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Eastern lore, Western allure
By Mimi Avins (Times)
Updated: 2005-12-09 10:24
In period films, costume designers wrestle with the sticky problem of making
historical accuracy and theatricality compatible. To create the costumes for
"Memoirs of a Geisha," Academy Award-winning designer Colleen Atwood also had to
understand and portray an exacting culture.
"In Japan, there are rules for everything," she says, "so what you wear in a
particular season is very well-defined."
For months before production began on the film, which is based on the
bestselling 1997 novel by Arthur Golden and which opens Dec. 9, Atwood flung
herself into research. She pored over archival photos from the 1920s through the
1950s, studied esoteric textile techniques and became conversant with rules for
proper dress ¡ª the Japanese equivalent of not wearing white after Labor Day.
"There's no such thing as getting it all right," she says. "Everybody has a
different idea about what's right and what's wrong, and what pleases some people
doesn't please others. Luckily, I had a few advisors who had a sense of humor
and said, 'Just do it.' "
Doing it, designing costumes for dozens of principals and hundreds of extras,
required taking artistic license. For example, Atwood concluded that the
subtlety of actual geisha dress wouldn't have the right impact on film.
"We were taking an art form that is a huge part of Japanese culture, but it
was important to remember that we were making a movie, based on a book of
fiction, written by a guy, about a geisha," Atwood says. "It's not a documentary
film. I'd worked with [director] Rob Marshall before on 'Chicago.' His vision
was that this movie is a grand story about a woman's life, a sort of 'Gone With
the Wind' set in another time and place. His vision freed all of us to create a
theatrical world together." (Marshall's approach was reflected in the casting of
the film, which created a flurry by awarding the key roles to Chinese
actresses.)
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