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“Boot, Blob, Cunt”: Hunter Schafer Recaps Her Hunger Games Press Tour Looks
Glamour is back. Our very own fashion director Dara joined Hunter Schafer on an international press marathon for the new The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and the talent-stylist dream team quickly had the internet gagged. From sculptural arts-and-crafts red carpet stunts to slutty afterparty looks, the pair joined us after two sleepless weeks to look back on the Capitol-worthy fashions, straight from Dara’s camera roll.
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SCHAFER: Are we live?
DARA: Yeah, we’re live. We just left the Prada store and Sally Beauty.
SCHAFER: Back-to-back. We’re in the Suburban.
DARA: We just ran some girl errands. So we’re talking about The Hunger Games press tour. The looks, the fashion. Our first collaboration in this way. A long time coming.
SCHAFER: We had a couple of attempts beforehand, but shit got canceled.
DARA: This is our first post-strike big slay together. Glamour is back.
SCHAFER: Yes. Glamour is back.
DARA: I talk a lot of shit about glamour being back, so we really had to do it for the girls.
SCHAFER: That’s why I had to have you.
DARA: Let’s give every look a moment. This is the first day in Berlin.
SCHAFER: Wow, that feels like so long ago.
DARA: Dries Van Noten, H-to-T except for the nude Louboutins. What were you feeling in this look?
SCHAFER: I love to give elf by default, so this was like, I’m elf but I’m also stepping into Hunger Games.
DARA: And she’s giving lady.
SCHAFER: A lot of that was the shoes. Dara really said, no flats, pointy toe, hard to walk—and I lived. I felt so cunt.
DARA: I love this one. She really set the tone. And the girls online are really gagged that Dries Van Noten got pulled for a press appearance because apparently Dries Van Noten does not do this. I didn’t know that.
SCHAFER: But you pulled it for me, right? Work.
DARA: I pulled it. Dries Van Noten is one of the greatest of our time, so I wasn’t trying to give big gag, it’s just great and I love it. Which brings me to the Schiaparelli couture painted look. She was nasty. What were you feeling in her?
SCHAFER: It gives bodycon. It’s such a crazy garment, but it’s stretchy.
DARA: Yeah, it really could fit anybody.
SCHAFER: It wasn’t the biggest carpet we were doing, but—
DARA: It felt right for the vibe. And the raw, nasty hair. Easy, rough hair. Powdery skin.
SCHAFER: It was a controversial choice. I’m glad we made it.
DARA: Me too. Someone was like, “It matched the naive bohemian vibe of the dress, finger paint.” They get it. I was feeling the art pop.
SCHAFER: It’s kind of “fuck you.”
DARA: Yeah. It’s a little gross. The white shoe said I’m still chic though. We were really giving freak-sexy the whole time.
SCHAFER: Exactly. Also, ever since it came out I’ve had that dress on my—
DARA: Yeah, this was a you choice. Let the girls know.
SCHAFER: That was me.
DARA: You sent that to me and I got the dress. Let’s give the Margiela, because she was fab.
SCHAFER: The Margiela was amazing. Dara pulled a bunch of Margiela.
DARA: There were literally 17 Margiela pieces traveling with us.
SCHAFER: 17?
DARA: I don’t know, I just made that number up. It was like 32. Every crystal tabi heel in every color.
SCHAFER: Should we tell them about princess party?
DARA: Oh my god. We didn’t wear princess party, but we wore it a lot in the rooms by ourselves.
SCHAFER: Princess party—which we should do an editorial with at some point—well, it is what it sounds like.
DARA: Big tulle fluffy dress, cupcake sequins. And there were a lot of princess party Margiela dresses. We would just put them on in the hotel room to hang out.
SCHAFER: Yeah, and you just feel like a little doll. It was really cute.
SCHAFER: And then we had the paper hat. Arts and crafts but make it fashion for the whole tour—
DARA: Because Tigris gives arts and crafts.
SCHAFER: Tigris is an arts and craft girl.
DARA: She is resourceful with her resources—her lack of resources. So we’re in a latex skirt, crystal pump with the tabi toe, weird slip underneath—
SCHAFER: That’s tucked in—
DARA: That’s got all these ribbons and nasty things. And then you wore the Connor Ives. That little flower, which was a you pick again.
SCHAFER: That was a me pick. Loved her. That outfit was very British.
DARA: We wanted to really give London. Little hat. Classic, lovely English rose things, via Hunger Games. And then the crazy coat.
SCHAFER: It’s part of the big yellow coat story we have going on.
DARA: That’s Hunter’s signature style. Big amorphous yellow blob.
SCHAFER: Exactly. They keep getting bigger and more yellow.
DARA: What else did we wear in London? Hold on. We’re getting out of the car.
[RECORDING PAUSES]
DARA: We’re back at the hotel. We’re in Hunter’s living room to finish this talk, even though I’m late for a hair appointment. This is probably all going to get edited out.
SCHAFER: There’s a Louis Bourgeois original print in the lobby. I died a little bit.
DARA: Chic hotel. So we’re in London, and we went to McQueen for a fitting. Because here’s the drama about the McQueen look in L.A. It didn’t fit, so we needed to go see if we could refit it.
SCHAFER: Yeah, my tits are too big for everything.
DARA: So fierce. Can you imagine being a doll and wanting a reduction?
SCHAFER: Imagine it, girl. This is my truth.
DARA: Anyway, we went to McQueen. We tried on some things. We fixed the dress. We had two major fittings in London right after that. You did the Prada gold and you did the Marni flower.
SCHAFER: Yes. And we had the rest of the tour figured out right there.
DARA: Boom. That’s when we decided to do this crazy flower dress, which we will get to. And then you did a talk in the lobby for an influencer event, so we did another chic little Margiela dress.
SCHAFER: Not quite princess party, but—
DARA: But looks kind of dirty and burned. It had tassels. It’s very The Hunger Games poster.
SCHAFER: And it was black and gold, which we also did quite a bit of.
DARA: Okay, so let’s get into gold. Tell us how you felt in this Prada.
SCHAFER: This look pushed me. This is what I love about having Dara on with me, she has an understanding of glamour. I have my comfort zone, which is like I said before, a little elf, a little sci-fi…
DARA: A little funky. Boot, blob, cunt.
SCHAFER: Yeah. I can appreciate glamour, but I have a harder time executing it myself. But once I’m there…
DARA: You love.
SCHAFER: I felt insane. It was crazy.
DARA: I love when Hunter gets evil, because she looks too cunt.
SCHAFER: It makes me really evil. It’s happened a few times on this press tour.
DARA: I really love that you love the avant-garde, pushing the boundary fashion, but this glamourpuss shit is my natural comfort zone. And I like them together, because it’s not too old school vintage and boring, but it’s still legible to people and they get it.
SCHAFER: Yeah. It’s a little bit for everybody.
DARA: For the gold Prada I pulled out the spring 2009 reference. I drew this up, sent it to Prada, kind of not thinking they would do it, and then they sent back a rendering with your face on it. It was very fierce. Full cartoon. They said, “We’re going to make it, and we’re going to try to get it done in a week.” And they did that.
SCHAFER: They absolutely did.
DARA: It was an emotional moment, because this was the big premiere.
SCHAFER: Yeah, and Dara just loves this collection. The way she talks about it, I can tell it goes way back.
DARA: It’s a favorite. It changed me when I saw it.
SCHAFER: And this was a bit of a baby for you, right?
DARA: This was my baby, yeah. I woke up and this was in my head.
SCHAFER: And they fuckin’ made it happen. Shout out to Prada, girl.
DARA: Hell yeah. And the tailor was so major. She used to work for Lee McQueen.
SCHAFER: Josh was wearing gold too, and everybody was wearing black and white. Very fierce for the world premiere.
DARA: Then we didn’t sleep and we went straight to the plane to L.A. And we looked haggard.
SCHAFER: We were struggling. Everybody was struggling.
DARA: Okay, then boom, L.A.
SCHAFER: We switched gears a little bit.
DARA: We had been giving everyone color, texture, print, pastel. L.A. was sleek, slick, cunt, silver, neutrals, and silhouette.
SCHAFER: Silhouette. Which is what we did with the Tory Burch.
DARA: We needed a palate cleanse. It was a lot of cuckoo crazy.
SCHAFER: It was. We needed to calm down a little bit.
DARA: And what’s better than a little white T-shirt and some studded leather pants?
SCHAFER: Yes. But still elevated with the shoulder pad and the matching belt.
DARA: Still giving you PanAm.
SCHAFER: Still giving PanAm. It’s more game maker, I would say. In the offices.
DARA: It’s giving—who does Julianne Moore play? That bitch.
SCHAFER: President Coin. The Coinage. And she looked like she had coin.
DARA: And you had coins on your pants. L.A. was very lowkey. Then it was the premiere. Let’s talk about that.
SCHAFER: Well, beforehand, I was really stressed out because I had to tape my boobs crazy to fit them in.
DARA: We were like, let’s give L.A. girl. Sexy, sexy, sexy. You’re such a hottie. Hair long, smokey eyes.
SCHAFER: Jewels encrusted all over the fringe. I think this was very warrior.
DARA: Heavy-ass dress.
SCHAFER: That dress… I shouldn’t say it.
DARA: What?
SCHAFER: It hurt me. It was physically… I couldn’t breathe because it was so heavy.
DARA: Glamour is pain.
SCHAFER: I think there are still bruises on my collarbone.
DARA: Oh, that’s beautiful. It left you with some love marks.
SCHAFER: Love bites from the dress.
DARA: McQueen love bites. This is one of Sarah Burton’s last moments on the red carpet.
SCHAFER: I’m so glad we were able to do that.
DARA: And it’s your first McQueen moment. Also, you and Viola Davis looked great together.
SCHAFER: Oh my god, everybody was giving sparkle.
DARA: Yeah, there was synergy.
SCHAFER: And then when I threw on the slutty little after party dress—
DARA: That little rose dress. Alberta Ferretti.
SCHAFER: With that hair, I really became a menace.
DARA: You put on the red slip dress and it was over for all of us. It’s rose because of the Snow family rose.
SCHAFER: Which is white, but it’s okay.
DARA: Well, there’s red in the beginning of the movie—
SCHAFER: And then it turns white! That’s fab.
DARA: Just because we’re doing slutty after party looks doesn’t mean they can’t also be on theme. We got fucked up on this night. We went a little too hard.
SCHAFER: We did. I severely fucked up a pair of shoes that we were still planning on using.
DARA: But I sent them to the cobbler.
SCHAFER: They got fixed and I wore them on Jimmy Fallon.
DARA: Period. That was another sleepless night, straight to a plane.
SCHAFER: Yes, I performed karaoke in front of a lot of people I didn’t know.
DARA: The karaoke was fierce. You did “Oh So Quiet” by Bjork and it was the best thing I’ve ever seen.
SCHAFER: This is a lot. We did a lot of looks.
DARA: We did a look literally just to drive to Jimmy Fallon in.
SCHAFER: Just for the walking in.
DARA: We got this neon fur from Alexandre Vauthier and you looked fucking hot.
SCHAFER: I started to get evil again.
DARA: Grace Kelly hair takes someone to that place. You know what? We had to give them plot twists, shock the system. You thought it was artful, chic, highbrow, and then we post-credit scene with the Balmain sexpot peplum corset.
SCHAFER: With the Bermuda shorts with a cuff.
DARA: It was so nasty.
SCHAFER: So freaky.
DARA: New York was giving stunts for no photographers around. We did the leopard coat just to walk to the car for nobody to see.
SCHAFER: Yeah. We kept being like, “Oh, we’ll do an outfit change inside because we need the entrance look to be gotten by the paps.”
DARA: And there were no paps. They did not show up. Wait, I love the Kelly Clarkson look. It was great. Thom Browne.
SCHAFER: Still very Capitol. We had a cum shoe. We’re calling it the cum shoe.
DARA: Prada does this shoe in a Saffiano leather that’s the most sickening off-white, yellowish tone.
SCHAFER: It looks like ejaculate. But in a really, fierce, beautiful way.
DARA: It’s so good. Everyone needs the cum shoe. And then it was the premiere.
SCHAFER: In the Marni, which was crazy.
DARA: This dress could not travel in a box or with me.
SCHAFER: It had to be hand-carried.
DARA: It just happened to be in London so you could fit it. It came to us on a dress form in a six-foot-tall cardboard box.
SCHAFER: It was enormous.
DARA: Someone came to help you put it on, and then they took it away. And then it was hand-carried to New York. Then it arrived at the hotel where someone helped us hang it up, and it was a sculpture. This was full Effie Trinket, Capitol couture.
SCHAFER: It was a perfect way to round it out too, because we had the arts and crafts in the beginning and then we went glamour, and we brought it back to paint and sculpture.
DARA: I feel like this is your comfort zone. You were beaming with joy.
SCHAFER: I was so happy in that god damn contraption. It was adorable.
DARA: It was so cute. Everyone’s asking, how do you sit? You don’t. She stood just like the Met Gala.
SCHAFER: I couldn’t touch anybody on the carpet because they were going to get cut by raw edge metal. And this was the smallest premiere. Kind of no reason to snap as hard as we did, but we did.
DARA: And that’s why we’re that. That’s why you’re that girl.
SCHAFER: That’s why you’re that girl. Because honestly, I would’ve talked myself out of doing this, I think.
DARA: We wanted to do a very simple thing, and then everyone was like, “Do it, do it.” And I’m no one if not a people pleaser. Everyone else loved this so much, so we had to do it. And I think it paid off.
SCHAFER: It did. It’s so Capitol, so Tigris.
DARA: And the makeup and hair was so pretty. Braided ballet bun and a little Marie Antoinette cheek.
SCHAFER: The beat was so good. I was snatched.
DARA: And then Simone Rocha for the afters. Little pink gumdrop.
SCHAFER: Just a little echo of the dress.
DARA: Yeah. Very similar silhouette in something you can sit in.
SCHAFER: And it had shorts, which I lived for because I love to squat and smoke a cigarette.
DARA: And then we stayed out all night, didn’t sleep. Went to Good Morning America.
SCHAFER: I was not feeling Good Morning America, in my essence. It was, “Good evening, I need to go to bed.”
DARA: But this was very chic and elegant seaside. I was like, Middle America moms are going to love this look.
SCHAFER: And a sensible shoe.
DARA: It’s a little summery, but it’s okay. On TV, there’s no weather. After Good Morning America we took a nap. Then you had to go do a talk in this little chic Carolina Herrera. Kind of a Madonna vibe.
SCHAFER: Yeah, we kept it young and fresh with the hair and makeup.
DARA: And you had this gold flower brooch.
SCHAFER: Like on the posters.
DARA: This was maybe your most sober look.
SCHAFER: I agree.
DARA: We had to give them a little bit of pullback. I love wow factor, I love pulling a stunt, but you know how Diana Vreeland’s always like, the eye has to travel?
SCHAFER: Mm-hmm.
DARA: The eye has to travel, but if the eye can’t rest, the eye gets too exhausted.
SCHAFER: You said that so well.
DARA: So black suit, that’s why. That’s it. That’s the last look.
SCHAFER: Wow. What a story. We killed it.
DARA: Y’all are gagged. Sorry for not letting anyone else breathe. Sorry for serving looks.
SCHAFER: Let me say one more thing: Dara is the best. This is why I was like, “I need to work with this bitch on the red carpet.” I love having her on set because she will show you exactly what you need to do pose-wise.
DARA: We worked on the poses. I was in there like Kris Jenner, stage mom.
SCHAFER: She’s there on the carpet right under the whole line of photographers, so I can just look down at her and she’ll make the motion and then I correct my pose and it’s seamless and perfect.
DARA: Photographers hate me because I’m blocking them, but I’m getting them their shot.
SCHAFER: This was so fabulous.
DARA: Okay, bye bestie. I need to go get my haircut. I’m an hour late.
SCHAFER: I got a party to go to.