BRUCEORANGE

Designer for “Hunger Games Fashion”

Lifestyle

As Finnick’s transparent netting, hunger games fashion played by Sam Claflin in the movie.

Talks about Her Favourite Looks from Catching Fire hunger games fashion

The new Hunger Games Fashion Film is a fashion fantasyland that showcases handcrafted pieces and pieces by Nicholas K, Juun J, Tex Saverio, Alexander McQueen and Nicholas K. The Hollywood Blog spoke with Trish Summerville, costume designer, about her choices for Katniss and Peeta. She also discussed how Suzanne Collins, author, handled the desire to make the characters look almost naked.

The Hollywood Blog: Please tell me about your experience working on something so different from what many people imagine. What is your approach to tackling a difficult task like this?

Trish Summerville (inaudible): It’s very interesting. Because the film I made, 2011’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is also based on a book. Each person can imagine the characters in a book. You can imagine what each character looks like. Because a lot of the things written are not always possible to translate onto film, I had to just take the approach of visually appealing.

[Laughs] The “strategically put knot.” He was worried about what he would wear. It had to be practical, allow the actor to move comfortably in it and still maintain a PG-13 rating. We were trying to include a gold net. We used a metallic yarn woven in gold to make the yarn. Then we waded it into a more kilt-like shape. It was still in play hunger games fashion, with his hip bones out and it being low-slung. It was the incorporation of the thing that would make the dress feel just like the one in the book. But not quite as literal as the gold knot he is wearing.

Which other costumes are well-known?

Peeta and Katniss in their flaming costumes. They needed something they could both wear. It had to be something that Katniss and Peeta could wear. This can make it difficult to create a matching costume for the chariots.

Did you worry about the technical aspects of Katniss’s dress, where she spins around and the white flames that transform into black? Did you think, “We’ll make it look cool!”

There were so many technical things that we had to be concerned about, and how they worked. One of those things is the wedding dress. It had to be able to spin and twirl when she moved. The wedding dress was very heavy. I had a Skype conversation with Tex Saverio the dress’s designer. We discussed many details. To make it light, he added this kind of hoop to the bottom. Surprisingly, the spinning worked really, really well.