Into The Woods & Maleficent Oscar Nominations!

Congratulations to costume designer Colleen Atwood for her nomination for an Oscar for Into the Woods. It looks amazing, the costumes are incredible. Below you can view a short documentary with interviews with Colleen about the inspiration behind some of the costumes. (I really like the producer John DeLuca describing the costume for Rapunzel… he seems to like the bondage aspect a lot!). It is quite awe inspiring the amount of work and thought and all the tiny details, that go into the costumes. I particularly like all the references to wood in the costume made for Meryl Streep’s ‘Witch’ character – it’s all very clever.

The bespoke Antique bark belt buckle we made for James Corden’s ‘Baker’ character has wood grain carved into it even though it’s made of brass. In fact one of the best things about film costume making is that it is keeping old skills alive, such as tailoring, shoe making, handmade jewellery etc. Film productions are a huge employer of very skilled people.

When you sit and watch a film, it all looks so seamless and artful that you, the viewer, rarely think about a detail like what the characters are wearing, yet they are such an important part of the story telling. They add to the actors characterisation.

So… if Colleen does win it will only be because we made our own contribution to the film – in as much as we made James Corden’s bespoke belt buckle. Yes I think you will find that that piece of costume acts its way right off the screen and is a contributing factor to the entire film! We have worked with Colleen before and she is a really lovely and very talented women!

And in terms of the Oscars we actually have another nomination up our sleeves too, in that we also made some bespoke jewellery designs for the film Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie. The costumes were by Ana B Sheppard and Jane Clive. They too have also both been nominated for an Oscar. Do you see the common link here?

You can see more of the bespoke jewellery designs that Stephen has made for Hollywood film and television projects here. Including the ring made for Johnny Depp’s Barnabas Collins character in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows and the incredible Stag Beetle collar made for Charlize Theron’s Evil Queen character in Snow White & The Huntsman.