Colleen Atwood

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 work space is so visually crammed. It's like an insane candy store. The number of textiles I'm surrounded with is mind boggling. It's a treat to come home to a nice negative space. ”

I always loved clothes, just not clothes that were appropriate to the place I grew up in. ”

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. ”

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

Every story is different, so what is a detail in one might not be in something else. Diversity is something I embrace and love about my work. ”

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. ”

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. ”

Each simian had a much different body suit, so besides trying to define class across species, there was a definite attempt to dress each group in different styles. ”

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. ”