Trouble in a little black dress.
In the upcoming Broadway adaptation of the Truman Capote novella, don’t expect the famous “little black dress” scene where Holly Golightly, forever immortalized by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film, delicately bites into a pastry in front of the Tiffany jewelry store on Fifth Ave.
“It’s not about one black little dress when she goes to Tiffany’s — there is not that moment [(n the play),” says costume designer Colleen Atwood.
Still, one of Atwood’s sketches of Holly Golightly has her wearing a slim knee-length black dress with a sweetheart neckline, and buttons down the back.
“She wears that in a restaurant scene, which is sort of a nod to the ’40s version of the little black dress,” she says.
Atwood — who has won three Oscars and designed nearly 60 movies you’ve definitely heard of, like “Silence of the Lambs,” “Chicago” and “Edward Scissorhands” — is making her debut on the Great White Way designing “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“Well, I wanted to try it, and this particular director asked me, so I said, ‘Why not,'” she says, speaking to the News while simultaneously supervising a fitting for the play. “It’s a good first try for me, there’s a lot going on in it. It’s not the ’60s” — when the film is set — “it’s the ’40s, where the book is set. So I’m not fighting that legend (of the film).”
Broadway’s “Tiffany,” like the book, doesn’t sugar-coat the truth for us like the movie did: Holly Golightly was a party girl who entertained gentleman callers for money. It’s grittier, and “Holly herself has more of an edge, I think. She’s much sexier in a less sleek fashion-y way,” says Atwood.
Unlike scores of costume-design hopefuls who study in specialized programs at NYU or Yale, Atwood came to the game from a fine-art background, and slightly later in life.
“I started doing (costume design) after I raised a child and worked, so I started in my late 20s,” said the Washington state native. “I studied painting — I wanted to be an artist and a painter. But I had to make a living, so I ended up working in fashion quite a bit.” In Seattle, she worked at the Yves St. Laurent boutique. The next step was moving to New York, where, “in the late ’70s, I just kind of fell in love with (the city).”
While her first New York film job was as a lowly production assistant on the set of “Ragtime,” she gradually made connections. “I became a costume designer through apprenticeships and working for other people,” she said.
She moved to L.A. in the middle of working on “Edward Scissorhands,” which she designed. She went on to design many of Tim Burton’s films — “Sleepy Hollow,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Alice in Wonderland” (for which she won her latest Oscar). Plus, she did other blockbusters, such as “Chicago” and “Memoirs of a Geisha,” which each won her Oscars.
She got her 10th Oscar nomination this year for “Snow White and the Huntsman,” but lost out to Jacqueline Durran, who designed “Anna Karenina.”
For the “Tiffany’s” 1940s era, she says, “I love … to get into the sculptural kind of clothing of the ’40s,” she says. There are some very feminine dresses: There’s a waist, there’s a bust Also, it is the war years, so people have less grand, sweeping clothes but still maintained a certain kind of style. And the color combinations from the ’40s are really fun — there’s some great use of vibrant colors.”
Atwood was also inspired by actress Emilia Clarke. “(She’s) playing Holly Golightly, who is a totally different kind of person — physically and in age and everything else — than (Audrey) Hepburn was in the movie.” The Golightly in the book is nearly 19, compared to Hepburn’s late-20s-early 30s Golightly.
“I really wanted to capture the youth of the time and how the energy of the young people all coming to New York to make their way during the war years. Girls going shopping for a dress for the night and entertaining men in ways that weren’t really spoken about. It’s just got a little more of an edge to it.”
Do you mean, we asked, the fact that Holly was something like a high-class call girl?
“Yes. They kind of sugar-coated it in the ’60s (film). So it’s less sugar-coated, more sexy, more about the sex. The setting is so different and the characters are more gritty and realistically drawn.”
Atwood, who lives in L.A., has been spending more time in New York for the play. Costume designers are hunter-gatherers by nature, always on the lookout for that perfect vintage hat, brooch or unusual material, and Atwood said she’s been particularly fond of two shops at the Showplace Antique + Design Center in Chelsea: Illisa’s Vintage Lingerie and Marlene Wetherell’s vintage shop.Not that she has a ton of time for shopping right now. “I’ve been in London a lot because I’ve got a ballet there that’s opening tomorrow, I’ve got a ballet in San Francisco opening, so I’ve been really traveling a lot,” she says. “Now I’m coming to New York for a chunk of time.”
As Capote wrote of Golightly’s first appearance in the book, she wore “a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker.” With her ever-present sunglasses.
“I’m going to have to talk about it forever!” she moaned, about discussing the LBD, before saying, “Absolutely!” of its importance to the modern woman’s closet. “Gotta have one. Can’t be without it, as far as I’m concerned. It is the one thing (to have) besides a great jacket.”
