Here's Why Glinda's Iconic Bubble Dress in “Wicked” Is a Different Color Than the Broadway Gown (Exclusive)

Costume designer Paul Tazewell talks about his inspiration for the iconic piece

Glinda's bubble dress in Wicked steals the show from the moment the Good Witch lands on screen.

How could a blonde witch in a bubble not grab your attention?

When Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good Witch floats into Munchkinland in the first few minutes of Wicked, she does so in her frothy pink statement dress. Broadway fans may have been surprised to see her in such a pink confection, because when Glinda floats onto the stage, her dress is a vastly different color — it's actually blue.

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"I guess my closest connection to the story of The Wizard of Oz was the film," says costume designer Paul Tazewell of the 1939 movie. "When I think of the iconic Glinda, it is Billie Burke as Glinda in that pink dress and how she arrives in the bubble. So I really wanted to pursue the possibility of using pink. I mean, there were legal issues with using pink for the Broadway design just because of studios, and we were given clearance to use the pink to be reflective of Glinda, thankfully."

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Tazewell is referring to the movie, starring Burke as the Good Witch, which was released in technicolor and based on the L. Frank Baum book published in 1900. Wicked is the prequel to the story (the real story about the witches), published by Gregory Maguire in 1995 and adapted for Broadway in 2003. Kristin Chenoweth was the first Glinda to wear the iconic blue dress in her bubble on stage, veering away from The Wizard of Oz theme of Glinda wearing all pink.

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"I was also intent on creating a similar quality of silhouette," Tazewell tells PEOPLE of looking to The Wizard of Oz to create the updated Glinda dress. "There's a fairy princess quality in Ariana as Glinda in that dress. It's sparkly and it is covered with bubble imagery that swirls around her. So it has all of those qualities that are magical and give you that sense of the Good Witch of the North in a very strong way, but it's re-envisioned, it's turning it on its head."

Tazewell says he didn't want the dress to feel "old-fashioned," despite calling back to the 1930s but instead "embraced the spirit" of how he and the audience feels when they would see Glinda in the original film.

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The dress itself took an incredible amount of time and work to make. The dress required 137 pattern pieces to put together. For the bodice, the team spent 225 hours hand-beading more than 20,000 beads. The end result is the show-stopping creation that Grande wears with her towering crown and spectacular wand while she and the munchkins sing "No One Mourns the Wicked."

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"There was a lot of research and development that went into that dress," Tazewell says. "The design of Wicked is giving us — and the story overall is giving us — the backstory of what happens once [Glinda and Elphaba, played by Cynthia Erivo] become these iconic characters, and it was my job to lead us into that. So who is Glinda before she gets to ride in the bubble in a beautiful gown? What are those things that lead up to that? That's what I was really trying to set up — giving you clues to build up to who she potentially becomes."

Wicked is in theaters now.

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