This will be the copy I am going to be using for Alice In Wonderland DPS. This is a brilliant interview with Alice Costume Designer Colleen Atwood. This article is perfect for VL as it encapsulates information and insight into the creative process undertook during the making of this film, which is very important to reinforce the philosophy of the magazine as well as informing the audience of how the creativity is explored in this aspect of design for film.
Think of the look of any Johnny Depp character from the Tim Burton universe from Edward Scissorhands bondage buckles to Ed Wood’s angora sweaters to the breeches and waistcoats of Sleepy Hollows Ichabod Crane and Colleen Atwood was the woman who envisioned and executed it. One of the most sought-after and gifted costume designers working in Hollywood today, Atwood has been nominated for an astounding eight Academy Awards, of which she’s won two for Chicago and Memoirs of a Geisha. Just reading about her 2009 slate is enough to render you exhausted: good thing she had Depp’s measurements seared into her memory when work began on Michael Mann’s Public Enemies; then there was the business of putting all those other Oscar winners into revealing outfits for Nine; and let’s not forget Mr. Burton, who called upon Colleen to reconceive the look of every character some real, some entirely virtual for his celebrated, 3-D take on Alice in Wonderland. We talked to Colleen about changing the chameleon Depp’s colors and what surprises are in store for Alice.
JH: You’ve worked with Johnny Depp many times now.
CA: I have Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow Let’s see Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland
JH: It must be a treat to design for an actor who can disappear so seamlessly inside his characters.
CA: He really is a chameleon, and he takes on the character in the clothes. They don’t ever look like costumes on him; they look real, and that really helps my job.
JH: Your partnership with Tim Burton how did the two of you first come together?
CA: a production designer, Bo Welch, who I’d work with prior to that, recommended me to him on Edward Scissorhands. So I met Tim through him, and we clicked in our own way, and we’ve managed to have a long run together and still enjoy working together.
JH: Do you conceive of the costumes together through sketches? I know he frequently begins on paper.
CA: There’s something that he captures that is kind of the soul of the character on paper, and there’s often costume elements, but we’re not married to that at all. I mean, absolutely on Edward Scissorhands, because there was so much involved with that, but with the Mad Hatter, with Sweeney, with those costumes, he really doesn’t give me a drawing and say, This is what I want. I think it’s because he knows the other people working with him are artists, so he gets very excited and enthusiastic when we show him what we have. He has a wonderful eye himself, and so he’ll add a little magical touch to something.
JH: How did the new 3-D technology he used in Alice in Wonderland affect your designs?
CA: I did a lot of the computer animated costumes I knew what the animated world was going to be, and I knew a bit about 3-D anyway, and so I sort of tried to make stuff that you could play with in 3-D. Stuff that pops in and out. We ended up physically making a lot of the other stuff and it would later end up being animated. It really helped Tim to see things as physical costumes first, and it gave the animators a lot of help as far as depth and texture and things like that. I think what we’re going to see now is the mixture of live and animated people and costumes in an animated world. It’s going to be a really amazing, fun thing for the audience.
JH: I know he wanted to depart with the traditional narrative. How tied were you to the original illustrations, and what were your reference points for designing a new Alice in Wonderland?
CA: It was really freeing, because there’s Lewis Caroll’s own drawings, of which there aren’t very many and they’re quite simple. As Alice went through various eras, there are classic references for them. Because this is so different from what people are going to expect Alice isn’t a ten-year-old girl, she’s a young woman there’s a nod to the classical need for that. But once she goes into Wonderland, we took it to another place. The Hatter has a hat and the recognizable elements, but we explored the world of hat makers in London in the period. So we pulled from that for inspiration more than the previous illustrations, and Johnny used that for his character. They called hatters mad hatters because they used these toxic glues and dyes all the time, and they were actually quite mad, a lot of them. So it was quite cool to read about that business in that time, and that they were actually quite in demand and made a quite decent living at that period.
JH: Now when you do something historically accurate and less fanciful than something like Alice in Wonderland, such as Public Enemies, how much research goes into it before you even sketch your first drawing?
CA: In a story like Public Enemies, it’s about people who existed, so you go to that trough, using what few images of them existed. Actually when I do period work, I really like to read about the period as much as I like to look at pictures, because sometimes the written word is much better at conveying what their lives were really like and how much they had, and where their clothes came from. Because a lot of time, people dressed in their Sunday best to pose for a picture. They didn’t take snapshots until much later there certainly wasn’t much of that going on in the 1930s. For most of these guys, it was mug shots and prison entrance and exit clothes, but I had a lot of people do online research, and Michael Mann of course had been on the project for a long time and had very deep research and was quite specific. The production designer usually starts a show before I do and they usually have a depth of research. So it’s a combination of all that.
JH: As a creative talent, how thrilled were you to work on a fantastical story like Alice?
CA: SO excited! I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, if it was going to be totally animated. The great thing for me is that I came to designing many more costumes than we initially thought so I got really involved.
JH: How did you go about creating costumes to reflect Alice’s tough new persona, whilst still nodding towards the traditional dress from the original story?
CA: Initially Tim and the script itself allowed for Alice to be quirkier than she had been in the book.
She was no longer a little girl not just a girl in a pretty dress, so I could really play that it up, which was portrayed in the shrinking/growing scenes.
JH: How did you tackle those scenes where Alice shrinks and grows, from a costume perspective?
Initially, I had to visualise and scale the series of sizes, for example, a scale of stripes. I worked visually not technically at the start. Then we figured out the reality of those scales, measured the stripes and made sure the garments were covering her body and that they looked good, exploding off her.
JH: What did you make of all the fashion hype surrounding the film in terms of getting the Alice look? Were you expecting it?
CA: Not really! In fact, I was quite taken aback! We finished filming a year ago and I hadn’t seen the finished movie. Then when it came out, I saw it everywhere! I was in Paris and there were all these shop windows with displays recreating Alice’s different looks. When you’re filming, it’s like you’re in a dark hole and you have no idea what the reception [of the film] will be. And then it came out and it was huge I just couldn’t believe it!
JH: Do you ever get to keep any of the costumes once filming is over?
CA: Unfortunately not, as the studio owns them so I haven’t kept any at all. I keep the fabric reference swatches and Johnny [Depp] is usually gifted with his costumes, so he has some of his character’s outfits. There are so many I would have loved to keep but I guess I can watch them on tape if I want to reminisce!
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