The most impressive thing about last week’s episode of Saturday Night Live wasn’t the writing, the acting, or even Dave Chappelle as host. It was Maya Rudolph’s costume as Kamala Harris in the cold open. On Saturday, November 7, Joe Biden was named the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and at 8:30 p.m. ET that evening, Vice President–elect Kamala Harris took the stage with him in Wilmington, Delaware, in a cream suit and distinctive pussy-bow silk blouse. Three hours later, SNL was scheduled to premiere, and the very first sketch of the evening was based around that victory address, so Rudolph had to look the part. According to an interview with PopSugar, SNL’s costume designer Tom Broecker and wardrobe supervisor Dale Richards put the look together in 85 minutes and, ironically, repurposed a Melania Trump costume to pull it off: “Rudolph ended up performing the cold open in nude Jimmy Choo pumps and the cream suit that was, interestingly enough, originally purchased from a suit supplier a year earlier for Cecily Strong to play Melania Trump in a sketch, though it was never used.” We can all agree that the suit ended up serving a much nobler purpose, in the end. Good for her (the suit).
