Why Aren't the Iconic Ruby Slippers inWickedRed? The Movie's Costume Designer Explains (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

The Wizard of Oz.Photo:Silver Screen Collection/Getty

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

They’re kind of iconic.

The sparkling red sequin shoes are the ones Dorothy takes from the Wicked Witch of the East after a house falls on her when she arrives in Oz with Toto. And, those are the very same shoes that help Dorothy get back home when she clicks her heels together three times.

KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty

Somewhere between six and 10 pairs were created for Judy Garland to wear in the 1939 film, and only a few are known to still exist — one is on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, and another is going up for auction next month.BBCestimates they’ll fetch a cool few million dollars.

When Paul Tazewell, costume designer forWicked,was creating his own shoes for this year’s film, he went back to the original source material for inspiration. And it turns out, Baum never intended for those shoes to be red at all.

Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there.

Wicked crystal slippers.Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

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“There’s the idea of Cinderella and the glass slipper, and then it’s like how we make shoes a myth and how we’ve indulged them into our fantasy fairytale storytelling,” he says. “In the book they were silver shoes, and then they became crystal and silver shoes.”

Tazewell incorporated swirls and jewels into the shoes that actress Marissa Bode (who plays Nessarose, the character who later became the Wicked Witch of the East) would wear inWicked,and in doing so, created something entirely new and unique to this movie.

But his silver shoes simultaneously pay homage to Gregory Maguire’sWicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West— the book thatWickedon Broadway and theWickedmovie are both based on. Maguire stayed true to Baum’s storytelling as well, writing in his 1995 novel that the shoes were iridescent beads and gifted to Nessarose.

In Maguire’sWicked, Glinda enchants the shoes to help Nessarose (who is in a wheelchair prior to this point) walk, and when the spell is cast, they become red. In the Broadway show, Elphaba is the one to cast the spell!

Nessarose and Elphaba in Wicked.Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

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source: people.com