"You're always trolling for stuff, no matter where you are in the world." Wednesday costume designer Colleen Atwood talks about the inspiration behind each of Wednesday Addams' wicked looks on the hit Netflix show. From screening fabrics to comparing collar shapes, Colleen breaks down every intricate detail that went into curating the bloody perfect wardrobe for Jenna Ortega.
Director: Juliet Lopez
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: Alana McNair
Producer: Funmi Sunmonu
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Emebeit Beyene
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd, Anthony Wooten
Talent Booker: Mica Medoff
Camera Operator: Shay Eberle-Gunst
Sound : Kari Barber
Production Assistant: Brock Spitaels
Set Designer: Matt Mulligan
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Director: Juliet Lopez
Director of Photography: Grant Bell
Editor: Alana McNair
Producer: Funmi Sunmonu
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Associate Producer: Emebeit Beyene
Production Manager: Andressa Pelachi
Production Coordinator: Kariesha Kidd, Anthony Wooten
Talent Booker: Mica Medoff
Camera Operator: Shay Eberle-Gunst
Sound : Kari Barber
Production Assistant: Brock Spitaels
Set Designer: Matt Mulligan
Post Production Supervisor: Edward Taylor
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Kameron Key
Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I found it in Romania at Zara.
00:02 And I was like, oh my god, I can't believe this is here.
00:05 You're always trolling for stuff no matter
00:07 where you are in the world when you do something like this.
00:10 Hi, Vanity Fair.
00:11 I'm Colleen Atwood, costume designer for Wednesday Adams,
00:14 along with Mark Sutherland, my associate.
00:16 Today I'm going to be talking about how we created
00:19 the wardrobe world of Wednesday.
00:22 With Tim Burton, I've had a long time collaboration.
00:26 My first job with Tim was on Edward Scissorhands,
00:29 which was a great way to start.
00:31 I had worked with the production designer, Bo Welch,
00:33 before on something, and he had recommended me to Tim.
00:36 And he actually hired me in the interview,
00:39 which he's kind of the only guy that's done that in my life.
00:42 He's like, yeah, you want to do it?
00:45 And I'm going, yes, of course.
00:47 We've done 13 features together and a couple other art projects
00:51 and other things that Tim does.
00:53 We've had a long time shorthand, which
00:55 is a wonderful way to work with a fellow artist.
00:58 Tim and I discussed Wednesday Adams together,
01:01 as we had kind of with Alice, that you
01:03 feel like when something's as well-known and well-established
01:07 as the Adams family story and the characters,
01:11 that there's a beginning where you want to nail that and say,
01:14 this is that person.
01:15 It's recognizable.
01:17 It's an homage to more than 30 years of evolution.
01:21 We decided that the first thing would be the dress
01:24 with the white collar.
01:25 The only person who gets to torture my brother is me.
01:28 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:31 The first step in creating a costume is finding the material.
01:34 I found the fabric first.
01:37 And I had two or three versions of it.
01:39 And I over-dyed it.
01:40 I did some playing around with it.
01:42 And I landed on the fabric that the dress itself
01:45 is made out of, which is a rayon fabric with a little white
01:48 flower woven in.
01:50 Ultimately, of course, because there's never enough fabric
01:52 anywhere, I ended up screening fabric
01:54 to match the original fabric.
01:56 So that was the first step.
01:58 And the second step was doing all these different collar
02:01 shapes to show Tim.
02:03 So I did those on a dress stand, originally just shooting them,
02:06 sending him blasts of photos, like, do you
02:09 like this one, this one?
02:10 So we ended up making two or three for our first test
02:14 with Jenna.
02:15 The shape of the dress was the classic shape
02:18 of a Victorian dress without structure.
02:21 The shoes were kind of a fun element,
02:23 because I saw these strapped Dior shoes that were really,
02:26 to me, a little bondagey, a little Wednesday.
02:28 This particular costume, we didn't have to have tons of.
02:31 There's a young Wednesday in the show.
02:34 So it's the same fabric, or very similar.
02:37 I had to have enough for two for her,
02:38 because when you have children, you always
02:41 have two, unless you're really walking the line.
02:44 For Wednesday herself, I think we probably
02:47 made three dresses, just so we were covered.
02:49 In this particular project, I was pretty much in concert
02:51 with the production designer, because I'd
02:53 seen his concept art early.
02:55 So I knew what colors they were going to use.
02:58 They were building big sets, so we
02:59 had to know what they looked like ahead of time.
03:01 We shot as much as we could sequentially.
03:04 So this was Wednesday entering school
03:07 with the regular school before she went to Nevermore.
03:09 We sort of pushed the color around her,
03:12 which is something as a designer you sometimes
03:14 do to make your costumes stand out a little bit more
03:17 than they would normally in a room.
03:19 In that particular sequence, it was
03:21 sort of based on Tim's Burbank past.
03:23 It was all the pastels, almost California-looking classroom.
03:27 Tim came up with the idea of the piranha in two plastic bags
03:31 held up to dump into the pool.
03:32 The first fittings I had were for this scene,
03:35 so I fitted the lacrosse team.
03:36 We were really in the Speedo world
03:39 for a while there, figuring out just the right color
03:41 and everything for the scene, which you kind of don't really
03:44 see.
03:44 But all those things come into play
03:46 when you're designing a costume.
03:48 Like, you would never put the team
03:49 in a black and white costume.
03:51 You'd put them in red or blue or a kind
03:53 of classic anti-black and white color.
03:56 [MUSIC - "SKILLS ON SKILLS ON SKILLS ON SKILLS ON SKILLS"]
04:01 This shows you kind of can pop Wednesday by the colors
04:04 that you put her around.
04:06 And Tim and I came to an early point
04:08 where we wanted the uniforms to be purple and black.
04:11 We really wanted her to have her black and white only uniform.
04:15 And we played around with it, and I
04:17 ended up having to have the fabric for these costumes
04:19 woven, because nothing was the right color of purple.
04:23 It was either too dark or too pink, or there were issues.
04:27 So a company actually wove the wool for me.
04:30 When it came to Wednesday's costume,
04:32 I couldn't find a stripe that I liked that was gray and black.
04:37 I had this idea of silk screening the stripes on fabric
04:40 so I could get a stripe that wasn't just
04:42 a hard black and gray stripe, but that could
04:45 be graded on the two sides and not a regular stripe.
04:49 I've done it before.
04:49 I did it in "Sleepy Hollow."
04:51 I've done it in other movies where I've hand-painted stripes
04:53 or done them, just to get away from the relentlessness
04:56 of a woven stripe.
04:57 I scaled the stripes down a little bit on her
05:00 because of her size.
05:02 And I thought it gave her a delicacy
05:03 that the other costumes didn't have.
05:05 We played around with the art department with the Nevermore
05:08 emblem for a while.
05:09 And then we just came up with something
05:11 that was more like a clean, simple graphic, which
05:13 is very Tim Burton.
05:15 And then the collar was inspired by a Carnaby Street shirt
05:18 that I saw in an old reference from the '60s.
05:21 It was like a high stand with a little fine rollout.
05:24 So she's kind of a combo of a lot of different ideas
05:28 put together.
05:28 Her shoes were a big point in the story,
05:31 that she didn't wear sneakers and she didn't wear girly shoes,
05:34 but she wore these black, kind of goth shoes that
05:37 were still feminine, but had a different edge
05:40 to the other people's footwear.
05:44 You were very impressive in there.
05:46 This look here, which is a Wednesday casual look,
05:50 it's almost dressy compared to her other outings looks.
05:55 And when you start designing with the limitations
05:57 of black and white, it's daunting
06:00 because we really started to lean into texture and surface
06:04 on clothing in order to sort of contrast
06:07 the sort of feeling of the black and white.
06:09 So when I found this little--
06:11 I call it the potholder sweater because it reminds me
06:14 of those crochet projects that you had in school.
06:16 And I found it in Romania at Zara.
06:19 And I was like, oh my god, I can't believe this is here.
06:22 You're always trolling for stuff no matter
06:24 where you are in the world when you do something like this.
06:27 We were looking for the prom dress, thinking about it.
06:34 And I always thought I'd find this amazing vintage dress
06:38 that I could read "juj" for the prom dress
06:40 because conceptually, it had to be something
06:43 that she found in the local thrift store.
06:46 So it had to kind of look like it
06:48 could come from that world without being too much.
06:52 I kept looking at '50s prom dresses,
06:54 and I just didn't see anything that I loved.
06:57 And so I was starting to make one.
07:00 And then randomly for another thing,
07:03 I was walking down Bond Street in London.
07:05 I glanced into the Elias store, and I
07:07 saw the dress on a mannequin in the upstairs.
07:11 And I went in with my assistant, who's very petite.
07:13 I asked the guy if she could try the dress on.
07:16 I didn't know what the choreography was going to be,
07:19 but I had her swish around in it so I
07:20 could see how it moved and stuff.
07:21 I just said, this is just the dress.
07:24 I just knew it.
07:25 I didn't even question it.
07:26 And when Jenna saw it, she loved it.
07:28 We scaled it down for her a little bit
07:30 because it was a lot of dress, and I just kind of modified
07:33 it a bit for the show.
07:34 And then, of course, she runs through the woods in it.
07:37 So we had to manufacture it ourselves.
07:39 And we made probably four or five copies of it.
07:44 So it was a very painstaking, labor-intensive process.
07:49 Afterwards, I spoke to the people at Elias
07:52 because I was trying to get a dress for a display.
07:56 And they said, you know, that was the only dress
07:58 we made like that because it isn't really
08:00 their usual vibe at all.
08:01 It was probably just somebody's dream project in the workroom.
08:04 And it ended up there, and it ended up on her going viral.
08:07 It was so crazy.
08:09 My first fitting that I had with Jennifer
08:11 the show about her wardrobe.
08:14 She's very open.
08:15 She's very collaborative.
08:16 And she always says, Colleen, I trust you.
08:19 So we had an all-day session with her,
08:21 with hair and makeup, figuring out who she was going to be.
08:25 And it really came together in a great way.
08:27 And then halfway through the day,
08:29 we brought in Emma, who plays Enid.
08:31 Wait.
08:32 You're joining the Black Cats?
08:35 You're willing to do that for me?
08:38 They were so in tandem in my head, visually.
08:41 They were yin and yang.
08:42 I didn't really want Enid to look like a puffy pink object,
08:46 you know, too girly, not with a little bit of edge.
08:49 She was a wolf person.
08:51 She had her nails that sprung out.
08:53 She had things that happened with her clothes that
08:56 had to relate to her character.
08:58 So I used graphics on her costumes to balance Wednesday.
09:03 She's very apart from people.
09:05 And I think she feels as much an outsider as Wednesday,
09:08 but on the surface, looks way like an insider.
09:12 Any plans you have of running away end right now.
09:17 The first time I met Catherine Zeta-Jones on this show,
09:21 I met her on Zoom.
09:23 And I know her because I did Chicago with her.
09:25 She came on the Zoom, and she had her hair really straight,
09:28 her makeup on.
09:29 She says, I thought I'd do my hair like this,
09:31 have these really red lips.
09:33 You know, she was ready for work.
09:35 Like, she's a very prepared professional.
09:38 And we talked about the dress, and that we sort of
09:41 wanted to pay homage to the original black dress,
09:44 but eventually branch out from it.
09:47 I made three versions of the dress.
09:49 I made one in leather that was really great,
09:52 but maybe it was too much.
09:53 It felt too costumey.
09:55 And then I made one in a kind of harder kind of silk.
09:58 And then I made one in this jersey.
10:00 And the jersey is probably the most
10:02 similar to the traditional morticia dress.
10:05 With Catherine, we changed the hard V neckline
10:08 in the cartoons into a more kind of gentle neckline
10:11 that was great for her.
10:12 And it worked better with the long black hair.
10:14 And I also-- you don't see them here,
10:16 but I have these two little inserts
10:17 I did that were silver on one side and black on the other
10:21 that kind of twisted around to try
10:24 to keep some highlights in the black with digital photography.
10:28 And it actually helped kind of give a more exaggerated shape
10:32 to her body.
10:33 But it comes and goes on screen.
10:34 You don't always see it.
10:36 Sometimes a sharp tongue can cut deep.
10:39 When you get a guy like Luis, you make it to work on him.
10:42 He's a joy to work with.
10:44 He just embraces costume so much and enjoys the process
10:48 and knows that he's not like an easy guy to put clothes on.
10:52 But he still loves clothes and doesn't
10:54 give you a hard time about it.
10:55 So what I did is I took the traditional striped fabric,
10:59 but I did all kinds of darts in it.
11:00 I didn't want the stripes to get round on him.
11:03 I wanted him to stay square like a drawing.
11:05 And then I gave him a slightly earlier cut to the suit
11:09 than we'd seen before.
11:10 It's not Victorian, but it's more
11:12 like a early Edwardian kind of shape, which I liked for him.
11:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:20 When I met with Gwendolyn Christie,
11:21 I had in my house in London at the time
11:24 an old poster from "The Birds," beautiful colors
11:28 with a half shot of Tippi Hedren.
11:30 There was just something about the vibe of that
11:33 that resonated the minute I saw Gwendolyn.
11:36 And I said, you know, this is really weird,
11:39 but I have this idea.
11:40 And she was like, oh, yeah, that's great.
11:42 So then we talked about the structure.
11:44 On these costumes, you have to have
11:46 a really strong understructure for the clothes
11:48 to sit right on the body.
11:50 And we just came up with all these menswear fabrics,
11:53 but really the finest of the fine menswear fabric,
11:56 cashmere and wool blends, things that would still
11:58 look feminine even though they're
11:59 tailored like a man's garment.
12:01 And then hair and makeup sort of fell into that
12:03 with a French twist in the lips.
12:04 And Tim loved it.
12:06 He was just like, whoa, I would never have thought of that.
12:09 And it was like so great, because when
12:10 you design a show like this, you have her,
12:13 you have Christina Ricci, you have
12:14 all these different characters that you
12:16 want to look different and kind of otherworldly,
12:20 but be part of a world.
12:22 That sort of more frumpy kind of vibe
12:25 worked great for Christina's character,
12:27 and I really wanted to veer away from it for Weems.
12:31 I think for me, the thing that got me most interested
12:33 in Wednesday was a really good collection of screenplays
12:39 with the idea of doing a project like this with Tim.
12:42 As a designer, my approach to both series and features
12:47 is pretty much the same.
12:49 It's like a character evolved journey,
12:52 and I was really happy as we went along and sort of got
12:56 Enid, Wednesday, Weems, my Christina Ricci character.
13:01 To me, the excitement is not just creating the costumes,
13:04 but creating the world they live in.
13:06 So creating the people around them and the whole thing,
13:10 to me, is part of that process.
13:12 Thanks, Vanity Fair.
13:14 I'm Colleen Atwood, and I can't wait for you
13:16 to see what we do in season two.
13:19 [Music]