From ‘Chicago’ to ‘Wednesday,’ How Costume Designer Colleen Atwood Makes Black Pop on Screen

Oscar-winning actor Catherine Zeta-Jones recalls meeting “Chicago” costume designer Colleen Atwood in her workshop before the musical began filming.

“It was this explosion of costume and dancing fishnet tights hanging from every hook,” says Zeta-Jones. “I remember meeting her for the first time and looking at her designs, giddy with anticipation, and looking at her vision and just going ‘Wow! This is amazing.’”

Zeta-Jones had an instant respect and admiration for Atwood and her craft. She’s not the only one. Directors Rob Marshall and Tim Burton have her on speed dial as one of their first go-to department heads and collaborators when starting their new films. I needed that same group from ‘Chicago’ because we speak the same language and shorthand at this point,” Marshall says. He used Atwood on Disney’s 2023 live action “The Little Mermaid.”

Atwood is set to be honored for her work at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival with Variety’s Creative Impact in Costume Design award. For over four decades, Atwood has crafted costumes for a lengthy rollcall of features, including “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Masters of the Air.”

In bringing Melissa McCarthy’s sea witch Ursula to the big screen in “The Little Mermaid,” Atwood went for something glam but dark to go with the character’s cave. “As we know from science, an octopus changes their color to match their environment, so we needed something dark,” Atwood says. She wanted to give the effect that Ursula was surrounded by glamorous lights because she’s a “showgirl at heart.” Atwood ended up using a purple sequined fabric with a layer of black suede lasercut leather on top for Ursula’s outfit. “That broke it up and gave the outfit a real texture of an octopus skin.”

Her process is a thorough one that involves research and diving into archive photography. And when she’s working on an established IP, Atwood knows just how to pay homage while putting her creative stamp on costumes.

Take Netflix series “Wednesday,” for example, for which she reunited with Burton. “We can nail the iconic look right away [for the title character] with a nod to the original pointed collar, little print dress and modernized platform shoes, and then put her in an environment that she totally contrasts with: an American happy-time public school,” Atwood says of her reverence for the macabre teen’s original outfit. “Then you’ve given the nod to all that’s come before.”

To make black pop in the macabre world of the Charles Addams-inspired show, Atwood says she embraced “texture and juxtaposition. I like to use blacks that have a shine to them because it doesn’t go as flat as opaque, especially if somebody isn’t spending a lot of time lighting.”

“Masters of the Air” required over 300 leather jackets. For that, Atwood sought era-specific zippers from Japan and sheepskin from Scotland and England to create the costumes for the 1940s-set series. The process of manufacturing the jackets used in the show took about nine months. Atwood went to great lengths to age the leather, “We put them in a vat of rocks and a cement mixer, literally, to beat up the leather, to get it to look like somebody had been wearing it for a few months, and as the journey went on they were aged more in that way.”

Atwood recently reunited with Burton again, for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and again on the second season of “Wednesday.” The former will screen at the film festival after Atwood’s presentation.