Twenty-five years after its release, Almost Famous still feels like the perfect coming-of-age movie that makes you feel nostalgic, even if it’s for a time and place you’ve never been. Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age dramedy follows 15-year-old rock critic wunderkind William (played by Patrick Fugit), who lands a Rolling Stone assignment and goes on tour with a (fictional) 1973 band called Stillwater. If you’ve ever fallen in love with a song, an album, or a band, you’ll see yourself in William, or better yet, the well-dressed muse, Penny Lane (played by Kate Hudson).

Costume designer Betsy Heimann understood that clothes would be as much a part of the storytelling as the music itself. She had worked with Crowe previously on Jerry Maguire, but also “shared a past in rock and roll” with the director and was thrilled when she got the call to work on Almost Famous. “There wasn’t even any thinking about it,” Heimann tells TZR.

The foundation of the film’s wardrobe came directly from lived history — Crowe’s snapshots from the road with Led Zeppelin and The Eagles, alongside rock photographer Joel Bernstein’s intimate archives of Neil Young, who inspired the “cowboy outlaw” aesthetic of guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup) and the boys of Stillwater. For William’s pinwale corduroy jackets and button-up shirts, Heimann reached beyond Crowe’s memoir and into Bernstein’s archives, finding a photo of sound engineer Larry Johnson, alone in a dressing room. But for the “Band Aids,” Heimann pored over photographer Baron Wolman’s visual documentation of the era’s famous groupies, like Pamela Des Barres, who was one of the women who inspired the character of Penny Lane (alongside Pennie Anne Trumbull and Bebe Buell).

When you watch the film, you feel instantly transported to that moment in time, and a lot of that has to do with the authenticity in Heimann’s work. Yet, contrary to popular belief, most of what we see on screen was not thrifted but made from scratch. “I made most everything on that movie,” she explains, “and I know that people think I got them from thrift stores, but I didn’t, and I actually take that as a compliment, so I’m not complaining.” The garments were meticulously constructed, then aged, distressed, and softened until they felt lived-in, as though plucked straight from the back of a tour bus. (All of the blue jeans worn in the film, which were sourced during a “West Coast tour” with her costume supervisor, Michael Dennison, through Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, were pretty much the only pieces that were actual vintage.)

If there is a single costume that defines Almost Famous, it’s, of course, Penny Lane, the mercurial yet magnetic rock-and-roll muse, wrapped in her fur-trimmed coat, carrying a tackle box as a purse. “The coat was very important to Cameron. We talked a lot about it,” says Heimann. The biggest reference for the look was Fran Kubelik in The Apartment (played by Shirley MacLaine), one of Crowe’s favorite films, but it was also symbolic. Taking Crowe’s description of Penny Lane, Heimann imagined her as a butterfly and the coat “was her cocoon,” and somewhat of a security blanket. The search for that “cocoon” began with Fran and the sweeping silhouette of 1920s opera coats, but Heiman was pragmatic. “This was the era of the Afghan coat,” she explains, “but the Afghan was too heavy for me. It didn’t do what I wanted it to do. I needed it to be lighter, so I looked at Erté’s drawings, and I just got it.”

Here is where we enter fashion folklore. Heimann famously raided Urban Outfitters for three shag rugs, cut them up, then tested different shades on camera with cinematographer John Toll to find the exact cream color that would “bounce the light off” of Penny Lane’s “luminous” face. The body of the coat, which was constructed from avocado-green cut velvet upholstery, was discovered serendipitously at Michael Levine in downtown LA. The hue aligned with the film’s tightly controlled color palette.

Overall, Betsy Heimann wanted Penny to read “lyrical, flirty, and exciting,” but grounded in pieces that displayed her softness and vulnerability. So she mixed lace crop tops and velvet bell-bottoms with peasant blouses and worn-in jeans. The playful white fur hat came from a Janis Joplin reference photo Cameron Crowe handed her. In the scene where William tells Penny that she and the other Band Aids were traded to another band for “$50 and a case of beer,” she’s in a sheer, ruffled cream blouse meant to underscore that fragility. “What kind of beer?” she asks, blinking back tears. “She’s smiling, trying to be brave,” Heimann explains.

For the blue silk shift dress that Penny wears when she travels to New York to see Russell, Heimann cut it from vintage embroidered Chinese silk she picked up while traveling. “Vintage was so important then,” says Heimann. “In the early ‘70s, you had the glamorous Bianca Jagger in an up-to-date white pantsuit, but there were also young women mixing in stuff like Edwardian tea blouses with their blue jeans. This dress was Penny’s way of saying, ‘I’m a grown-up now, I gotta make a play for this guy because his girlfriend is showing up in Yves Saint Laurent.’ The mini length was deliberate, too — perfect for showcasing the embroidered lace-up boots Heimann had custom-made, a style widely copied today from brands like The Hippie Shake.

But Penny wasn’t the only style icon of the girls. Sapphire, played by Fairuza Balk, had her own standout looks. Heimann clocked her instantly: “This is the leather-and-lace girl,” she said (citing the Stevie Nicks/Don Henley anthem that technically came later in 1981, but still embodies the same sugar and spice vibe). “[Fairuza] was so inspiring as a person — she was the real deal of leather and lace. And all that jewelry was hers, all those big rockin’ crosses. She was borderline goth.” But Sapphire wore a lot of color, too. The pièce de résistance was a multicolored feather-boa vest — “a cross between a bolero and a shrug” — built by layering cut boas sourced from Melrose Avenue. “Only Fairuza could pull that off,” says Heimann. “You just can’t make that for anybody. I made it for her. [Sapphire] was not a disillusioned character. She was the speaker of the truth and thought she could have a fun moment.”

Another Band Aid, the incredibly named Polexia Aphrodisia (played by Anna Paquin), leaned more vintage and feminine in her romantic, body-hugging dresses. Heimann says she couldn’t find true real-life references for Polexia, but she “sprang to life” on her own. One memorable look was a slinky pink dress with a bucket hat, tinted heart-shaped glasses, and a butterfly print purse made from a plastic tablecloth. “The pink dress was an homage to a 1930s nightgown, made with a lace collar and panne velvet. I was thinking photographically, it would catch the light,” explains Heimann. “She was the English one, just a bit more reserved, but it didn’t make her any less naughty.”

Another of the film’s most eye-catching costume moments comes when William’s sister, Anita (played by Zooey Deschanel), sweeps into the airport in her flight attendant uniform, a red-and-pink miniskirt suit with matching red go-go boots. “It’s the iconography of the period,” Heimann says of the famous look, which was worn by actual Pacific Southwest Airlines in the ‘70s. The look wasn’t invented for the film: Heimann literally drove to San Diego to meet a former PSA flight attendant who’d saved her uniform. But the pop of color Anita brings was meaningful in itself. After all, it was Anita who got William into music in the first place. “When the going has gotten really tough, and William’s just sitting there in the airport, here she comes, the bright, colorful world of reality,” says Heimann. “She’s a lifesaver for her brother.”

In the end, as stylish as rock icons and their “groupies” are, the costumes in Almost Famous were more than just decoration; they helped tell each character’s story. “Every moment in that film meant something to me, and every costume that anybody wore, I hoped would be in sync with that moment,” she says.