White Collar Premiere Week continues as USA’s brand new series premieres this Friday at 10/9c! Everyday this week, I will present interviews with the cast and crew of White Collar, and today’s interview is with Series Costume Designer, Stephanie Maslansky, who has worked on every episode after the Pilot.

On the Pilot:
I think the pilot was done really well by—and the designer for the pilot was Kat Thomas, a really good designer, New York designer. I feel as though I took off from what she sort of established in the pilot having had a conversation with the writer, with the producer, the creator of the show, Jeff Eastin, what his vision was of this character.

Neal really does go undercover in terms that he really has to change his persona in outfits based on that?
Exactly. And, generally speaking, when he goes undercover, whoever he’s playing, that character does require a really strong terrific look. And, initially, the look was based on, and continues to be based on, the silhouette that was popular during the Rat Pack era, during the late fifties, early sixties, which is a very slim silhouette with very fitted jackets, and slim trousers, slim ties…And what we’ve done is we’ve taken that style and made it a bit more contemporary.

Peter, who’s the FBI agent, and always wears the same Brooks Brothers suit, he has a very specific look that—also, he has a very slim silhouette and a very sort of elegant silhouette. But he, actually, confesses to the fact that he isn’t interested in clothes and always his character has been wearing the same suit forever. Primarily, he wears Brooks Brothers. He also wears some Burberry—sort of very traditional classic clothing makers that I found. Paul Stuart as well.

With Elizabeth’s career as an event planner, they must be able to do a few fun parties, etc…?
Yeah, definitely. I’m very happy that they decided to make her into an event planner because that really gives us an opportunity to make her a little bit more cutting edge.

I would say the tone of the colors that we’re using in this show, the pallet is primarily cool—blues, grays, with pops of strong jewel-tone colors. And that’s another difference between our show, this contemporary show, and the vintage era Rat Pack, which was more warm browns and oranges and peaches, more earth tones.

Did you custom design any of the outfits that Neal will be wearing in the show?
So far, I haven’t had anything made from the ground up. However, I am starting to have a few shirts made because I’m sort of running out of—we use specific—there are some—I use some pretty specific designers for Neal in particular. We started out using a lot of Paul Smith and a lot of Varvatos. And we’ve now added Thomas Pink, and they’ve been wonderful. We’re using a lot of Thomas Pink. We also use some Calvin Klein. And then, of course, we use vintage clothes as well. So, I won’t say I’ve custom made anything, but we customize everything… And perhaps as time wears on and there’s season two, three, four, five—God willing, we have more time in prep, I’ll be happy to design their clothes. But so far, I’ve been very fortunate to find really great designers out there who already have great pieces that we can then tailor into the individual items for those actors.

Tune into White Collar, premiering Friday, October 23 on USA Network.