How Gunnar Deatherage Went From Project Runway To Designing For Chappell Roan

In the age of social media, sometimes a fateful DM is all it takes to land a job. At least, that’s how Gunnar Deatherage started designing custom looks for Chappell Roan. The fashion designer shot his shot one day, reaching out to the Grammy-winning musician’s stylist, Genesis Webb, after seeing her buzzy wardrobe at Coachella in 2024. “I was just like, ‘this girl is doing something so cool,’ and I wanted to be a part of it,” he tells TZR.

Just months after the music festival, Deatherage created Roan’s now-iconic swan costume for the artist’s performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “Genesis came over to my garage, which was my studio when I lived in Pasadena, and we just kind of talked about everything,” Deatherage explains. The stylist brought along sketches of Roan’s upcoming looks and asked Deatherage which one he wanted to take on. He immediately gravitated toward the swan — and had just three days to bring the design to life.

It was clearly a success, given that Deatherage has created a number of Roan’s looks ever since, including her Saturday Night Live performance outfit and a clown masquerade-inspired costume for the Orange Festival in Warsaw, both of which were collaborations with his now-husband, multimedia artist Christopher Minafo. Much like the swan moment, Roan’s festival look quickly gained traction online. “My fiancé painted her face on the bustier; that was a six-day turnaround on the whole thing,” says Deatherage. “It’s kind of turned into this collaboration between the two of us with them, and I’m really thankful for it,” he adds of working alongside Minafo with Roan and her team.

Today, Deatherage is behind some of Hollywood’s most memorable looks, but his creative beginnings were far more humble. “I'm from a small town in Indiana that kind of borders along Louisville, Kentucky, and so, you know, we were super creative growing up,” he shares. “There wasn't access to a lot of anything really, and so I grew up with a grandmother who was a seamstress who was such a big inspiration for me, and I just loved it.”

Deatherage likens the feeling he first experienced while designing to having a superpower. “I always wanted to be better at it; being as professional as possible was important to me,” he recalls. When it came time for college, however, the designer couldn’t afford to enroll, so he pursued beauty school instead. “Beauty school paid for fashion until fashion paid for fashion,” Deatherage shares.

His first big break was landing a spot on Project Runway Season 9 in 2011. “In some ways, I think Project Runway acted as, like, a degree from college,” Deatherage reflects. Only 21 at the time, Deatherage suddenly had an audience for his work. “I was able to prove to myself I could make clothing, so it was really formative in that way,” he says. During those early years of designing, Deatherage was largely inspired by the idea of simply being able to construct clothing, meaning many of his pieces were more rudimentary than experimental.

These days, though, Deatherage is constantly raising the bar for himself and taking on new challenges — like, for instance, creating 15 gowns and multiple suits for his wedding to Minafo last month. “The process has been crazy,” he says of the year-and-a-half-long undertaking. “We've treated this like we’re basically releasing a collection together.” Deatherage continued to advance his skill set while designing the wedding looks, working with fabrics like tulle and chiffon, which are notoriously tricky to master, he says.

However, Deatherage’s “wedding collection” hasn’t been the only project on the docket this year. This time, it was Deatherage who received a DM about a custom design for an A-lister, with stylist Nicolas Bru reaching out on behalf of Shakira. Bru asked Deatherage to create an outfit for her Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, marking the designer’s first-ever tour look. He ended up making a metallic top and coordinating fringe skirt in various colors, from bronze to blue.

“Then in the midst of all of that, they came and asked us to do her World Cup look for the music video for ‘Die Die,’” he recalls. Deatherage and Minafo then flew to Miami, where they had just four days to create Shakira’s turquoise fringe-and-bead ensemble, along with costumes for her five dancers.

Deatherage has been finding inspiration in the Gilded Age as of late. “I’m a huge history buff,” he says. “I just, like, think what an interesting glimpse into American history, even if it’s, you know, a little bit far-fetched.” He looked that far back in history when creating Chappell Roan’s aforementioned looks, such as her festival ensemble. “We really referenced kind of niche things in history, and it was cool to be able to give our take on that,” he shares. “I think that that’s an era where you get to mix and match mediums and colors and textures, and you just get to play, really.”

Recently, Deatherage took on an assignment unlike any of his past work: creating a dress out of Viva paper towels. “I was like, ‘I’m going to treat this very much like a Gunnar challenge,’” he says. Flexing his design muscles, Deatherage transformed the household staple into a 1960s-inspired baby blue gown, complete with a floor-sweeping train (see here). “I was able to dye it and manipulate it, and it just held up because it is durable,” he shares of the cloth-like product. For Deatherage, the partnership offered a welcome opportunity to experiment and push his creativity in a new direction.

Though Deatherage has clearly achieved a lot in his career, there’s one area he’d still love to explore: the film industry. “I think it is a hard job, and a thankless job sometimes, but I would love to do a really costume-heavy film,” he shares. “That’s a dream of mine.” Until then, keep your eyes peeled for more celebrity costume moments — and, perhaps, another unexpected paper towel design.