Visiting with 'Idol's' fashion guru Miles Siggins

On Sunday morning, just over 48 hours before the finale, the CBS lot which once housed the Idoldome is eerily quiet. The storied "American Idol" set has been dismantled and moved downtown to the stage of the Nokia Theatre, taking along with it almost all of the legions of crew members who service the production round the clock during "Idol" season.

The soundstage where millions saw the rise of Adam Lambert and Kris Allen now sits cold, dark and barren.

 Several stories up, however, down a long hallway, one man still labors on the final preparations of the season. The person -- apart from the contestants -- whose work is the most discussed, analyzed, criticized and imitated of anyone on the show is men's stylist Miles Siggins, who sits among racks and racks of suits, sweaters and distressed jeans, sifting through his notes.  

“Between the two shows and all the numbers, I have 48 outfits to think about,” the tall, thin soft-spoken Brit sighs. “I need to keep a notebook by the side of the bed so I can keep track of everything I’m supposed to remember.”  As he pauses in his work, we talk through the process of planning the finale wardrobes, and the long fashion road to the Nokia stage. 

With the extremely fashion-conscious Adam Lambert, Siggins saw this week’s work as the first step into his post-"Idol" career. Planning for the finale, Siggins took Adam to meet with the local L.A. designer Michel Berandi, whose over-the-top sensibility he found a good match with Adam’s. “The guy's a genius. I wanted Adam to meet him because I think going forward they’ll have a very good working relationship,” Siggins says. In an example of how the wardrobe could change the feel of a piece, he shows off the overcoat Adam was to wear for his reprise of “Mad World.”

“Last time,” Siggins says, “the whole look was light and airy. This time it’s dark and very dramatic.”

He shows off some of the costumes for Wednesday's results show, and the drama of the outfits -- the details of which cannot yet be revealed -- only increases with some jaw-dropping, off-the-charts pieces. Siggins says, “Adam is at the point now where he says, ‘I’ve made it this far, I just want to be exactly who I am. Let's go over the top, and let’s do exactly when we want to do.’ So we’ve really really gone for the theatrical, and we’re not so worried if it will scare people.”

However, Siggins points out, on the other hand, Adam has the ability to wear classic suits, in almost the same breath as the Mad Max-wear. He points to the suit Adam has lined up for his second number on Tuesday. “Most of the time I start with these kids saying, ‘You’ve got to really define your image, focus your brand. Adam’s image you can do so many different things with. I think that is his image, he’s a modern-day David Bowie to me. He’s such a chameleon.”  

He continues, “It’s his theatrical background, he’s used to wearing costumes so he thinks a different way about it. Most of them, like Kris and the guys -- Kris’ friends ripped him apart for wearing this shirt with sparkles in it. They don’t understand, you’ve got to take it up a little.”

Speaking of Kris and his journey, Siggins tells, “With Kris, at the beginning of the season I really wanted to change him because he’s got so much of that boy next door in jeans and a T-shirt thing. But then I said, that’s who he is, and it works for him. It hasn’t hurt him at all.” Asked how he injects glamour into that look, Siggins says he utilizes “better clothes, better fitting stuff. We’ve added a few new things he would never wear before like leather jackets, better jeans. Initially when I was trying to change him, he was very resistant. He’s very simple. He likes things very simple. At first I fought it, but then I said, that’s who he is and it's working for him.”

On Danny Gokey’s fashion journey: “At first [it] was really tricky because he has quite a difficult body to fit because he’s very big on top. He has a barrel chest and quite a little waist, so he was very difficult to fit. We’ve slimmed him down a bit. We tried a bunch of different things that didn’t work, and he wasn’t feeling it and I wasn’t feeling it, like the white coat. But then we did a black suit a few weeks ago, and it looked great on him so we stuck with that. For a start, he resisted a bit but that’s his color -- black and white -- pretty classic.”

On Anoop Desai: “I had a lot of fun with Anoop this season. He came and he was like a college frat boy and the first thing he said to me was, ‘I want to dress like Kayne, an R&B singer and hip-hop kind of vibe.’ So we just went to town on that and for the finale, we went fully Kanye on him. He’s not afraid of color, so he’s into trying new things and mixing things up.”

On Matt Giraud: “Matt’s a bit of a throwback with a bit of Justin Timberlake in there as well. And some Michael Buble. His voice is like his music, and I think he’s right for a modern interpretation of that as well. He looks great in a leather jacket. He got really nervous for a while because of some of the feedback, so he was trying to change things instead of just being comfortable with who he was."  

On Scott MacIntyre: “He’s gotten refined. When he came here he was wearing vests, like a piano player type. I’ve gotten him into some leather jackets, kind of a harder image. He’s now like a slightly harder version of Chris Martin.”

On Michael Sarver: “He came from working on an oil rig, so we got him into blazers. He looks really good in blazers. That with a button-down and jeans look great on him.”

I ask him one of the critical questions raised by this season: What is the proper way to wear a wallet chain. He nods and answers, “Sometimes an outfit just needs something. For TV it’s a quick easy visual fix just to add a bit of something. If you fit it on a suit you don’t necessarily expect it, but it just gives things a little edge.”

Asked how working with the contestants has changed since the early years, Siggins reflects, “The contestants have become more savvy over the years. The first couple years everyone was fresh off the boat so they’d come into the show and didn’t know what they were supposed to do. These guys have all watched the show, and take note of what works and what doesn’t. So they do a bit of homework before they get on the show. They hit the ground running instead of looking down and spending weeks trying to figure things out.”

Asked his low point of the season, Siggins recalls Danny’s infamous white jacket. “It just made him look really big and everybody said -- ski bum. It looked good in the store. But it just didn’t look as well as we hoped on camera.”

One of his high points -- Sinatra week. One of Siggins' great causes, both on "Idol" and in his own fashion work during the off-season, has been returning glamour to menswear, and putting young men back into suits. Siggins has also presided over the now complete transformation of the man at the center of the show, Ryan Seacrest. Seeing how unimaginable it now is to picture Ryan in the floppy T-shirts that made up his wardrobe in the first season, and how naturally his tailored suits fit at the heart of the show, one would say that Miles Siggins has made a mark on our culture in a way that few can even dream.

NOTE: Join us live Wednesday for our post-show chat at noon PDT / 3 p.m. EDT at latimes.com. Then come back later in the day and chat during the show with blogger Mark Lisanti at 5 p.m. PDT / 8 p.m. EDT, also at latimes.com/idoltracker.

-- Richard Rushfield

Photo: Richard Rushfield

Idol Tracker

What you're watching