Legendary costume designer Colleen Atwood takes us behind the seams of ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,’ revealing the artistry and creativity behind the film’s iconic wardrobe. With 4 Oscars and 80+ films to her name, long time Tim Burton collaborator, Atwood discusses the freedom and excitement of building unique worlds with Burton again. From Michael Keaton’s black-and-white suit hand crafted from Italian satin to reuniting with Jenna Ortega post 'Wednesday,' Atwood breaks down how she collaborated with the actors and director to ensure the costumes reflected the essence of their characters.
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00:00The first time Michael tried on the suit, it was kind of like, he's back.
00:03It's showtime.
00:06The portal is open and Beetlejuice is back, along with the Dietz family,
00:10joined by Jenna Ortega as Lydia's daughter Astrid. To clothe his larger-than-life and
00:16afterlife world, Tim Burton turned to his longtime collaborator,
00:20four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood.
00:24Hi, I'm Colleen Atwood, the costume designer for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
00:31I've done many films over the years. Tim and I have a real shorthand. We've worked together
00:36on many things. We're making our own rules, we're making our own worlds, and us pushing
00:40each other in a new direction was really the most exciting thing, and working with the cast,
00:45who I'd always admired. For me, the characters are the world. You start with them and you make
00:50them who they are. In approaching Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, I looked to the first movie,
00:55of course, for the things that are expected, starting with Beetlejuice.
00:59Not to mention the fact that you're talking to a dead guy. Now, what do you think?
01:03He was the main thing that was iconic. The original designer was a woman named Maggie Rogers,
01:08so keeping with the influence of her costumes, we used a really beautiful four-ply silk satin fabric
01:14from a company called Taroni in Italy. Michael really wanted to feel like he was a little bit
01:20older. So we kind of like broke down the clothes, so they looked a little more old manny, even though
01:25it was Beetlejuice. It felt a little less hyper real. Beetlejuice's other main costume is his wedding
01:31tuxedo, which we manufactured in a little bit different wool fabric than the initial one was.
01:38We kind of kept to the same vibe of that tux because it just looks like a rent-a-tux,
01:42which is kind of the idea. He has a couple little surprise changes within the story that we kind of had fun
01:49with. With so many characters and so much to create pre-production, the planning process before
01:54a movie begins filming is when Atwood begins crucial collaborations with the director and actors.
02:00My process with Tim is not like a lot of discussions, intellectualizing about story
02:05and character and all that, and I sort of just show him my fabrics, my ideas. He just says,
02:11go for it. With each actor, we sort of figure out their clothing and their character, whether it's
02:16Catherine or Winona or Jenna, because we sort of know what set they're going to be on, what they're
02:20going to be doing in the costume, because you have a script that you're working off of. In the art
02:25department, they start before us. They sort of show you the colors that the rooms are and things like
02:29that, and I don't look at one color for one person. I look at all the colors together and I apply them.
02:35Kind of diffused 70s colors. There's scenes in it with Soul Train and with different things where it's very
02:41hearkening to another time, and the sort of lighting and the elements of the underworld measured into
02:48that in a way that it all looked good that way. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Well,
02:54Winona's very stylish in a really low-key way, so we had a fun time collaborating with different
02:59things. She was very key on sort of keeping that vibe of somebody that wasn't comfortable in their
03:05clothes. Her first costume she wore when she has her TV show in this really great 80s dress with a
03:11cinched waist. It looked like a cheap old horror costume, and we love that. And then as she goes
03:17along, her casual wear is a real nod to Victorian sort of style with small waist, high collars,
03:23sort of very Lydia from the first movie. Whatever a character feels about clothes,
03:28it's a costume designer's job to make sure the actors can move and perform seamlessly in their
03:33costumes. She has super sensitive skin, so we had to do cashmeres and really luxe fabrics on her,
03:38kind of keep her comfortable in the clothes. I have a lot of people that help me with fabrics
03:43and shopping, so they go out and they see what they find. One of the challenges of it is just
03:47being able to find a quality and a fabric that you like, but have enough of it to make five costumes
03:53out because a lot of stores now don't carry big quantities of anything. And if you're using antique
03:58fabrics, you're really limited in it because there really isn't any more that you can go get.
04:02When I get the script initially, I don't break it down per se. I just kind of get a closet sort of
04:08idea built up. As I get deeper into it, as I have fittings, we kind of talk together and say,
04:13oh, this would be great for this scene, this would be great for that scene, but it's not like it's
04:17written in stone. When I initially signed up for this project, the things that I had in mind were
04:22making the clothes exciting for people today. So it was really fun to reunite with Winona, who I hadn't
04:29seen since Edward Scissorhands. See Jenna again, who I've worked with, they're as odd as Beetlejuice,
04:35the whole family. They're all like a puzzle of crazies. Don't ever say that name, Beetlejuice.
04:41Jenna and I have a great time together. We did Wednesday Addams together, so we have a comfort
04:45zone. We sort of went with her character as somebody that didn't really focus on clothes that
04:50much, kind of grunge in a way. Her Halloween costume was a departure from that. She's going as a
04:55Halloween date as Marie Curie, so I chose a fabric that looked like it might be radioactive. It kind
05:01of glows in the light and in the dark. It's very lightweight, and I knew that she'd be moving a lot,
05:06so it moves beautifully. It's a very sheer nylon and metal fabric that's really hard to sew, so the
05:12workroom was really happy to see it be finished. The floral dress that Astrid wears once she's met
05:17her boy, and she kind of goes over to see him again, so it's a little bit girlier than her other clothes.
05:22It's a beautiful old chiffon fabric that I had with little tiny sunflowers on it that I've always
05:28loved, but there was just enough to make a dress for Jenna out of it, so it was great. Nice girly
05:33look, not as tough as her other stuff. While that was going on, we were looking for stuff for the
05:38underworld to see what was out there that we could buy, rent, and acquire to sort of build these characters.
05:44Where is Beetlejuice? I think the introduction of my corpse person was really a fun element for us,
05:52because we didn't know how you get the body out of the box with something on it so it wasn't naked,
05:57and put it together, and then put together this stitched together person in a bridal dress that
06:02was sort of quasi-period that goes from one color to another was really a fun kind of fresh thing in
06:08Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. Though they created many new pieces for the movie, Atwood and her team
06:12made sure each piece looked lived in, even for the dead. The sort of technique of making them and aging
06:19them and breaking them down was an overall challenge. You wanted to make them exaggerated reality, but you
06:26didn't want them to be showy in doll clothes. You wanted them to be real. So it was taking kind of
06:31exaggerated fashion a little bit and keeping it toned down and broken down enough so it looked like
06:37it's viable that it could be real people's clothing. There's two routes. You can pre-age the materials and
06:42then make the clothes, and then there's making the costume and then taking it and steaming it and adding
06:47aging to it with paint to make it feel like it's really been around, which is kind of what we did with the
06:53underworld clothes, which are much, much more beat up than the above-the-ground clothes. You could have a fun
06:58ways in a sort of quasi-dark humor way of looking at cause of death in a way that you could convey it
07:05in costume and makeup. That we were able to have people in the underworld, or they died while they
07:10were hiking and they fell off a cliff, or they had a spear through their heads. Could have been in show
07:14biz. We did moms. We did everybody. We sort of all embraced that from the start together and sort of
07:20had a great time with it. We had, I think, 200 people that we did that way. That's 200 out of 2,000 total
07:27costumes. When you're designing for people whose faces are blue and green and different colors of
07:32gray, you don't really want to put them in gray costumes much. You want to put them in color to
07:37kind of enhance the whole makeup and hair exaggeration that's going on in the room. This job required
07:44imagination and fun, which is just like a gift. Thinking outside the box, the main thing was kind
07:50of the shrinkers. Their heads aren't where normal heads are. Their arms don't move like normal arms,
07:54so we had to do a lot of R&D before we could actually make the costumes. So they didn't have
08:00a bump in the back where the actual real person's head was, and so they could actually move and see,
08:06because their faces are actually where the shirts are. So we had to put mesh in the shirts in order for
08:11them to see out when they were acting and running around. Their actual shoulders are on their head with
08:16the head, which is an old puppet trick. You know, it's still working. And I needed a lot of fabric to make
08:21their costumes loosely based on Century 21 real estate guys from the 70s. And I said, why don't we go,
08:27why don't you look in the upholstery world? Those old 70s bonded fabrics are like upholstery fabrics.
08:33And then we found it, and it was like three dollars a yard. Not only was it right, but it was really cheap,
08:38which was great. Even though Beetlejuice was in the 80s, there's definitely a timeless quality to it.
08:43It could be the 50s, it could be the 70s, which is what makes it really special. So you kind of have a lot of
08:49latitude, which was my approach to it. I didn't really feel like I had to be stuck in now. And I
08:55didn't feel like I had to be stuck in then. I could kind of make my own time with it. And Tim was very
09:00supportive of that. Luckily for Lydia and Astrid, Beetlejuice can be contained and life can settle
09:05down. When the film's finished, the clothes that we've manufactured are all owned by the studio and
09:10they have an archive space they keep it in. And then the rental stock gets returned to the rental
09:15houses. And then there's things that we call expendables, stockings and things like that.
09:19And we donate those to theaters or other charities. But for Colleen Atwood, the next costume adventure
09:25is just beginning. For me as a costume designer, the thing that keeps it exciting is that you never
09:31really know what your next project is. You never know what period you're going to be in. You never
09:35know who's going to be in it. You never know what's going to be required of you as a designer. You learn
09:40stuff all the time as you're designing. And it keeps it fresh and it keeps it alive, which is really
09:45one of the things that makes art and life exciting.