Interview: From Leo’s Robe to Chase’s Poodle Skirt, Costume Designer Colleen Atwood on the Hidden Details and the Wearable Looks of the Revolution in ‘One Battle After Another’
When you think of some of film history’s most iconic costumes, the work of Colleen Atwood likely comes to mind. From Hannibal Lecter’s chilling mask to Edward Scissorhands’ bladed fingers, Atwood has created some of the most enduring cinematic creations. What makes Atwood such a titan amongst her peers (and the industry as a whole) is that her detailed work illuminates the character wearing it, adding new facets that may have potentially gone unnoticed.
After growing up in the farming town of Quincy, Washington, Atwood eventually made her way to New York City, where, after a serendipitous meeting through a friend, she began work as a production assistant on Ragtime. Now, more than forty years later, Atwood has served as the costume designer on more than fifty films. Most notably, she fostered key collaborative partnerships with Rob Marshall (Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha), Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland), and, of course, Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Married to the Mob). With four Oscars and numerous accolades under her belt, Atwood now finds herself working alongside a new collaborator, Paul Thomas Anderson.
In Anderson’s latest masterpiece, One Battle After Another, Atwood leaned into an area that she noted always provides an exciting challenge for her as a designer: creating costumes for a contemporary-set film. Anderson’s American odyssey follows former French 75 member Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), sixteen years after the pair was forced into witness protection when a bank robbery went awry. But Lt. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) has unfinished business and, in setting out to capture the pair, Bob and Willa must discover (or rediscover) their dormant revolutionary spirits. Much like Atwood’s collaborations with Demme, her work in One Battle After Another is filled with sharp, hidden details and unique, purposeful decisions that connect each character with their environment.
I was thrilled to speak with Atwood recently to discuss her work in One Battle After Another. We spoke about “all in one day” costumes, the decision to keep Bob in his flannel robe, Lockjaw’s special occasion outfit, and what it’s like to collaborate with Paul Thomas Anderson.
Sophia Ciminello: Hi, Colleen, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I’m really excited to talk to you about this movie.
Colleen Atwood: Hi, Sophia. Thanks so much. It’s great to meet you.
SC: Lovely to meet you too. Well, you’ve had such an incredible career, and here you’re working with a new collaborator in Paul Thomas Anderson. How did you become involved in the project?
CA: Thank you. Well, I’d run into Paul on and off through a mutual friend over the years, at Dodgers games and other things. And he and I, I don’t know, we just had an easy manner of conversation. But I’d never gotten to work with him. So I was really honored and surprised when he asked me to do this. It was very exciting for me because I’m a huge, huge fan, obviously.
SC: That’s great. You worked with Jonathan Demme throughout your career, too, and I know Paul has talked about how important his films have been to him. Did you discuss his films in preparation for One Battle?
CA: Yeah, there was some Jonathan vibe in this for sure. Paul and I have talked about Jonathan, but not so much in terms of the filmmaking. It was always really more of just who he was as a person. (Pauses) But Jonathan was back here. He was watching.
SC: Wow, I think you can really feel that in the movie.
CA: I really think so too.
SC: So much of what makes your work so memorable is just how character-driven it feels, and Willa’s outfit has such a strong contrast. How did you decide on that combination of the leather jacket and skirt?
CA: For Willa, it was really reality-based. Paul had gone on to scout and saw a girl at a dance who dressed kind of similarly, in a tulle skirt with a t-shirt. And then we added the leather jacket to give her a kind of strength and a really classic feeling.
SC: There’s so much to the way the outfit changes for her, too. The skirt gets a little bit dirtier, she has to tie the jacket around her waist…
CA: Exactly. When you design a costume or figure out a costume for a character who wears it throughout the whole movie, it’s good to have it be able to do different things. Jacket on, jacket off, the skirt deteriorating with the environment and the harshness of the situation she was in. It was a really good fabric for that. I bought this old silk marcasite that was a bit softer, easier to light, and a prettier kind of fabric than the classic rock and roll petticoats made out of polyester that you can buy on Amazon. So, I made it out of that for it to light better, but also for it to be able to age better and to move better in the action moments.
SC: Speaking of a character wearing one costume throughout the movie, we have to talk about Bob and his robe. I’m sure you’ve seen this, but audiences have started dressing up as Bob during screenings of the movie…
CA: (Laughs) Yes! It’s hard to resist being that comfortable in your life. It’s pretty funny.
SC: Did you and Paul start with the idea of Bob wearing a robe, or did it evolve into that look?
CA: We really evolved into the robe. We did these fittings with Leo [DiCaprio] at Paul’s house, and Paul would photograph him. I’d have a rail there of casual stuff, because the story starts with Bob getting out of bed in the morning. And originally, we had like a big, beat-up sweatshirt hoodie. And then one day, we thought, “Oh, what about a robe?” And then I grabbed this old kind of rental robe and put it on him, and that felt good to everyone. So, it was a very collaborative, fluid process. And then, like Willa’s skirt, I needed to make the robe, because we needed many multiples in it. So, I found this fabric that was like an older version of a Pendleton kind of fabric, and made the robe out of that.
SC: And it moves in such a fun way, too, just like Willa’s skirt.
CA: It really had a good comic element to it, that robe. Because we were like, “Does he take it off?” And Paul goes, “No, He’s not thinking about the robe. Do you take your stuff off if you’re running away from your life? No, you just have to keep going.” So, we kept the robe on. Bob couldn’t think about his outfit.
SC: I also have to ask you about that little pink glittery backpack that’s attached to his bag when he flees his house. You can just tell that he packed that a long time ago and hasn’t thought about it since. How did you land on that detail?
CA: Well, the reason that that came to be is that we were talking about him going down to his hiding place, which we didn’t spend very much story time in ultimately, but he had a place that he’d set up when he’d first come to that place when Willa was a baby. So everything in there that he’d put away for Willa was a child’s thing. So he just automatically grabbed it when he went on the run. We had a little jacket and stuff inside, just in case he opened it. So it was a really fun sort of sidebar. It’s so interesting that you noticed that. I didn’t know if people would notice it or not, or wonder, “What the heck is that?”
SC: It’s such a cool detail, because it really reminds you of just how unprepared he might be. He’s been paranoid about it for a long time, but he isn’t really ready for it in that moment.
CA: Yeah, he wasn’t exactly plugged in. And I think it’s how it is in life. How you’re really intense about something that you’re worried about, and then you stop worrying about it quite as much, even though it’s always in your head. So you don’t keep that level of intensity up as you go, you know?
SC: Oh, for sure. I also wanted to talk to you about Lockjaw because we see him in a uniform, but he really has one go-to special occasion outfit with khakis and a blue button-down.
CA: (Laughs) Oh, yes.
SC: How did you think about what someone like Lockjaw might be wearing outside of work?
CA: Well, I think that this sort of Christmas Adventurers date night version of the Lockjaw character is his idea of what a nice dress-up outfit would be coming from the heart of America. I said, it’s probably what his mom put him in for Easter Sunday growing up. It’s khaki pants, a navy jacket, a little striped tie, and a shirt. Just coming from that part of America myself, it’s a kind of timeless classic look that speaks to that sort of character to me and his past, not his present, but his past. And also, the world that he was aspiring to be a part of was this very conservative middle America, where they’re not flashy dressers. Just like it’s reflected in their casual wear too, they have a look that’s their look, and he was trying to be one of them.
SC: You really see that when he’s bringing flowers to Perfidia, too. He looks like a little kid playing dress-up.
CA: Yeah, it’s exactly that kind of vibe that I really wanted to do, and Sean [Penn] really got that. He really dialed into that.
SC: That makes me think a lot about how he wears and carries the clothes, too. We have that funny line later where Willa asks him why his shirt is so tight (laughs).
CA: (Laughs) It’s great.
SC: Did you have conversations with him around fit and how he would move in the costumes?
CA: Yeah, we did, and it had to be very precisely fit. His posture when he was Lockjaw was very, very rigid. His shoulders were square, and he had a little bit of a limp going on. His costumes had the fit of old military uniforms and the way that they used to tailor their uniforms in another era. It was supposed to feel very tailored, but not consciously so.
SC: And thinking about that conservative American look, the way that you dress the Christmas Adventurers is just spot-on, even down to the brands. What were your conversations with Paul about this group and what they might be wearing like?
CA: Well, Paul and I talked about how the setting for their meeting was that it was super early in the morning. They were all en route to do whatever they did in their day, and maybe on Saturday morning, they got a call to come to the house.
SC: They looked like they were running late for their tee time.
CA: Exactly. They were all in golf attire, you know, Tim had on his vest and his upmarket Lacoste workout kind of stuff. And they all had a look like that. Sandy had on his khakis and his pale powder blue sweater vest. It was just like a vibe of a certain kind of person. It’s like Post Magazine, 1950. We wanted that classic Americana feel, but in casual wear.
SC: And with Sensei Sergio, we have another good blend of casual wear in that he’s wearing his gi, but we also have a few jackets and a pair of cowboy boots in the mix. How did you create the look for his character?
CA: Well, it’s funny because his thing is so straightforward. He came into the movie in the second act, so I didn’t fit him right at the beginning. But I had a little rack for him. And it probably had like seven things on it. And I took it over to his house because initially, it’s the gi. And then I went, well, he probably should have other stuff in case we need it. And I had this Puma jacket, which I liked a lot because the graphics are so simple and clean on it. And he says, “Yeah, I could wear that while I’m in the office. I wouldn’t be hanging out with my gi on. I could still have the pants on, but I’d put this jacket on.” And then we had the normal martial arts shoes and stuff.
But I’d been in El Paso, and I fell in love with these boots I saw at a bootmaker there. So I had to make them for Benicio, and I had them at the fitting. And I had all the martial arts shoes, too, but he goes, “Yeah, keep those, but I’m going to wear these. Just in case.” (Laughs). And then at the end, we didn’t know if he’d ever really change again, but I had Jimmy McBride in New York make the denim jacket for him because I’d seen that jacket and I’d really liked it. And I thought it would be great for him to have just hanging on a peg there, something like a more Southwest kind of jacket. So it ended up playing in the story. We weren’t sure, but the thing with Benicio is that it’s so fluid, and so the choices were very invisible, but every one of them was purposeful. And it’s sort of how that fitting came together in a really inspirational way for me as a designer to see how he kind of adapted and did it.
SC: The way that the characters are able to mix and layer with jackets really adds so much to these characters.
CA: Yeah, it really was so fun to think about the practical side of the characters in that way.
SC: And just to wrap up, you’ve worked across so many different genres and time periods. What’s a challenge that you find unique to designing and constructing costumes for a film set in a contemporary world?
CA: Well, I think design is actually story-based. You know, in this story, it was totally real, mixed with real clothes, mixed with real people. So to me, the challenge and the brief was to keep it real and also not have too many clothes because it’s distracting when you’re trying to tell this kind of story where it’s a one-day story. So it’s a really interesting process to keep it to that, really. The trickiest thing with that kind of contemporary design is just sometimes to have it not look like anything, to have it just be what it is, you know?
SC: For sure. You notice the characters’ clothing, but it never feels distracting.
CA: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s the biggest challenge with it. It’s all in staying true to how you’re trying to tell the story.
SC: Well, thank you again, Colleen, it was lovely speaking with you. Congratulations on the movie!
CA: Thank you! It was great speaking with you, Sophia.
One Battle After Another is currently in theaters from Warner Bros.
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