Colleen Atwood is no stranger to the Oscars. The much sought-after costume designer has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards and has won three for her work on “Chicago” (2002), “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2006) and “Alice in Wonderland” (2010).  This series singles out behind-the-scenes players and their contributions to films competing during the movie awards season. Read More »  Her latest nomination comes for her designs for Rupert Sanders’s solemn and serious take on a well-known fairy tale, “Snow White and the Huntsman.” It trades the Disney version’s frilly dresses and doves for utilitarian warrior gear and crows. But the wicked queen still has a remarkable crown. Mr. Sanders’s approach to the story and the period combined elements of the medieval with the contemporary.  “Rupert wanted to have the feeling of another time, but also to not be limited by time,” Ms. Atwood said, speaking by phone from Los Angeles. Below, alongside images and sketches, Ms. Atwood discusses how she blended styles and ideas to create the clothing for Snow White, the Queen and the Huntsman.  Both Snow White and the Huntsman wear, for the most part, the same costume throughout the film. But they go through a number of transitions in the costumes.  “There was the challenge of making something that people can wear that long, that they can do a lot of action in, and that you don’t get sick of looking at,” Ms. Atwood said.  Because the film has Snow White (Kristen Stewart) trudging through the woods and moving through water and dirt, the character didn’t need to be stuck in a long dress. The Huntsman cuts it off to allow for more freedom of movement. “I put leather leggings on her, kind of what guys wore in the period, under her dress,” she said. “Once he hacked off her dress, it gave it a hipper look. When you take a period and evoke something young people can relate to, they really connect with it.” The Queen  The film’s most elaborate costumes are worn by the Queen (Charlize Theron). One striking example is this costume, which is accessorized with flexible metallic chains around her head.  “I found those chains a year or two before ‘Snow White and the Huntsman,’” Ms. Atwood said. “And I kept trying to figure out what to do with them. And one day I was thinking about the queen and the crown and how she was getting to a point in the story where she was starting to crumble a little bit and wanted to cover up her neck. I didn’t want to put her in a turtleneck or high collar. So I thought this would make a good veil in front of her neck.”  For the crown, Ms. Atwood and her team wanted a gothic design. “I had an amazing crafts guy who was doing jewelry for me,” she said. “I gave him an idea of what I wanted and I came back, and he’d taken it to another level.”  Ms. Atwood had an idea for the dress that she had carried with her for a while, but it solidified in a curious way. “I was walking through London on a Saturday and went into a fabric store,” she said. “I saw this material and thought, I can finally make that dress.” What she found was a metallic beaded fabric on a chiffon back, from India. “It isn’t the kind of fabric you would pick for this movie, but sometimes the camera does strange things to those surfaces so you can’t really tell what it is. It just looks shimmery on her, which was fun for me.”  One outfit that required painstaking work was the queen’s feathery cloak.  “That was inspired by an art piece that we saw,” Ms. Atwood said. “It ended up being the first thing I made for the movie because they wanted to do some photographs before we started filming.” All of the feathers were hand-cut by a milliner, Sean Barrett, who spent two weeks making the outfit. “It had these swooping wing shapes in it that were the feathers themselves.”  For the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth), Ms. Atwood and her team followed a rule of thumb: everything he wore, he used. They didn’t pad him with too much extra, but the costume is an assemblage of pieces.  “I took skins from all different kinds of animals and assembled his costume from that,” she said. “We used odd shapes, where someone would make a circle and a half-circle and cut it off to make his vest.  “His arm braces were made out of saddle leather that we soaked in water and molded into shapes. We spent a lot of time making his costume look lived in, comfortable and not too stiff.”
Colleen Atwood, a three-time Oscar winner for her costume design and nominee for "Snow White and the Huntsman," discusses her work.