'Masters of the Air' costumer designer Colleen Atwood had to dress not only mega-stars like Austin Butler, but also over 300 extras in the ambitious WW2 series. In 'Behind the Seams' Atwood walks through how she used historical research, family references, and more to create pilots that could truly fly.
Variety Artisans presented by HBO.
Variety Artisans presented by HBO.
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00:00 Hi, I'm Colleen Atwood, costume designer for Masters of the Air,
00:03 and I'm going to walk you through some looks for the show.
00:05 Let's rack 'em up and knock 'em down.
00:16 Masters of the Air is about the B-17 pilots that came over to the UK
00:26 and flew missions over Europe during the Second World War.
00:29 And they also became prisoners of war.
00:31 Welcome to Starlit Woods 3, boys.
00:34 Where you're going to spend the best years of your lives.
00:37 I found quite a bit of original insignia,
00:43 but I had to make some insignia to match
00:46 because there wasn't enough to go around for all the rank,
00:49 because not only did I have 300 speaking parts,
00:52 I had at least 300 or 400 extras a day.
00:56 Rank has its privileges, boys.
00:59 The hats were one of the most difficult things to find
01:02 because there were a few original ones that I got from a place here in Los Angeles.
01:07 But in order to have them fit on human heads from today's world,
01:12 they were all really tiny.
01:13 So I had to make all new hats
01:16 and find somebody that really could replicate them
01:19 with the buttons, the leather,
01:20 all the elements that make them spectacular.
01:24 The masks that they wear in the planes,
01:26 I used original masks,
01:28 but I had to repurpose them and refit them for the show.
01:31 I kept trying to invent ways that they could be smaller and different
01:35 because everybody wants to see the face.
01:38 And I had to kind of repurpose them slightly to work,
01:41 but they were all original masks,
01:43 which is pretty amazing to be able to find that stuff in today's world.
01:47 It was quite a few years ago.
01:49 The boots I sourced from,
01:51 there's a lot of reproduction houses that do those boots
01:54 because people do reenactment.
01:57 And so those sources come in handy for boot making.
02:01 Egan notoriously had the white shearling jacket
02:04 that was kind of the inside joke
02:06 because everyone else made fun of it.
02:07 There's a line where Cleven said he'd be the world's biggest target
02:10 jumping out of an airplane in a white jacket.
02:13 Austin Butler's character, Buck Cleven,
02:16 was one of the great romantic pilots of the period.
02:20 So we really wanted to capture the feeling of the sort of beauty of that character.
02:28 So we used an original flight suit and beautiful chocolate brown suit
02:33 and handmade ties and the leather jacket that he wore.
02:38 He has this jacket, NA-3, which is a lighter weight leather jacket,
02:41 but this was his signature look.
02:43 When Austin came to the fitting, we just put all this stuff together.
02:46 And, you know, Austin Butler looks beautiful in everything,
02:50 but it was really fun to really find the character together with him
02:54 in the room with the costumes.
02:57 How about that?
02:58 Yeah!
03:01 Rosie's jacket and costume is from the latter part of the war
03:06 because as the war went along, the technology improved.
03:10 And one of the technologies in the clothing
03:14 was the discovery of a lighter weight material
03:18 that was warm and artificial alpaca that these guys could wear on the planes
03:22 because the weight of the shearling was so heavy that it was exhausting,
03:27 not to mention if they fell in the water, they'd be a rock.
03:30 [Grunting]
03:34 And then once they ended up in the camps,
03:37 they received packages from the Red Cross.
03:42 So you'll see our guys in British overcoats
03:44 because as the war went on,
03:46 the access to Red Cross was less and less.
03:50 -You're... -Subbot and Westgate, your roommate.
03:54 Oh, dear. You expected a man, didn't you?
03:57 Well, the excitement of getting a woman was very tangible for us.
04:02 And luckily, we had women in the story.
04:05 We had Belle's character who was in the military in the UK.
04:09 So we had women's uniforms.
04:11 And then we had our Red Cross girls who had really great clothes.
04:14 And then a guy would give them a jacket with all kinds of patches on them.
04:17 So we had fun with all those characters and textures of that around the base.
04:22 And then we had parties.
04:23 And every time there was a party, there was a dance sequence and music.
04:27 So it was really fun.
04:28 And we made a lot of clothes for all the women dancing.
04:31 [Dramatic music]
04:38 Well, this came in for Belle Polly.
04:40 She was actually a spy in the story.
04:43 And Dee Rees, the director for that segment,
04:45 really wanted her to pop in the environment and just be totally bold.
04:50 And she said, "I love that color blue."
04:52 And so we did that.
04:53 And then I put the fuchsia dresses in homage to my grandmother's wedding dress,
04:58 who was married at that time.
05:00 The shoes are reproduction shoes that we had made to work for the show.
05:04 And the purse is a reproduction purse.
05:07 We couldn't really use real things all the time in those ways
05:10 because of the size of people now compared to then.
05:13 But we tried to be as honest and honor the period as much as we could.
05:17 I think the idea of what this show was from the very start,
05:21 it had so much heart.
05:23 And you look back on it, and you're just really proud
05:26 to have been able to create a story that really felt integral
05:30 to the way that point in history was.
05:33 [Gunfire]
05:34 We're gonna stick with our mission as long as we can fly.
05:37 [Gunfire]
05:39 We won't go without a fight.
05:41 [Music]