Dirty Dancing at 35: Remembering Patrick Swayze's budget-busting shoes and the battle over 'appropriate' cutoffs for Jennifer Grey

A Catskills resort in the summer of ’63. A sensational and sultry musical climax. And a young, bright, idealistic Jewish girl who unexpectedly falls in love and finds her voice. A perfect melding of romance, dance and politics, 1987’s Dirty Dancing—a big-hearted shoestring indie that broke records and won a Best Original Song Oscar (for “The Time of My Life”)—is still as timeless and relevant today as it was 35 years ago.

Indeed, the story that gave us heartthrob Patrick Swayze’s ageless line, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” unsurprisingly continues to strike a major chord with audiences worldwide. After all, female-focused coming-of-age stories (especially those that earnestly acknowledge female sexuality and gaze) are still not as common as they should be today. And reproductive rights—the core of Dirty Dancing’s plot through dancer Penny’s (Cynthia Rhodes) illegal and near-fatal abortion—are under constant attack, especially after Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“I was very connected to trying to retell the story of Grossinger’s at that time,” Dirty Dancing costumer designer and renowned stage and screen artisan Hilary Rosenfeld tells The A.V. Club, in a conversation to commemorate the film’s 35^th anniversary. Considering the budget constraints she had to work around, it was no easy task to accurately represent a bygone era on screen. In the end, Rosenfeld was able to bring a great deal of personal experience and period authenticity to the passion project, (very) loosely based on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s own memories of her family vacations at Grossinger’s, the mountain resort that was the inspiration behind Dirty Dancing’s Kellerman’s and recently suffered a major fire. (The film was actually shot Mountain Lake Lodge in Pembroke, Virginia.)

Rosenfeld talks about dressing Jennifer Grey’s Francis “Baby” Houseman (with details on that swooningly flouncy final dress) and Swayze’s Johnny Castle, reflects on the film’s themes around class, gender and reproductive rights and remembers working with the film’s key players, including director Emile Ardolino, actor Jerry Orbach and of course, Swayze, who are sadly no longer with us.

Hilary Rosenfeld: I always knew that world, and I knew the people. My parents met at Grossinger’s back in its heyday. While I had never been to the hotel, I always knew about it. In Eleanor Bergstein’s story, it’s a place that families went. But also, people looking for romance went to Grossinger’s, which is why they had dancing instructors. The family lore is, my mother (now 98 years old) danced with Eddie Fisher at Grossinger’s. He saw her, and she was 23 years old. He asked her to dance and that’s as far as it went. So my work is very real because it’s just my personal insight. I feel like the history is important and it should be reflected.

In one of our early scouting trips, Eleanor Bergstein, Emile Ardolino (who had done a lot of dance movies and documentaries) and I went on a road trip to the Catskills to meet people. We even took a dancing lesson, a tango lesson or a cha-cha lesson. So I was aware of the movement that the costumes would have to undergo; that characters should be all comfortable in their clothes. But [we were also driven by other factors] like the budget. Typically, a low-budget indie like this would try to use existing clothes, but there were so many restrictions in terms of the movement; dancing scenes [for which] things [had to be] done in multiples. We didn’t have enough money to build two dresses for Baby for the finale. We didn’t have enough money to build more than two dresses for Cynthia Rhodes for her dance scenes. And I spent a huge amount of my budget on Patrick’s shoes.

AVC: Why were his shoes particularly expensive?

HR: They had to be custom-made. He had a place in L.A. that made his shoes, and he wanted them to fit perfectly and they did. So I compromised on other things.

AVC: Perhaps those constraints add to the authenticity. After all, we are in a resort where people have limited clothes and someone not as fashion-conscious like Baby would not pack 10 suitcases.

HR: That’s true [for some characters] and not true [for others]. Baby as a character was rebellious; she wanted to join the Peace Corps. Her sister [Lisa] was the [traditional] girl and came with a trunk-load of clothes. And they probably shipped the clothes ahead, because of course it was a place that parents took their daughters of a certain age to marry them off to the right people.

The [other authenticity] battle was being period-appropriate. [I had to] convince Jennifer to wear longer cutoffs [according to the period]. But because it was filmed in the ’80s, the fashion was shorter cutoffs. So you have to convince [the cast] that the period touches that you’re interested in are appropriate and make the movie look a certain way. A lot of things were rented and reconfigured, some things were made. Patrick always wanted his body to show. So, I compromised a little bit on the period and gave him short jackets instead of longer [ones] that would obscure his hips and the movement. The sweet spot is to try to make the period and the reality meet in a certain way.

AVC: Speaking of those shorter cutoffs, I went to an outdoor Los Angeles screening of Dirty Dancing a few months ago and a lot of viewers showed up in costume dressed like Baby. The jean shorts and the form-fitting salmon-color tank with the sneakers was a popular choice.

HR: Totally un-period and not something I ever approved. The shorts are so ’80s. In fact, the only bad review I’ve ever gotten in my career was from Vincent Canby about that movie; about how it was not period-accurate, which made me unhappy. But that was one of the things you can [only] argue so much. Also, her hair at the end, I wanted straighter, because those loose curls were more ’80s than ’60s. But [my] thought is, when you surround somebody with enough period looks, you [still] get the feel. So when I lost that battle, I was really conscious of making sure that everybody else surrounding her had looks that were more period. So you try to support your work [any way you can]. I will say also, in her own personal wardrobe, Jennifer had a red-and-white-striped shirt that was very Jean Seberg that I said, “Oh, let’s use this!” It was very Left Bank avant garde, that was exactly right.

AVC: When we first meet Baby, she has such sweet-looking clothes, like that big blue wool cardigan that’s not body-conscious. But then she becomes more aware of her sexuality and tweaks her looks, perhaps by tying a shirt to expose her midriff and so on.

HR: Jennifer was a pleasure to work with. She also had a lot of pressure from people to look hot. My thing [was] having her slowly evolve, so you could see that she was [evolving] from a studious college girl who was politically aware. The Kennedys were in the White House [then], so there was a big societal explosion and she was just at the beginning of it. She was not a hippie; she was a college girl thinking about going into the Peace Corps [whereas] her sister [wanted to] find a nice guy and marry him. [Screenwriter] Eleanor Bergstein went to Wellesley, and so the inspiration was to keep Baby very traditional: well-bred, well-educated young woman who was not interested in being a pretty thing, but [wanted to] make a contribution. [So her looks had to] evolve in a [realistic] way without bringing in tons of extra clothes. [While her sister] probably packed a trunk, Baby probably packed a backpack and her mother probably added a dress so that she would be able to eat dinner in the dining room properly.

But the awakening of her sense of [self] and body is [connected to] something [more]. Dirty Dancing is a “right to choose” movie. And this is timely since Roe vs. Wade has just been overturned. That’s the thing that some people overlook about Dirty Dancing: it’s [about] the right for women to choose. Baby took the initiative to help Cynthia Rhodes’ character make a choice in her life.

AVC: It’s quite sad how relevant all this still is today, 35 years after the movie. It’s a huge piece of the movie—the whole story exists because of Penny’s abortion.

HR: It’s a huge piece of the movie that people have overlooked. I could share with you emails I get. A young woman emailed me and wanted to have that peach dress Jennifer wore at the finale made with Bible quotes all over it, and I said, “That’s not what the dress is about!” But anyway, I convinced her that a [custom] dress like that was expensive. Even then, it was probably about $1,200.

AVC: Where’s the dress now?

HR: I don’t have the dress. They hold them for re-shoots, and then I think Jennifer has that dress—it’s never been stated, but I think that’s the case. I have the sketch that I designed and drew, and had [the dress] built [from]. It had to be specially built so movement [would be] included. So when [Jennifer] raised her arm, the dress [wouldn’t] split, which it did many times. But there was only one of them at the end, I’m not sure you would really want that dress because it had been mended so many times.

I think people want that dress because it was perfect for the moment. It’s not that it was the prettiest dress ever. The movement, the peach color … it was fresh and demure, but sexy at the same time. It fit her perfectly, and it was just the right dress at the right time. And that’s the difference between costume and fashion.

AVC: It carries traces of the ’50s, which is realistic for early ’60s.

HR: I [was] looking at people’s closets, the clothes that they have in their closets and what they would bring to a hotel like this. Your best dress is maybe five years old. The mother had more up-to-date styles, but Baby dressed in an age-appropriate way: not [in] a tight, straight pencil skirt, but a skirt that was looser and fresher and younger. Now, an 18-year-old girl would want to dress in a more sexual and evocative way.

AVC: I love the contrast between Baby’s and Penny’s wardrobes. Innocent vs. grown-up, and reflecting different social statuses.

HR: Cynthia Rhodes was a lovely, lovely person and natural dancer. Penny was also somebody who was trying to elevate her social status. I think she got caught in the middle of thinking that Robbie would be her ticket out, and he was not. That’s the other thing: the class struggle in the movie is also very interesting.

AVC: Yes, I had always thought of it as an “upstairs vs. downstairs” movie.

HR: Exactly. During that period, you could tell who people were by their clothes, and now that is not so clear. Now you can tell someone’s wearing blue jeans, if you really know the labels, you can tell who has the $250 blue jeans and who has the $29 blue jeans, but it’s possible for somebody who’s on a $29 blue jeans budget to look great, too. It was a formal period in time.

AVC: A sad thing about watching Dirty Dancing today is realizing that many of its key players are no longer with us. The director Emile Ardolino of Chances Are and Sister Act, Jerry Orbach, and obviously Patrick Swayze…

HR: Emile Ardolino was lovely and a really great collaborator. He was really interested in the movement in the camera and the story. The first time I met Patrick, he was dancing with the Eliot Feld ballet. I was an assistant costume designer on something he was in, so that had been probably five years before. Patrick was a very interesting person. He was at a certain point in his career and I’m not sure he really wanted to do Dirty Dancing. I think he felt he should have gotten something bigger. But this was the grain of sand that tipped the scale towards a bigger career for him. [And I remember] Patrick [did not] want to rehearse; he was a natural dancer. Jennifer was not. Jennifer has an incredible work ethic and wanted to rehearse all the time. She was willing to work hard. But he was like, “I don’t need to rehearse.” Jerry Orbach was just a pro. [I would ask,] “Jerry, would you wear this?” “Yeah, sure, fine. I’ll wear it.”

AVC: Why do you think Dirty Dancing is still one of those movies people turn to with deep love and affection after 35 years?

HR: The thing about the movie is: it was the right movie at the right time, with this spark of a young girl coming alive and connecting to her body through dance. Connecting to her sexuality with somebody who was not approved by her parents. She saw the inner good in Johnny when he didn’t himself, and that’s what it’s about. When you just gloss it over and just have it be about the music and the dance, it doesn’t really work. It’s the heart of it; that’s why young girls still like it, and that’s why people can [still] watch it. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” is a classic line, and it’s the way Patrick said it. It’s not even in the writing, it’s the way Patrick said it. Patrick understood that.