Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1352017
26 The Costume Designer Spring 2021 '90s Redux That Rings a Bell… Many people who watched the original run can name their Saved by the Bell celebrity crush—you know who you are! For costume designer Mojdeh Daftary, taking Three decades have passed, but for some of us, the '90s were not that long ago. If you remember people "investing" in Beanie Babies, doing the Macarena, or dreading the arrival of Y2K, then you might feel a pang of nostalgia about the last decade of the previous century. It was a time that felt oh so profound—even a bit grim—then, but now seems charmingly innocent. The '90s are ripe for revisiting, as people look fondly to familiar things as a respite from uncertain times. Nostalgia is booming, especially in the world of enter- tainment, bringing life to old favorites. on the revival meant drawing inspiration from the earlier series, but with a mandate to keep things contemporary. That meant rewatching the '90s episodes to take note of the original characters' iconic looks, and referencing them with an eye toward how they've developed in the years since. "I wanted to reacquaint myself with the Bayside environment: the colors, background actors, sets, etc. I knew that we wanted to create an environment that would pay homage to the original show without making it look like a parody," she explains. As a "reimagining" of the original series, the pro- cess is about both the new and the familiar. "Our executive producers really wanted to make sure that we used looks from the original series, when possible, to evoke that sense of nostalgia, but they wanted us to be careful to keep the overall look of the show modern. We wanted to make sure that our original cast was an evolved version of their teen selves," Daftary says, "and our new cast each had a unique by Gary V. Foss Dexter Darden, Belmont Cameli, Mitchell Hoog, Alycia Pascual-Pena, Josie Totah, Haskiri Velazquez, Mariah Iman Wilson in Saved by the Bell Photo: Tyler Golden/Peacock