Colleen Atwood Talks Alice In Wonderland Costumes

04 June 2010

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Colleen Atwood has had a long an illustrious career as one of cinema’s best costume designer having worked on the likes of Edward Scissorhands, Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago and Public Enemies, bringing her two Oscar along the way.

Her last project once again saw her team up with Tim Burton for Alice In Wonderland, which is out on Disney DVD and Blu-Ray today. So I caught up with her to talk about a new look for Alice, working with Tim and Johnny and what lies ahead.

- You have designed the costumes for Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, having worked on so many of his other movies, so how did you two get together?

We met actually through a production designer that I had worked with who recommended me to Tim when we were doing Edward Scissorhands. I met Tim and we hit in off in our interview and he basically hired me right then, which was very exciting.

- What is your working relationship like with him? How closely do you work together is he very hands on in bringing ideas to the table?

Basically we start with the script, we usually have an initial meeting and he talks to me about the general feel of how he sees it and I go off and do my research. I then bring him materials, which he reacts to, and then we go on to the next stage which is the design process.

We start researching fabrics and fabric ideas; he enjoys all the textiles and visual materials, so he sees all that. 

Once I start making the clothes he usually comes in on the second fitting, once we have got the initial boring stuff done, and has a look and we take it from there.

-  And what makes you keep wanting to work with him?

I really like him as a person, which is very important, but I also admire him as an artist and I’m always excited to see when he is thinking for a project, he has always had a very interesting view on what he wants to see.

- What was your inspiration behind the look of the film did you look at the books and films that have gone before or were you very much encouraged to design something new.

I think that you tell for the script that we were encouraged to forge a head with new ideas without any disrespect to the old. I certainly was familiar, even from my childhood, with the original stuff and I sort of used it as a starting point but then we were totally set free by the fact that Alice’s dress didn’t shrink and grow with her in the story, and that really was a turning point. There were also plenty of new characters added so there was all this new material which was freeing.

- Alice is still seen in the famous blue dress so how has that changed from what we have seen in the past? And how does the design change from when Alice is in the real-world to when she is in Wonderland?

What happens is that the blue dress is a full skirt but it’s on a young woman and not a child so it isn’t a pinafore/little girl dress, there’s a moment in the flashback where little Alice is with the Hatter and she has on this very traditional Victorian child’s dress.

But young Alice is in a neverland between adult clothes and children’s clothes, which is why I made the blue dress the way that it is, it doesn’t quite touch the ground, it doesn’t have a hoop, it doesn’t have a corset but it has embroidery around the hem which acknowledges Wonderland in a way but without saying it.