The saying goes, “Clothes make the man.” But it ain’t necessarily so when it comes to Young & Restless power monger Victor Newman. So how does the show’s effervescent costume designer Mandi Line go about outfitting Eric Braeden’s iconic character, who by and large has three looks: the business suits he wears for wheeling and dealing, the track suits he wears for chilling and the leather jackets he dons when he’s got the urge to open a can of whupass.
The veteran of Pretty Little Liars and Shameless tells Soaps.com that, when she came aboard the daytime drama in 2024, one of the first things she did was reassure a colleague, “I’m not here to reinvent that Victor Newman wheel,” and ask herself, “How can I bring a little more edge to it?”
Tales From the Dark Side
Line soon discovered that, like Harrison Ford and Mandy Patinkin, both of whom she’s worked with, Braeden values comfort. So that’s a top priority. “Then we’re keeping him dark because you’re always in trouble [with Victor], or he’s up to no good. That darkness just brings that fear when anyone walks in the room.
“And if he had a leather,” she adds, “I would introduce a different cut. Eric loves soft things, so we do some aloe track jackets.”
Hue Goes There?
Line has lightened up Braeden’s counterpart in one regard — however slightly. Victor often wore black shirts, “he never really did blue, but I brought a little midnight in here. And we custom-made his shirts.”
The assumption, Line notes, is that tailoring a shirt bought off the rack would be cheaper or quicker. “But if you have someone like Eric that deserves the world, why not custom-make it to their body instead of taking it and altering it 10 million places?”
Does Line have a favorite Victor look? In fact, she does. “Eric in a white shirt, a tie and a black jacket… forget it,” she says. “That is where I’m just like, ‘Oh my God, you’re so handsome.’”
