Colleen Atwood Design Quotations

The exposure I have had to beautiful materials across the world, from Japan to Italy, enables me to pull design ideas together. This, combined with years of historical research, has created a great fountain of ideas for me.

It's often said that costume designers are a faceless group of people. But we can contribute to fashion in a way that might be new and different.

I love designing costumes that I can actually construct, working to create an environment that people want to be in.

Some of the kimonos took as long as four to five months to make, with all the layers that go into it.

The thing that's great about being a costume designer is you never know what's going to be next; you never what world you are going to enter.

Costume design allows you to do a different type of research and create characters, whereas in fashion, you create an image and clothing for the masses.

One thing about costume design - and I think design in general - but especially costume design, is people have a misconception that it's very glamorous work.

Sometimes a contemporary film like Silence of the Lambs is difficult. To make it look real but interesting is always a challenge.

I really don't over-theorize about design. I'd rather feel it than talk it to death. A lot happens as you unroll the design.

I really like the original Apes costumes. The colors were great, and the use of heavy materials was something that influenced me for this film.

I have always loved beautiful leather objects, especially the detail that goes into designing them both inside and out.

I worked in fashion, but I worked more in the sales side of fashion than in design. I was an assistant buyer for a department store back in the '70s and the early years of Saint Laurent. And I used to have a lot of private clients that I bought for.

I grew up in a small town in Washington State, so I wasn't really aware of costume design as a career growing up, but I loved clothes. I remember I saved all my money, and the first thing that I bought was a white blazer, which was to the horror to my parents. But I have always had a strange connection with clothing.

My own style is pretty classic; I much prefer to design for others.

Knowing who the actors were as you were designing them helped, with Catherine's beauty and Renee's frailty, they directed me visually just by who they were.

The first Chicago was definitely a product of its time, and Chicago the musical is definitely a contemporary look at another time.

In Chicago, I walked in knowing what the dancers were going to need.

The designs were based on quite a lot of research of what a movie musical is, filtered through the eyes of today. If we'd gone strictly with the '20s, the movement would have been impaired.

I think that sometimes people don't understand that a costume that has to be worn every day and doesn't change the whole movie becomes iconic. It's very important because it requires a different design process, since you have to make something that people aren't going to get tired of looking at.

I don't design my own clothes. It's so not what I think about.

I always have a moment when I know I'm designing the last costume that gets made for a movie and it's always been floating up there but it's kind of the last one. That's always probably the hardest one for me.

In designing Supergirl, I wanted to embrace the past but more importantly, thrust her into the street-style action hero of today,

While researching design, I was inspired globally, from Peru to Turkey to Africa to Japan-from the 5th century through to today.

I've been lucky in the things I've got to work on. I've been able to keep it fresh, always getting to do different kinds of things.

For contemporary fashion, I'm a huge fan of so many of the people out there. I think Azzedine Alaia holds up through three generations of very specific, beautiful design. I think Jean Paul Gaultier also is very interesting with a long span.

I can create clothes for so many different time periods. I've always tried to avoid being pigeonholed. Plus, everything I learn about design and costume from one movie somehow works its way into something else.

I design for the movie and the character as well as the person wearing the costume. I show the ideas to the actor, then do fittings for shape and technical things such as movement in the costume. Once the costume in this form is on the actor, you have a sense of their connection with it. I then take it to the next level with the final fit.