Row File—Sandi Spika Borchetta
Sparkly, Rhinestone, Magpie Lover

Sarah Skates

What first piqued your interest in clothing design?
“Basically I’ve been an artist since I was little. I could always draw. My grandmas and my mother taught me how to crochet and knit, so I did that too. But I didn’t grow up being a clotheshorse. I didn’t have the money. I grew up in a pretty large family in Montana and for the most part wore a lot of hand-me-down clothes. It really wasn’t until I was in college and wanted something cool to wear to go country dancing that I became interested in clothing design.

What is your current role at Big Machine?
I’m vice president of creative services and oversee all of the artists on Big Machine and Valory. Because I’ve done styling with hair and makeup and wardrobe for so many years—normally the creative service position hires that out and orchestrates that—I often just do it myself with our artists. I also organize their photo shoots and videos. Because of my background I work on those projects too. I just try to bring as much to the table as I can.

How did your career begin and develop?
I am an artist. I have a fine arts degree from the University of New Mexico. But I feel that my hands-on application and just doing it and digging into the unknown taught me way more than I ever could have learned just going to school. Extensive costuming design and art history in college helped some. But after college, because of my interest in country music and dancing to country music, I thought, “Why can’t I design clothes for people who sing country music?” So my pursuit of that led me to one artist in particular, and to Nashville—that was Reba McEntire. Long distance I started designing and creating stage clothes for her, and the relationship grew. We did that for a few years from Albuquerque, where I was living, and then I moved here because she was interested in me working with her on the road. That was really awesome. Once I moved here, I was little by little exposed to more artists and started doing freelance work for other artists while traveling and working full-time with Reba. I never advertised, I just worked really, really hard. I moved here in ’89 and was thrown right into the midst of it.

I was with Reba at Starstruck when they built the new building on 17th Avenue and had an office there, but I also had my own workroom/studio just up the street. I did both in-house and freelance for thirteen years.

What is the upside of being in-house, from your perspective and the label perspective?
From the label’s perspective they get my services with just a phone call. But being at the label—what’s fun for me and I think is an advantage—is that I can work with them [on the common] goal. You always try to do that—everybody work together—but I understand the purpose much better than I did before. And I can go after really specific things. For example if we are doing a video shoot, I make sure that we have a still photographer and videographer, and capture all the things that we need for online use like interviews or content. As far as the artist’s look, I feel like I have a much better insight on what everybody at the label wants, not just what the artist wants. And they can talk really openly to me about it if they feel something’s working, if maybe it’s not, or if there is a different direction we want to go. And we can also get really excited about things that are working great and make it even better. So it’s just easier. The communication is a lot faster. We move within the label at lightning speed. We can do a photo shoot and have photos ready to use in two days if we really need something.

Do you see some of those same advantages in working alongside your husband, Scott Borchetta? Is there also a downside?
Absolutely, [there are advantages], if questions arise, we can answer them at lighting speed. We can know what each of us wants to do, whether we agree or not might be another story, but at least we know what our thoughts are.

It has its pros and cons. It really does, and he would say the same thing. In the last almost three years our lives have been so overwhelmed with the business and taking care of everything. We have to be really careful that when we come home at night we’re not just continuing business until 2 o’clock in the morning. I have to stop myself all the time, and I’m sure Scott does too. He’s better at it than me, with leaving the work talk at the office. Me, I’m more top of mind. I’m thinking about something and I blurt it out. We both have to shut down [at home].

What is the styling process for a new artist such as Taylor Swift? How has the process changed as her career has grown?
The difference between then and now is night and day. It helps that she’s always been a beautiful girl. When she was 14 and I first met her—she still is like the girl next door—but she was truly the girl next door. In high school she wore a lot of jeans, and she wasn’t yet into her love and passion for dresses. In the first photo shoots we did it was not jeans at all, it was all dresses, and really kind-of casual. And progressively, little by little, she developed this passion for wearing dresses and cowboy boots, and that’s a trademark of hers now. I just helped her get to that place. Helped her find dresses and if I couldn’t find them, I would design and make them. From then to now, the extreme difference is, with the success of her music, she’s gotten a lot of attention, so we’re more easily able to venture into some other places to experiment with other designers and broaden the horizon.

We’ve been very experimental with her videos, as far as stretching it a little bit, and pushing it as far as beauty. The “Our Song” video was four different set-ups of nothing but wardrobe, costumes, and hair, and then her performing her little heart out…In one setup we straightened her hair, which was really different. And [her fans], right off the bat, were a little bit shocked. It’s amazing how fans get used to seeing the artist that they love in one way and it throws them a little bit when you change that up.

With Taylor specifically, because she just loves dresses and she’s such a girly girl, I’ve had so much fun being able to work with her. And it’s more than just designing and making the dress and putting it on her, she loves the process. So our connection is even more special, because she loves to sit down and talk about it. She’ll start talking about it months ahead, like “What are our ideas for the ACMs? Or the CMAs?” She can envision things that I talk about, and I can see things that she talks about. And then I’ll pull swatches and sketch, and we look at them and she gets excited. She loves the custom process. She also knows that if we do a custom dress she doesn’t have to worry about somebody else having the same dress that night or showing up in a magazine [column called something like] “Who Wears It Best?”

Why is imaging such an important part of an artist’s career?
All artists strive to set themselves apart in some way. The music has to come first, people usually hear it on the radio first and then they see it. But more and more, with the digital age, they can see somebody’s picture before they hear the music. What they look like is super important. Sometimes it doesn’t take a whole lot to tweak their image so that it’s maybe a little more contemporary or something’s just a little bit different about what they’re doing. Jimmy Wayne, for example, I started working with him years ago, and he was pretty clean shaven and we tried this thing where he has a little bit of whiskers underneath his lower lip. And he tried it, and it stuck and he still has that today. It’s not very much, and it’s not like he’s the only one on the planet that has that, but for him it was something a little different that he tried and he really liked it. So you just try to find that little thing that helps them out.

I guess another example of that would be Taylor wearing rhinestones on her eyes for the “Teardrops On My Guitar” video?
Being the sparkly, rhinestone, magpie lover that I am, I talked to Taylor about doing that. We did a little sample of = some clusters of stones on her hand and on her eye and she fell in love with it. It’s that little something that set it = apart. Not that it had never been done before, but for her and her fans it was new and fresh.

How do you come up with the ideas for photos and videos?
I guess they haunt me really. It’s a process. I love to just sit down and soak in the song, and what the artist has to say about it and what they want. And I sit with the director. Trey Fanjoy has done all of Taylor’s videos, so she and I are like sisters now, and we work really well together. We sat down in a conference room before the “Our Song” video and talked about the sets. We had the set designer there. [We discussed] the colors, the feel, and I had fabric swatches for the dresses, and we put that all together and we painted the picture, asking “What is it that we want it to look like? How do we want it to feel? And what do we want people to feel when they see it?”

Do you always handle the artists’ hair and makeup? Do you sometimes shop for the artists instead of making their clothes?
I shop a lot, and I pull from showrooms direct a lot too. Those are called loaner clothes. You can’t keep them for very long, but you can use them for your purposes and send it back. And when I can’t travel to L.A. or New York and do it myself, I have some established contacts who do it for me. It’s free press for the [clothing makers], so that’s why they want to help you out by sending you clothes to use.

I do hair and makeup, but often for the videos I’ve brought in Lori Turk to do Taylor’s makeup because it’s such a big day and makeup is such an important part. I want to make sure the hair and all those details are well covered. So I’m not afraid to bring in the back-up to make sure everything is good. And there are so many talented people out there that it’s fun to tap into the talent and bring it to our camp. I encourage stylists to contact me at the label to introduce themselves.