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One of the challenges with period costumes is, on a technical level, making the scale of different periods work on contemporary bodies. We're much bigger than what people were in older times.
Colleen Atwood -
I design for the movie and the character as well as the person wearing the costume. I show the ideas to the actor, then do fittings for shape and technical things such as movement in the costume. Once the costume in this form is on the actor, you have a sense of their connection with it. I then take it to the next level with the final fit.
Colleen Atwood
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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.
Colleen Atwood -
I like the architecture of lingerie.
Colleen Atwood -
I can create clothes for so many different time periods. I've always tried to avoid being pigeonholed. Plus, everything I learn about design and costume from one movie somehow works its way into something else.
Colleen Atwood -
I love designing costumes that I can actually construct, working to create an environment that people want to be in.
Colleen Atwood -
Inspiration comes from everywhere: books, art, people on the street. It is an interior process for me.
Colleen Atwood -
On Planet of the Apes, I had a very knowledgeable team who knew good materials, but I had one main source person who worked online and on the street continually looking for the proper materials.
Colleen Atwood
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I really don't over-theorize about design. I'd rather feel it than talk it to death. A lot happens as you unroll the design.
Colleen Atwood -
I have watched 'Project Runway,' but I'm not a devout watcher of it. But I think it's a great show, what I've seen of it, and I think Tim Gunn is a very positive, amazing guy.
Colleen Atwood -
It's fun conjuring what people will be wearing in the future. We exist in this world today, and yet there are people walking around who still look like they're in the '60s.
Colleen Atwood -
I always loved clothes, just not clothes that were appropriate to the place I grew up in.
Colleen Atwood -
Costume, hair and makeup can tell you instantly, or at least give you a larger perception of who a character is. It's the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth, so it really does establish who they are.
Colleen Atwood -
The designs were based on quite a lot of research of what a movie musical is, filtered through the eyes of today. If we'd gone strictly with the '20s, the movement would have been impaired.
Colleen Atwood
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Planet of the Apes was a gigantic challenge, making the clothes work so people could do stunts and action in the clothes. I really learned a lot about that in that movie.
Colleen Atwood -
I've always loved movies, art and clothes.
Colleen Atwood -
I don't design my own clothes. It's so not what I think about.
Colleen Atwood -
I always have a moment when I know I'm designing the last costume that gets made for a movie, and it's always been floating up there, but it's kind of the last one. That's always probably the hardest one for me.
Colleen Atwood -
As for futuristic costumes, I loved doing 'Gattaca' because I'm a minimalist at heart, and it's a very minimal film. Plus, with Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke and Jude Law, how could you go wrong?
Colleen Atwood -
I get more distracted by hair or a really bad wig than I do costumes any day of the week.
Colleen Atwood
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The thing that's great about being a costume designer is you never know what's going to be next; you never what world you are going to enter.
Colleen Atwood -
I think a lot of young girls go through that period in their life of finding who they are, and at that point, looking good matters the most.
Colleen Atwood -
For contemporary fashion, I'm a huge fan of so many of the people out there. I think Azzedine Alaia holds up through three generations of very specific, beautiful design. I think Jean Paul Gaultier also is very interesting with a long span.
Colleen Atwood -
Sleepy Hollow had a lot of action in it, even though it was a fairy-tale movie.
Colleen Atwood