Colleen Atwood Research Paper

Sydney Lokant
Costume IV
Project 1
8/29/16
Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth-it really does establish who they are. –Colleen Atwood
Colleen Atwood is one of the most recognizable costume designers of these times. She was born September 25th, 1948 in Yakima, Washington. She started as a fashion advisor and then moved to New York to study art at NYU. After a happenstance in 1980, Colleen ended up with a job as a Production Assistant for Ragtime. She then worked as an assistant costume designer for A Little Sex. She continued working on projects until she landed the opportunity to costume Sting’s Bring On The Night tour and documentary in 1981. This brought her the recognition to begin

One important element of Colleen Atwood’s style, prevalent throughout her designs, especially in Bigfish, is “unthought-of” objects she incorporates into her signature designs.(Vilkomerson). Like in Snow White and the Huntsman, she incorporated rooster feathers, chainmail, leather spikes and manipulated parchment to make some off the wall touches to her designs. (Miller, 2012). In other works she has tweaked what everyone thinks of and made it look like something never seen before. (Miller, Inside Meryl Streep’s Glam Into the Woods Makeover, and Colleen Atwood’s Other Fairy-Tale Costumes, 2014). She also uses colors and fabrics to set the mood of the scene being played out. Lucy's costumes are similarly elegant, hinting at her innocence and purity. She quite literally glows in Todd's initial flashback of her, wearing peachy-white lace from head to toe, including her bonnet, which casts a halo-like light around her face. Atwood says, "The world of Lucy was a rosy memory. I wanted that whole world to have a sort of peachy glow about it. I used diaphanous fabrics to create a transparent feeling; they could almost evaporate," (DeDominicis, 2008). This is compared to the dark almost monochromatic colors used in the rest of the