers, pioneers, diamond pioneers, living legends and icons in our community that have truly defined the elegance of the culture and the magnitude of ballroom, and that it has reached every corner of the world,” Jean says. “It is something that we’ve never been ashamed of, but now we can really truly stand in the light of the sun and be revered and respected for what we contribute. And to me, that’s part of the revolution.”

Jean was born in Haiti and moved to Florida with her family as a child. Her grandmother made dresses and Jean grew up studying the way she sewed and created.  

“I’ve always been attracted to clothes. Clothes have always been part of my experience,” she says. “I love clothes as much as I love my freedom. And baby, I love my freedom.”

She moved to New York to enroll at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, studying design for stage and film. In her interview process, she got to meet one of her mentors, Paul Tazewell, an experience that reaffirmed her belief in a higher power. 

“I said, ‘OK, there’s a God,’” she says.

Her involvement with “Cats” began with a conversation with the directors, Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch, and she immediately felt connected to the project. 

“I felt called to create one-of-a-kind, showstopping feline fashion that celebrates the legacy of New York, and that’s what I tried to do,” she says.