'Wednesday' Costume Designer Colleen Atwood Details the Stories Behind the Characters' Iconic Looks
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Netflix's Wednesday starring Jenna Ortega has inspired a whole new generation of gothic style, thanks in large part to the show's costume designer Colleen Atwood.
The Addams Family spin-off, which sees a teenaged Wednesday Addams being sent off to a boarding school for outcasts, is a modern take on the classic story. That means Wednesday — and the rest of the Addams crew — are still very much stuck in their vampy all-black wardrobes, but Atwood made sure to modernize the costumes to they feel right in line with what a current Wednesday would wear.
But while Wednesday may not stray from her all-black garb, her school roommate and fellow outcast Enid (Emma Myers) wears everything but. Their co-existence creates a juxtaposition on screen of lights and darks, which Atwood tells PEOPLE is something she hopes to continue to play with, should the series continue.
PEOPLE spoke with Atwood about creating the wardrobes for each of these unique characters and also got all the details on how she found and fell in love with the Alaïa dress that Wednesday wears for the school dance. All that and more ahead.
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Courtesy of Netflix © 2022 Jenna Ortega
PEOPLE: There have been several iterations of The Addams Family over the years. How did you approach Wednesday to make it feel still classic yet fresh?
Atwood: "We were lucky in that the script was a new approach. We saw Wednesday as part of the Addams family in her little flashback with her scorpion pet and her traditional white collar. Then we saw her in the public school as a young teenager set amongst a background of colors and Americana.
"But then she goes to Nevermore, which totally set us free, because once she's in Nevermore, she gets her uniform, which is customized for her, but a total departure from what we know Wednesday as. Once she has her casual looks at school in her dorm or hanging out, you could contemporize the character; still keep it in the feeling of Wednesday, but really make it something that people of all ages actually can relate to. She isn't just such an iconic person dressed in a vintage looking outfit."
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PEOPLE: Wednesday will always wear black and white, but the character's wardrobe feels interesting, not flat. How did you achieve that?
Atwood: "I manipulated texture with shine and knits and the juxtaposition of black and white to give it some relief. Black just goes very matte on camera, so that was the way I got around it: a textural thing with the lighting. We got some kickback on the shine and then the white bits within the clothes. The white bits help give it some separation."
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PEOPLE: Wednesday's Alaïa dress at the Rave'N has become iconic look from the show. Tell me about the moment you saw that dress and realized it was "the one."
Atwood: "It's so weird. I was walking on Bond Street in London, and I was actually looking for something else, just shopping for the character. The dress for that scene had always been in the back of my head since the very beginning, like, 'What am I going to do? Am I going to do a vintage thing and redo it? Am I going to copy a vintage thing? What is it?'
"I looked over in the window of the store and I saw that dress on display, and it was displayed up quite high so you could see light through it. I had my assistant with me and I said, 'Let's go in here for a second.' I knew the fabric because I'd used this same fabric on dance costumes previously, so I knew it would move really great. It was also tie-dyed black and brown, which made it not so prim. It kind of gave it a little bit of an edge.
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"My assistant's really tiny, so I said, 'Would you mind putting this on so I can see it move in the room?' I had her put it on and give me a twirl in the store, and I thought, 'Well, I'll never do better than this dress. This dress is fabulous.' The skirt was perfect.
"I had to do some modifications to the top because of the scale of the ruffles and to make it move more for choreography, but it was pretty minor. Jenna loved it when she put it on. It was just one of those moments where you can tell it's the right thing.
"Sometimes you want to make those costumes as a designer, but when you see it in front of you and it's the right thing, you just kind of go, 'This is the one.' So it was really that. I was like, 'This is the dress. No question.'
"It's very not typically Alaïa. Their clothes are beautiful, but that's not their norm."
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PEOPLE: Contrary to Wednesday, Enid is so bright and vibrant. Walk me through putting Enid's wardrobe together.
Atwood: "Well, it's funny, we sort of did [Wednesday and Enid] in tandem. We started with Jenna and she came in and we played with her hair. We did the little freckles and things that were added to make Wednesday more today, and then Enid came in. We knew we wanted to mess with her hair. Paul Hanlon brought all these wigs that had different colors in them, and we played around with colors.
"Tim says, 'I want it to look like [Enid] does it herself, and every week she tries a different thing, and it doesn't really work.' So that's how we got the hair and makeup going. I'd seen a picture of the concept for the set, and I wanted to keep a strength in the color. I didn't want the girliness of pastels to be expected.
"Enid is from the lupine branch of the family, so I used furrier textures on her that were soft, but sort of bristly. I used graphics on her that had more of a balance for the black and white on Wednesday."
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Netflix Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams
PEOPLE: Were any of the characters particularly difficult to dress?
Atwood: "Once I got on a roll with who the girls were, what the school uniform was, how everybody adapted it, it had a flow to it. I think probably the hardest costumes to practically make work were the Poe Cup ones. It was in real water, and it was freezing cold. They had to wear stuff that looked good, but they still had to have a wet suit underneath part of the time. It was a really hard.
"They had to run through the woods in [the costumes], so they couldn't be barefoot in the boat. There were a lot of little nuances to that sequence that looked seamless in the show, but to work it out probably was the most painstaking part of it. My co-designer, Mark Sutherland, and Bobby Soutar, who was my source shopper, really did a great job finding things that could work, and then we piece-mealed it together. It looked fine in the show, but we were terrified the whole time they were shooting."
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PEOPLE: With this cast of characters, you have the Addams family, but then you have these "Normies," who are just your everyday people. Is it easier for you to do the costuming for the everyday people, or someone like Wednesday who has a distinct look that you are designing around?
Atwood: "It's a filtration process, so one isn't necessarily easier than the other. In this case, I had Wednesday first, so I started with Wednesday's world. So Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), who's not really a Normie, but kind of a Normie, and Christina Ricci's character.
"As we moved into the town, I got those kids who were the townies. So I could do archetypes with them to balance off what I was doing with the other "less Normie," slightly more nerdy people from the school."
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PEOPLE: Are there any details that you put into the costumes that viewers haven't picked up on yet? Any secret details?
Atwood: "I haven't seen anything out there that hasn't been unveiled. There's more to come, but it's pretty on the table. Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Wednesday's necklace was a little fun thing — the W and M being the same letter upside down and right side up. It was a lot of fun to come up with some of those ideas to tie it together that way.
"I think it's all been pretty much visually kept up on. People are really into watching it. They probably know more about it than I do."
Netflix
PEOPLE: You worked with Tim Burton on this, and you've previously worked with him a dozen times. What is your collaborative process like with him when it comes to the costumes?
Atwood: "To him, it's a very character-driven process, and then I start bringing him stuff: pictures, paintings, fabrics. And we talk about color and how he sees the world. The next step is really getting a fitting together and trying shapes on to show him.
"Once he's signed off on it, I just run with it. We shorthand because we've done 13 movies together."
PEOPLE: After you've worked together so many times, it must be a pretty seamless process.
Atwood: "There's always a curve ball thrown your way no matter what you're doing and who you're doing it with. But with Tim and I, we have a similar aesthetic in the way that less can sometimes be more. We're minimalist in our take on what's in the room, and I think that that's something in design that's a bond that we have as collaborators."
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PEOPLE: Watching the show back, is there anything that you would've changed about the costumes you did or any ideas you have for a potential season 2?
Atwood: "I'm sorry that Weems got the hot shot in the neck, but I'm hoping she could come back because I loved her so much. She was so much fun to dress. I also think it'll be fun to unwind it and see the younger people become more of their own characters.
"It'd also be fun to see more of Morticia, even if it's a backstory explaining her a little bit more. For me as a designer, it would've been fun to do more stuff for Catherine, for sure.
"And then the ongoing dichotomy of [Wednesday and Enid] — how they're separate, but they're bonded."
