The Very Stylish Heidi Bivens

by Lana Fleischli

A while ago, I interviewed my friend Heidi Bivens for “That’s Interesting Zine”. Bivens has recently become known for her styling in Euphoria, Mid90’s, as well as a multitude of other movies. She was also nominated for an Emmy this past year for her work on Euphoria.

I was looking back at the transcript of my interview with her after watching the recent Euphoria special episode, “Jules”, and decided to write a bit about it.

One major thing I noted when watching the episode was the fact that the clothes have become big trends now. I wondered if Heidi knew about the trends, and if that’s how she styled it. I asked her if she takes from what she sees or if she is just unintentionally being a trendsetter?

Heidi Bivens: I feel like it’s a bit of like-- I call it the creative ether… and it’s like the same reason why when I was heavily involved in the fashion industry doing fashion styling-- you see a lot of the big designers coming out at the same exact time with certain trends that-- whether it was like a skirt length, or minimalism, or a certain color, a certain kind of fabric. There might be what one person sees as coincidences, but there was like, a lot of the similar type of thing happening. One season on the runways in Paris, Milan, New York, and London, you’d see the same type of trend; and I always ask myself as a fashion editor and as a stylist, ‘how does everyone know what each other are thinking?’ I’ve just come to this conclusion that like how people process visuals and inspiration can be so varied, but if we’re all looking at the same stuff like movies, or music, or television, art, politics, it doesn’t matter what-- anything, but we’re all sort of--whether you like one genre of music and I don't and I listen to another kind of music-- our tastes can be varied, but we’re still, as humans, living in popular culture-- being aware of popular culture, we’re still exposed to the same things. So I think that a lot of times inspiration kind of sifts through the minds of all these creative people...I don’t know if it’s a coincidence as regards to my career, but like Jonah Hill wanted to make Mid-90’s at a time when the 90’s happened to be coming back, and I think part of that is because he’s at an age where he's nostalgic for that time, so his age group has now reached a point where they're nostalgic for that.”

I found that idea incredibly fascinating. We all know that history repeats itself, and so does fashion. But I then wondered how she was able to find all of these clothes?

Heidi Bivens: So in all my searching for costumes in the costume houses, and looking at vintage, the 90’s felt relevant and also hadn't really come back into fashion yet as like a resurgence, so there was so much 90’s clothing in the costume houses that I had never seen before. I had never seen it-- meaning like I had never seen anyone use them in a film or in television in the way that I was going to. So it was exciting to think that I was going to take these clothes that are “vintage”, but look like they could be new because it’s trendy right now. And no one will have seen these clothes-- it’s not like someone watching the show would be like, “I know that shirt, that’s from…” you know Bloomingdales and they would know what brand it was or whatever. I was trying to create a look that felt familiar that people wouldn’t be able to pinpoint where it was from-- what brand it was. Which I felt like made it seem more real or original somehow because it felt familiar, but it wasn’t recognizable.”

That’s why these trends sparked after Euphoria came out. That’s also why she is an amazing artist. The nineties hadn’t made a comeback, and these clothes weren’t ever seen on camera, but now I’ve seen many people sporting the kind of pants that Maddy wears-- the kind where you can’t really tell how they wear underwear under it, or the tennis skirts seen on many of the girls, especially Jules. Not to mention that when I watched Euphoria or Mid90s, I looked at the outfits, and how cool they looked, and I realized that I would never be able to look at those individual pieces of clothes and put together such a cool outfit.

Now to follow the high-school theme, I asked Heidi about what high school was like for her. What did she find important? What did she do in her adolescence that made her who she currently is? Her response was probably my favorite part of the interview.

Heidi Bivens: High school-- I really found myself through extracurricular activities. I don’t really feel like I’d know what my identity was in school-- like in going to school, being in school, interacting in school. It was more like my friends I hung out with outside of school-- my life outside of school that made me-- sort of help me find myself as an individual. Like for example when I used to do my zine, I didn’t hand it out at my school. No one at my school I think would have necessarily appreciated it. I guess I was kind of like “alternative” , “outsider” at my school kind of. Then I gravitated toward the people who were like-minded. And then like, my zine-- well I guess I started my zine maybe when I was a sophomore-- junior-- I think my junior year of high school...I remember being made fun of because I would like wear my hair in Bjork buns, or I would wear tall socks, like knee socks-- I would do “stylee” things that were different, and I would get made fun of by girls in school, and I remember maybe three or four weeks later after that, I’d see one of those mean girls come to school wearing the tall socks, or like wearing something that I was made fun of for-- like doing the thing they made fun of me for, and that was like-- advice to my younger self is just like, yeah, be your own person, do your own thing, which is what I did! Which is why I ended up moving to New York when I was 18 years old, because New York, I mean, no one’s gonna make fun of you for being different. Just like yeah, don’t listen to the mean kids, do your own thing. I mean some people are super popular and they don’t have to even worry about that. I mean I don’t even know if I was popular. It’s so hard to look back and know I definitely was an overachiever. I was a cheerleader and I was on color guard… it’s like basically drill team with flags, and during football games they’d have the cheerleaders come out and do their cheer, and then right after color guard would have to do their flag routine; so I’d have to like run and change and go back out. I couldn’t just choose one, I wanted to do everything. So I think, yeah, advice to younger self-- I’m trying to think of something positive, so you have to write about mean girls… because that’s one of the things that really resonated with me in my memory… I’ll tell you a story about those mean girls. So, those mean girls-- so mean-- and one of them wanted to date my boyfriend-- no one was interested before I dated him. He was like, “not cool”, and then as soon as I dated him, they were all interested. But one day, I came home and someone had egged my house and toilet papered my trees, and I was like-- ‘cause in another life I want to be a detective. That’s like if I could start over, and like, choose a job, I’d wanna be like, forensics FBI or be a detective or something, or be like a private detective--and so immediately I was like, “eggs, toilet paper” and there was a lot, right. A lot of eggs and a lot of toilet paper. I was like, they had to have bought this stuff somewhere, and so I went to the 7/11, local convenience store up the street, and I took my yearbook and I asked the guy who was working there. I pointed out the mean girls in my yearbook and was like, “Did this girl, did this girl, did this girl come and buy eggs and toilet paper?” and he was like, “yes”, and I was like, “burn!”. So then I knew it was them. So then my best friend-- she’s still one of my dear friends, Jean Scott, she was two years older than me, and she had already graduated, but she came back and picked me up from field hockey everyday in her red Ford Festiva; and she pulled into the parking lot and I had told her what happened. You did not want to mess with Jean. She was beautiful and tough, but like kinda scary-- you don’t wanna mess with Jean, and she came to pick me up. She just opened the door of her car, and like had her like leg out the door, so she could see the field hockey field and watched me when I went up to the field. I told those girls to come over. They came over. I had my field hockey stick and I was like, “I know what you did. If you ever do anything like that again, or if you ever mess with me,” and then I pointed to Jean and she just like leaned out the car-- it was so great! And I had my field hockey stick in my hand. You know, when you play field hockey, like, someone could accidentally like hurt you; so I kinda like, joked threatened them, but more like Jean was there and they never messed with me again after that. It helps to have older, tough friends.

That was a story she clearly remembered, with good reason, and I wondered what else in her childhood impacted her to become a stylist?

Heidi Bivens: When I was your age and living with my parents, I used to love looking at fashion magazines: like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. I was always really curious about whose job it was to pick the clothes, and I’ve always thought that would be a really cool job to have, because I was always very inspired by these pictures I’d see in these fashion magazines. And then I would go out to like the thrift stores or like, my mom’s closet and I would try to put together that looked similar to what I was seeing in fashion magazines, so I just really love this idea that there’s a job out there in the world where someone was choosing the clothes to put in the magazines for people like me to be inspired by. I was thinking less about who was designing the clothes, because that job already made sense to me. Of course someone is thinking up the clothes, and someone is creating patterns, and someone is choosing fabrics, and building these clothes, but the idea that there was another job that was just choosing the clothes to put on these beautiful models-- I was like, “that’s a pretty cool job!”

I really enjoyed talking with Heidi, and learning about how she became who she is, and how she helped the show become what we see on the screen. She is truly talented and has a great eye (and great stories). I’m excited to see what she will do in the future!