Trouble in a little atramentous dress.
In the accessible Broadway adjustment of the Truman Capote novella, don’t apprehend the acclaimed “little atramentous dress” arena area Holly Golightly, consistently immortalized by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film, cautiously bites into a pastry in advanced of the Tiffany adornment abundance on Fifth Ave.
“It’s not about one atramentous little dress aback she goes to Tiffany’s — there is not that moment [(n the play),” says apparel artisan Colleen Atwood.
Still, one of Atwood’s sketches of Holly Golightly has her cutting a abbreviate knee-length atramentous dress with a sweetheart neckline, and buttons bottomward the back.
“She wears that in a restaurant scene, which is array of a nod to the ’40s adaptation of the little atramentous dress,” she says.
Atwood — who has won three Oscars and advised about 60 movies you’ve absolutely heard of, like “Silence of the Lambs,” “Chicago” and “Edward Scissorhands” — is authoritative her admission on the Abundant White Way designing “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“Well, I capital to try it, and this accurate administrator asked me, so I said, ‘Why not,’” she says, speaking to the News while accompanying authoritative a applicable for the play. “It’s a acceptable aboriginal try for me, there’s a lot activity on in it. It’s not the ’60s” — aback the blur is set — “it’s the ’40s, area the book is set. So I’m not angry that fable (of the film).”
Broadway’s “Tiffany,” like the book, doesn't sugar-coat the accuracy for us like the cine did: Holly Golightly was a affair babe who entertained admirer callers for money. It’s grittier, and “Holly herself has added of an edge, I think. She’s abundant sexier in a beneath glassy fashion-y way,” says Atwood.
Unlike array of costume-design hopefuls who abstraction in specialized programs at NYU or Yale, Atwood came to the bold from a fine-art background, and hardly afterwards in life.
“I started accomplishing (costume design) afterwards I aloft a adolescent and worked, so I started in my backward 20s,” said the Washington accompaniment native. “I advised painting — I capital to be an artisan and a painter. But I had to accomplish a living, so I concluded up alive in actualization absolutely a bit.” In Seattle, she formed at the Yves St. Laurent boutique. The abutting footfall was affective to New York, where, “in the backward ’70s, I aloof affectionate of fell in adulation with (the city).”
While her aboriginal New York blur job was as a average assembly abettor on the set of “Ragtime,” she gradually fabricated connections. “I became a apparel artisan through apprenticeships and alive for added people,” she said.
She confused to L.A. in the average of alive on “Edward Scissorhands,” which she designed. She went on to architecture abounding of Tim Burton’s films — “Sleepy Hollow,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Alice in Wonderland” (for which she won her latest Oscar). Plus, she did added blockbusters, such as “Chicago” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” which anniversary won her Oscars.
She got her 10th Oscar choice this year for “Snow White and the Huntsman,” but absent out to Jacqueline Durran, who advised “Anna Karenina.”
For the “Tiffany’s” 1940s era, she says, “I adulation ... to get into the sculptural affectionate of accouterment of the ’40s,” she says. There are some actual feminine dresses: There's a waist, there's a apprehension Also, it is the war years, so bodies accept beneath grand, across-the-board clothes but still maintained a assertive affectionate of style. And the blush combinations from the ’40s are absolutely fun — there’s some abundant use of active colors."
Atwood was additionally aggressive by extra Emilia Clarke. “(She’s) arena Holly Golightly, who is a absolutely altered affectionate of being — physically and in age and aggregate abroad — than (Audrey) Hepburn was in the movie.” The Golightly in the book is about 19, compared to Hepburn’s late-20s-early 30s Golightly.
“I absolutely capital to abduction the adolescence of the time and how the activity of the adolescent bodies all advancing to New York to accomplish their way during the war years. Girls activity arcade for a dress for the night and absorbing men in means that weren’t absolutely announced about. It’s aloof got a little added of an bend to it.”
Do you mean, we asked, the actuality that Holly was article like a chic alarm girl?
“Yes. They affectionate of acceptable it in the ’60s (film). So it’s beneath sugar-coated, added sexy, added about the sex. The ambience is so altered and the characters are added abrasive and realistically drawn.”
Atwood, who lives in L.A., has been spending added time in New York for the play. Apparel designers are hunter-gatherers by nature, consistently on the anchor for that absolute best hat, brooch or abnormal material, and Atwood said she's been decidedly addicted of two shops at the Showplace Antique Architecture Center in Chelsea: Illisa’s Best Lingerie and Marlene Wetherell’s best shop.Not that she has a ton of time for arcade appropriate now. “I’ve been in London a lot because I’ve got a ballet there that’s aperture tomorrow, I’ve got a ballet in San Francisco opening, so I’ve been absolutely traveling a lot,” she says. “Now I’m advancing to New York for a block of time.”
As Capote wrote of Golightly's aboriginal actualization in the book, she wore “a abbreviate air-conditioned atramentous dress, atramentous sandals, a fair choker.” With her abiding sunglasses.
“I’m activity to accept to allocution about it forever!” she moaned, about discussing the LBD, afore saying, “Absolutely!” of its accent to the avant-garde woman’s closet. “Gotta accept one. Can’t be after it, as far as I’m concerned. It is the one affair (to have) besides a abundant jacket."
