Why Aren't Dorothy's Ruby Slippers in "Wicked" Red? All About the Costume Designer's Choice to Stray from the Iconic Color Hedy Phillips, Jordana ComiterNovember 22, 2025 at 8:30 PM 0 Silver Screen Collection/Getty ; Universal Pictures 'The Wizard of Oz' (1939) ; 'Wicked: For Good' (2025). Wicked's Broadway show and film adaptation tie together the Wonderful World of Oz, providing insight into the origins of many of The Wizard of Oz characters Notably, Dorothy's slippers are red in The Wizard of Oz movie, but silver in Wicked on Broadway and the film adaptation Wicked costume designer Paul Taz...
- - Why Aren't Dorothy's Ruby Slippers in "Wicked" Red? All About the Costume Designer's Choice to Stray from the Iconic Color
Hedy Phillips, Jordana ComiterNovember 22, 2025 at 8:30 PM
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Silver Screen Collection/Getty ; Universal Pictures
'The Wizard of Oz' (1939) ; 'Wicked: For Good' (2025). -
Wicked's Broadway show and film adaptation tie together the Wonderful World of Oz, providing insight into the origins of many of The Wizard of Oz characters
Notably, Dorothy's slippers are red in The Wizard of Oz movie, but silver in Wicked on Broadway and the film adaptation
Wicked costume designer Paul Tazewell told PEOPLE that the silver slippers are an homage to the novels that inspired the productions
Some things really did change for good in Wicked and its sequel, including Dorothy's red ruby slippers.
Wicked: For Good, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, officially hit theaters on Nov. 21, nearly one year after the release of the first part of the stage-to-screen adaptation. Though director Jon M. Chu took several creative liberties when turning the Broadway show into a movie, some things stayed true to the musical — including a color change for Dorothy's staple slippers in The Wizard of Oz movie.
If you've ever seen the film (and even if you haven't), you're likely familiar with Dorothy's (Judy Garland) ruby slippers. The sparkling red sequin shoes are the ones Dorothy takes from the Wicked Witch of the East after a house falls on her when she arrives in Oz with Toto. And, those are the very same shoes that help Dorothy get back home when she clicks her heels together three times.
The Wicked ruby slippers may not be red, but as it turns out, that's actually because they are an homage to the original Wizard of Oz book, published by L. Frank Baum in 1900.
So, why aren't Dorothy's slippers red in Wicked: For Good? Below, Wicked and Wicked: For Good costume designer Paul Tazewell told PEOPLE what went into creating the shoes for the film.
Why aren't the ruby slippers red in Wicked: For Good?
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
'Wicked' crystal slippers.
When Wicked costume designer Tazewell was creating his own shoes for this year's film, he went back to the original source material for inspiration. And as it turns out, Baum never intended for those shoes to be red at all.
"They're not ruby," Tazewell told PEOPLE of the original shoes. "In the book, they were these odd little silver boots."
But because The Wizard of Oz was made in technicolor for 1939, the studio wanted to take advantage of the ability to showcase the many colors it had at its disposal, so Gilbert Adrian, costume designer for MGM, strayed outside the 1900 novel by Baum.
Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there.
"There's the idea of Cinderella and the glass slipper, and then it's like how we make shoes a myth and how we've indulged them into our fantasy fairytale storytelling," he said. "In the book they were silver shoes, and then they became crystal and silver shoes."
Tazewell incorporated swirls and jewels into the shoes that actress Marissa Bode (who plays Nessarose, the character who later became the Wicked Witch of the East) would wear in Wicked and Wicked: For Good, and in doing so, created something entirely new and unique to this movie.
But his silver shoes simultaneously pay homage to Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West — the book that Wicked on Broadway and the Wicked movie are both based on. Maguire stayed true to Baum's storytelling as well, writing in his 1995 novel that the shoes were iridescent beads and gifted to Nessarose.
What is the significance of the slippers in Wicked and The Wizard of Oz?
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
Marissa Bode as Nessarose and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in 'Wicked.'
In Maguire's Wicked, Glinda enchants the shoes to help Nessarose (who is in a wheelchair prior to this point) walk, and when the spell is cast, they become red. In the Broadway show, Elphaba is the one to cast the spell.
Wicked: For Good implemented another change as it relates to Nessarose's slippers, as she no longer is "pleading for a disability to be fixed," as Bode told PEOPLE ahead of the release.
With some lyrical changes to "The Wicked Witch of the East," the scene instead focuses "on the magic in general and the magic of the story."
Do any of the original Dorothy slippers exist today?
KAREN BLEIER/AFP via Getty
'The Wizard of Oz' ruby slippers.
Somewhere between six and 10 pairs were created for Garland to wear in the 1939 film, and only a few are known to still exist — one is on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and another went up for auction after being found after a heist.
In 2018, a pair of Garland's slippers were found after being snatched from the Judy Garland Museum in 2005. The FBI led the investigation, managing to recover the prized memorabilia during an undercover operation in Minneapolis.
When Terry Martin was indicted by the U.S. District Court in 2023 and charged with theft of major artwork, the press release obtained by PEOPLE estimated that the current market value of the pair of slippers is $3.5 million. They were put up for auction in December 2024 and set a new record when they sold for $28 million.
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Source: Entertainment
Published: November 22, 2025 at 05:36PM on Source: MARIO MAG
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