Alias Costumes And Wigs
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Season 1, Episode 1: "Truth Be Told"
When the pilot was filming at the University of Southern California, Reitz recalls, series creator J.J. Abrams noticed a woman walking by and immediately knew he wanted to replicate her day-glo red hair color for the scenes when Sydney goes rogue. "So I walked up to her and I'm like, 'What do I need to do to get a piece of this hair?'" he says. "And she was like, 'Oh, I don't care. Take it!' She let me cut a piece off."
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Season 1, Episode 2: "So It Begins"
Goldsmith's first episode (Linda Serijan designed the pilot costumes) was also the one that included Syd in a blue rubber dress, a garment Goldsmith procured at a Los Angeles latex fetish shop called Syren. The synthetic get-up became iconic for the show, which is not lost on the designer. "It was like job security," she says.
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Season 3, Episode 3: "Parity"
"I spent so much time trying to get the right shoe" for Sydney's undercover trip to Spain, Goldsmith recalls. "We had her in an orange dress... and she had the fan, and she had the red Veronica Lake hair." And when the correct footwear was procured, Goldsmith and her team altered nude character shoes and tennis shoes in order to have footwear Garner — and her stunt double, Shauna Duggins — could move in. "For one fancy Alias look," Goldsmith says, "it would be six pairs of shoes."
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Season 1, Episode 14: "The Coup"
The Vegas casino-waitress outfit Sydney dons — then quickly ditches when she sees Francie and that no-good Charlie in the vicinity of the chapel — was made of a chain-mail-like material "that kept pinching my skin," Jennifer Garner tells TVLine. "It hurt so much, and it was so short!" She adds, "We shot it in Vegas, and I felt very exposed in a big, public place... It was one that I felt like I would never get out of."
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Season 1, Episode 21: "Rendezvous"
While on a mission to record a man's heartbeat in order to crack a safe (long story), Syd's alias was a vampy cabaret singer in a Paris café. "We wanted to make it sexy, but she had to do a lot of stunts, and it had to be extremely practical," Goldsmith says. "I did a more androgynous style: a black Emporio Armani tuxedo pant and jacket, an Agent Provocateur corset and a thousand-strand black beaded choker. That was pretty fantastic."
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Season 2, Episode 7: "The Counteragent"
"We actually got a real Geisha" to teach the hair department how to make wigs in the traditional Japanese hairstyle, Reitz recalls. "God, it took us a full week." The work paid off, though: Reitz and his team won a Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hairstylist Guild Award in 2003 for their work on the episode.
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Season 2, Episode 10: "The Abduction"
If Syd appeared at an elegant function and then later jumped out a window/off a cliff/from a plane, it's likely Garner was feeling a little crowded in her gown. "Riggings and harnesses and all kind of things were accommodated under the costumes and sandwiched in between pairs of Spanx to streamline," Goldsmith shares.
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Season 2, Episode 11: "A Higher Echelon"
Though Sydney often wore the splashier disguises, her partner Dixon sometimes went incognito, as well — much to the chagrin of portrayer Carl Lumbly. "There were some that I scrubbed from my memory almost as soon as they happened," he says. That includes Dixon's "Are you ready to party?!" DJ look. "I had no idea what I was wearing," Lumbly says, "and I never will."
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Season 2, Episode 12: "The Getaway"
Goldsmith credits series creator Abrams with giving her the freedom to have fun with Syd's wardrobe and the "chameleon-like" Garner with the ability to roll with whatever showed up on the dress rack. "We were constantly creating new ideas," she adds, "and to be able to do it with somebody like Jennifer was just a hoot and a holler."
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Season 2, Episode 13: "Phase One"
Thanks to SD-6 and the CIA, Goldsmith says she spent considerable time "reinventing every kind of tactical gear you can come up with." But even then, regulation boots and a regular old black turtleneck just wouldn't do for Sydney. So the designer tweaked Garner's version of the gear "to make it look more streamlined, sophisticated and sexy."
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Season 2, Episode 13: "Phase One"
"What... was the matter... with the black one?!" To answer Syd's question: Nothing, Goldsmith says of the Cosabella bra-and-panty set — but the red number that followed it almost perfectly matched the interior of the plane where she strangled the oaf who ogled her, and that's a production faux pas. "Sometimes," she says, laughing, "we forget to collaborate."
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Season 3, Episode 4: "A Missing Link"
Almost all of Garner's wigs first appeared on screen as long locks, then were later cut into medium, then short lengths. "We tried to get about three looks out of each wig, because they are about $20 grand apiece," Reitz says.
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Season 3, Episode 18: "Unveiled"
Vaughn didn't dress up often, but when he did, he went big — like when he blended in at a Goth club in Berlin. "I'm certainly not an eyeliner kind of guy," Michael Vartan tells TVLine. "But for that undercover mission, it fit perfectly, so it wasn't a case of 'Oh my God, what are my friends going to say?'" He laughs. "If you're infiltrating an S&M club, the least you can do is have a little eyeliner."
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Season 4, Episode 1: "Authorized Personnel Only"
For the record, Garner's favorite faux hair was "a blonde, really super-short wig that I wore when I was Swedish" — such as when she seduced a man just before stealing his unstable isotope. (We know that sounds dirty, but it's really what happened.)
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Season 5, Episode 6: "Solo"
The idea for Sydney's sari in the final season was born of necessity — Garner was pregnant with her first child — but the frock became one of Goldsmith's favorites. "The vividness of the color was so beautiful, and it was so simple and gorgeous. I just loved it," she says. "It was not a sexy dress, but it was stunning."