By Je’Don Holloway-Talley | For The Birmingham Times
Twyla S. Grider self-describes as a creator, cultivator, and curator, bringing fashion and design concepts to life across multiple mediums.
Now, Grider, 48, steps into the role of “Costume Goddess” for Red Mountain Theatre’s production of The Wiz, running Feb. 6-Mar. 1, bringing a fresh visual interpretation to one of the most iconic works in Black theater.
Though The Wiz is a culturally significant work, Grider said this production carries its own visual language. “This is a new twist on The Wiz and I can’t give it away,” she said. “We definitely dug into [past productions] … to look at how other people treated The Wiz and the characters.” The goal, she said, is “not to be different for difference’s sake, but we wanted to make sure that this one had its own vibe and uniqueness.”
Huntsville native Grider is a nationally respected designer whose last project in Alabama was the costume design for The World Games in 2022. While she had spent years immersed in fashion design, the idea of costume design did not initially sit at the center of her imagination. “I didn’t really think of costume design that much. I was very much immersed in fashion design as a professional working for different labels,” she said.
That shifted after seeing [Academy-Award winning custom designer] Ruth Carter’s work in the Black Panther franchise. “I was like, oh, wow,” Grider said. “I saw the amazing work that Ruth Carter did… and when the Marvel Universe gave her the platform to be seen and heard, and she was lauded as this amazing costume designer, I was like, that’s something that I’d be interested in doing.”
The Shift
In 2009, Grider decided to earn a design degree at Drexel [University in Philadelphia] because in the [fashion] industry, “although you may be able to design, there’s certain schools that have a little more panache… And New York is where you wanna be if you’re a designer in the United States, and I couldn’t get jobs in New York, so I enrolled at Drexel [to gain more credentials and opportunities].”
Grider’s plan worked. She did not complete the program because she landed a job with Jessica Simpson in 2011, as the singer and entrepreneur was launching her clothing brand, joining the team as an assistant designer and later moving into an associate designer role. This marked her first large-scale entry into the celebrity fashion brand ecosystem.
That step up within the fashion industry led to working with pop singer Justin Timberlake on his fashion line, William Rast, in 2014. Working with Jessica, “helped me understand how celebrities think, and how they like to brand themselves,” Grider said.
Guided By Mom
Personal branding was Grider’s first lesson in fashion, which she learned under her mother Dorris Grider, who also sewed.
In step with her mother Dorris’s ‘First Lady’ duties at Ephesus Seventh-day Adventist Church, which her father Joe pastored on Sixth Avenue North in Birmingham, the family was dressed “to the nines”, every week for church. Grider credits much of her visual sensibility to watching the women closest to her.
“So, my mom dressed the whole family [including] my dad. He would say that he dressed himself, but my mom dressed him,” she laughed. “My mother worked as a payroll clerk, and I just remember seeing her always dressed really well.”
“My dad’s mom was a seamstress and a maid,” Grider said. “And you would never know that they didn’t have money because she always looked put together.”
She added. “I would watch [my mom] with her girlfriends all dolled up for church in first lady gear, and all these women in my church and in different places all look amazing,” she said. “And you would never know their life stories because they had too much pride to let you know anything different.”
Early Life
Although Grider has strong ties to the Magic City’s North Side, she was born in Huntsville and spent parts of her childhood in Mississippi before her teenage years. Her family relocated to North Birmingham in 1993, while she remained in Huntsville during the school year and spent summers at home with her parents, who had moved to Birmingham for ministry.
Her biological brother, Greg, lives in Dallas, where her parents also live, while her brother Andre Davis, resides in Birmingham and works for the City of Birmingham. Her sister Marquise, a social worker, lives in Huntsville, and her sister Sheila, who works in telecommunications, is based in Atlanta. Though her younger sister is only two years behind her in age, Grider says she remains “the baby in everyone’s eyes.”
As an adolescent, Grider said she loved Teen Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, [and other fashion magazines] … “My mom would buy them and I would do my best to replicate what was in them at the time…. She would take me to JoAnns Fabric, and buy the patterns, fabric, and notions [buttons, sippers, etc], and she would help me pull our version of the design together.”
Although she had an established love for fashion, Grider had not yet conceptualized that she could actually have that dream fulfilled. “It clicked really late,” Grider laughed, “in my senior year in high school… I wanted to be a lawyer, and then I woke up one day and was like, ‘I want to be a fashion designer.’”
Grider initially enrolled at Oakwood University [in Huntsville] in 1996, before transferring to Auburn University, in the fall of 1997, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising and marketing in 2000. After graduating, Grider returned to Birmingham briefly before landing her first industry job in Washington, D.C., working as an assistant to menswear designer Everett Hall, who operated his own label and dressed clients ranging from Charles Barkley to Steve Harvey and numerous NBA players.
Grider’s early momentum in fashion paused in 2012, after she became a mother. “I had to step away from all of that when I had my son, Maxwell Grider-Moore [now 13], because I went into labor early,” she said. “And so I took two years off and the challenge of getting back in as a mom was even harder because the schedule is so grueling. I went back [to industry] in 2014, and worked for several labels [Kind Of, Nine West, Robert Rodriguez, Seven7 Jeans, and more] …”
Grider continues to mentor the next generation of fashion designers. “I never want to find out that there’s a young person that wanted to be in the arts and decided not to just because they didn’t know how,” she said, “so I mentor quite a bit.”
Bringing The Wiz to Life
Red Mountain Theatre’s 2026 rendition of The Wiz is directed by New York-based director, Monet. Much of the costume design work began in Grider’s studio, where she sketched concepts before sending them to Birmingham. Those sketches were then translated into garments by the costume shop at Red Mountain Theatre, led by costume director Kendra Weeks. “She truly is the person that makes my [design] dream actually happen there,” Grider said. “She organizes all of the stitchers [stitchers translate sketches and patterns into finished garments] to make sure that they are going in the right direction for each production.”
Feedback from director Monet and the creative team often shapes revisions. As blocking and choreography evolve, so do the designs. “If the movement is really important and someone’s jumping up in the air, then that affects the costume that they’re wearing then I may go back and adjust,” Grider said. “Or there might be a strong color, a color that she’s really passionate about, that needs to be represented. I may go back and do tweaks.”
Final adjustments happen in concert with the full creative team. “We make sure the choreographer is not interfering with that piece of it,” she said. “And now the next two weeks we put it all together.”
For Grider, designing The Wiz in Birmingham also carries personal meaning. “It’s always fun to come back to Birmingham because my dad had a large church (in Birmingham),” she said. “So, it’s like coming back home in a way.” She hopes young people in the audience see possibility in her presence. “I want my brother to bring my niece, who’s interested in fashion design, I want her to see something that auntie did,” Grider said. “I want that for everyone [interested in fashion design]. I didn’t have that as a child. And I want my niece to see this big stage and say, ‘we know somebody that did that.”
THE WIZ runs at Red Mountain Theatre Feb. 6 through March 1. Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday with 2 p.m. matinees on Saturdays and Sundays. Accessible performances will occur Saturday, Feb. 14 at 2 p.m. (ASL and Audio Description) and Sunday, Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. (ASL). The show is recommended for ages 8 and up. Tickets start at $40, available at redmountaintheatre.org.
