Look of the Week: Glenn Close and her six-foot impersonator demand a double take

By Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) — Professional shapeshifter Alexis Stone loves conjuring celebrities from beyond the grave. For Halloween, the performance and makeup artist morphed into Micheal Jackson. A few weeks earlier he embodied the late fashion designer Thierry Mugler. But the inspiration for Stone’s latest prosthetic metamorphosis wasn’t just alive — she was standing right next to him.

Glenn Close is a familiar muse for Stone, who impersonated her in costume as the “101 Dalmatians” character Cruella de Vil in 2023. On Monday night, the actor was dwarfed by her uncanny counterpart at the “All’s Fair” Season 2 premiere in New York. “I think seeing a six-foot man impersonate you is quite an out-of-body experience,” Stone said in a phone call. “It was ironically Glenn who was reassuring me, rather than me reassuring Glenn.” It was the first time Stone had come face-to-face with someone he was impersonating. He called it a “visual glitch.”

It really was a Glenn diagram, with clear overlaps: both were dressed in near-identical custom Matières Fécales looks inspired by the brand’s September runway — a brand Stone said had “Cruella mannerisms.” Close wore a coat dress made of Burkina Faso fabric, while Stone was dressed in the corresponding blazer and skirt. Both had the same icy-white shade of bob, not to mention their matching blush placement, lip shade and pinched smize to the camera.

Unlike Close, Stone is not part of the “All’s Fair” cast. The stunt was commissioned by the show’s director Ryan Murphy, also behind other costume-driven TV series like “American Horror Story,” “The Beauty” and “American Love Story.” “If there’s anyone that was going to help facilitate this, it was Ryan Murphy,” said Stone. “He really understands the complexities of bringing these characters to life.”

These kinds of headline-grabbing appearances have become Stone’s raison d’être and a key part of this business model. After making a name for himself online for his full-body transmogrifications, Stone caught the attention of the fashion community. In 2022, renegade designer Demna — another kind of stunt master with a subversive reverie for celebrity culture — discovered Stone while creative director at Balenciaga and sat him front row at his March show in Paris dressed as Robin Williams’ 1993 film character, Mrs. Doubtfire. Stone’s arrival as the pudgy matron instantly went viral. Since then, he has attended several Balenciaga shows before Demna moved to Gucci, plus runways for Jean Paul Gautlier, Diesel and Boss — though never dressed as himself.  No detail is too small for Stone and his team to re-create –– from custom-made contact lenses to nail the perfect iris shade, bespoke dentures and fragrances that get him into character.

At Paris Fashion Week in March, Stone upgraded from VIP guest to runway model after he walked the Matières Fécales show. The collection, titled “The One Percent,” was billed as a critique of the bourgeois class. Stone was dressed as an aesthetically conscious conservative housewife with a crisp button-down shirt, A-line skirt, peroxide blowout and fake facelift sutures. As well as designing his own makeup, Stone also created the grisly post-op prosthetics worn by the other models.

The budget required for these lifelike recreations is similar to that of a traditional TV show’s costume department, reaching even as high as six-figures he told CNN in 2025. As a sign of the times, Stone’s transformations live primarily on social media — an expensive investment in virality. But even though these moments feel distinctly modern, the fact Stone’s prosthetics are real and not AI-generated already makes his work a dying art. “People’s brains are adjusting very quickly to seeing artificial visuals,” said Stone, who added that he feels an urgency to platform the physical craft. “The future of practical effects is really up in the air right now.”

“I really love making the impossible possible,” he continued. “Glenn is number 22 or 23 when it comes to the (number of my) transformations. I keep a little bit of all of them in my personality.”

The-CNN-Wire
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