Costume Designer, Debra Hanson, Talks Dressing Schitt's Creek Fashion Queen and Matriarch, Moira Rose

 Moira Rose, the peerless once-wealthy Rose family matriarch on Pop TV’s hit comedy “Schitt’s Creek,” is an over-the-top television style icon for the ages.

Costumed by longtime Canadian designer Debra Hanson (Emmy-nominated with her assistant, Darci Cheyne), the multiwigged Moira is played to quirky perfection by Catherine O’Hara.

With guidance from showrunner and costar Daniel Levy, O’Hara leaned in to the campy Moira to offer Hanson and her team inspiration for the onetime soap star’s oddball couture as she and her family settled into Schitt’s Creek, the small town the Roses once purchased as a joke and their only asset after a business associate left them penniless.

“Moira puts great care into how she presents herself; she wants the world to see who she really is, which is, of course, an off-centered target,” says O’Hara. “I suggested Daphne Guinness [British heiress and high-fashion icon] as inspiration for Moira’s look but otherwise just stood there while Debra and her team and Daniel put me together in the most beautiful, formidable and hysterical way. “Johnny’s [Eugene Levy] impeccable suits and Moira’s wearable art tell everyone that these people are not going to give up who they think they are while being furloughed from their rightful positions,” she adds.

“I have to say there was a great deal of laughter in the fittings with Catherine O’Hara,” notes Hanson. “She tried everything, and by her response to it we always knew: ‘Nah, this isn’t quite it,’ or ‘Oh, my God.’ Most of the time, it was ‘Oh, my God. Put more.’”

Dan Levy also credits O’Hara with both Moira’s look and the vibrant and collegial experience. “I can’t pinpoint what exactly it is about Catherine that makes literally anything from a wig worn backwards to a complicated, high-fashion piece from Raf Simons work,” he says. “Fittings with Catherine were always fun because we could really experiment, and the weirder things got, the better she looked. We had this saying during her costume fittings that when it comes to Moira Rose, more is more. Too much is never enough. I’ll miss those mornings.”

Read full interview here