Costume designer Christian Joy's studio is in her apartment, deep in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on a street where, inexplicably, every house is bedecked with an American flag. Most known for her eccentric designs—a skeleton with spilling guts, various witches, spacemen and jokers—for Yeah Yeah Yeahs lead singer Karen O., Joy's designs are anything but traditional. She briefly produced her own line before deciding to focus entirely on art and costumes, and recently had her first solo exhibition, The Visitors Must Be Amused, at Audio Visual Arts in New York. And truly, making crazy, out-of-this-world stuff is what Joy does best. We recently stopped by her studio, which is filled to the brim with inspiration photos, sewing supplies and old costumes ("That's the first ever dress I made for Karen," she says, pointing to a tattered blue prom dress, "It's really nasty.") to take a peek and get some tips on making some crazy shit of our own.