The Goth Allure of the Film’s Costumes

For more than three decades, director Tim Burton has collaborated with costume designer Colleen Atwood to develop the darkly offbeat sensibility behind some of his greatest hits: Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland and current Netflix series Wednesday. 

Now the four-time Oscar-winning Atwood has taken the reins on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, following Aggie Guerard Rodgers’ designs for the original Beetlejuice 36 years ago.

The new film? It involved handcrafting nearly 1,000 costumes, Atwood estimates.

Among them is that iconic black-and-white striped suit for the character reprised by Michael Keaton, crafted of luxe silk sourced from heritage Italian textile company Taroni. “I actually had that fabric in my house forever because at one point I was going to cover a couch in it, but I have animals, so I realized that a four-ply silk couch might not be in my life,” Atwood tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It became Beetlejuice’s suit, and Taroni manufactured more with a specific stripe width that I was looking for because there’s never just one suit in a movie anymore with photo doubles, stunt doubles and all that.”

The process between Burton and Atwood centers on a material world — literally.

“I always get his reaction to fabrics because he is one of the few directors I know who actually enjoys looking at materials and handling them tactilely,” says Atwood, who used the finest French lace with pleated silk tulle for the red Victorian-style wedding dress donned by Winona Ryder, back as Lydia Deetz. “It has been a throughline of our working relationship for a long time. I didn’t use any fabrics that resemble the originals; I found fabrics that I could easily add color and texture to. [Many] got crustier and crustier.”

Costuming the cast of characters in the afterlife, each dressed to illustrate the cause of their demise, was a project unto itself. “We worked a lot with [creature effects creative supervisor] Neal Scanlan, and it was almost a full-time job to accommodate all the special effects bodies that changed how clothes were shaped and cut to fit these slightly skewered body types,” says Atwood. “We were constantly fitting and troubleshooting that stuff.”

Then there was an elaborate aging operation. “We did layers of silk-screening, applications of paint and other materials, and shredding them away, so the pieces looked really distressed,” says Atwood. “I had a big department doing that. Sometimes I age and over-dye fabric before it’s worn, sometimes after it’s made up, or both. I had multiple versions of Monica Bellucci’s dress [as Beetlejuice’s ex-wife Delores LaFerve] fresh from the dry cleaner’s scene evolving to more beat-up and aged as it went along.”

Bellucci’s black dress morphing from a lingerie version into a riff on her original wedding dress was another feat: “Figuring out how that dress worked, coming out of the coffins, was a real challenge. They put seven or eight body parts together, it was quite clever, and we had pieces of clothes to drape over bits that you didn’t want to know about; it was that sort of game.”

Input from actors also impacted costuming. “At one point, the matador might not have been in there, but Michael said, ‘Oh, it’s my favorite costume; I’ve got to wear that!’ ” says Atwood, referring to an authentic matador cape custom-made in Spain that Beetlejuice wears. Catherine O’Hara (Delia, Deetz’s arty stepmother), is the only character to rewear a piece from the original film: “She had the black hat and brought it in and said, ‘Can I wear this to the funeral?’ I said, ‘Yeah, perfect, let’s do it,’ ” says Atwood.

“I had a blast with Catherine’s stuff, because I felt like she was one of those people who had her biggest moment artistically and romantically in the ’80s, which is the era of the first movie, and stayed in it for the rest of her life,” adds Atwood. “The ’80s were back in a lot of weird ways in fashion, so I kept finding pieces that cracked me up, like her black-and-white leather coat that I found on a random website.”

Jackets by British fashion designer Elena Dawson were an idea generated by both Ryder and Justin Theroux (who plays Rory, Lydia’s producer-boyfriend) for their characters. “They were a Justin thing; he said, ‘There’s this designer …’ ” says Atwood. “Justin knows about clothes; he’s very stylish.” The costume designer approached Rory from a real-world perspective: “I felt like Justin’s character was parts of people I already knew in life — managers who are also really big ass-kissers and have symbiotic relationships with their talent. He and I had a laugh about the hairstyle — we were channeling a young Karl Lagerfeld — and the coat. He’s dressed like the boy version of Winona, with a French scarf and a ‘continental flair,’ as they would say back in the day.” Ryder also referenced Dawson’s designs, says Atwood: “I was aware of her clothes from Dover Street Market in London; they have an über-hip, goth vibe. So I sent Elena fabric and she made some specific pieces. Winona is a combination of schoolgirl goth and Victorian urban that is always in style in eclectic stores around the world.”

The more vibrant look of Lydia’s daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), is described by Atwood as “grunge and ’90s,” since the character gravitated toward that music, and “socially conscious” as a link to her deceased activist father. That translated to “pieces that felt really organic in their material choices and color that were everything that everyone else wasn’t,” Atwood says, pointing to a denim jacket and torn-up striped knit dress.

The powers of an Atwood jacket became apparent during a fitting in Rome with Willem Dafoe (underworld detective Wolf Jackson). “I had this great vintage ’70s coat I found,” says Atwood. “He came in, put it on and started doing poses with his guns. And it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the guy!’ ” 

This story first appeared in a January stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.