Costume Designers Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland On Evolving The Wardrobe of ‘Wednesday’

When this year's Creative Arts Emmy Award nominations, opens in new tab were announced, it came as a surprise to no one that the costume design duo behind “Wednesday,” Colleen Atwood and Mark Sutherland, earned another nod for Outstanding Contemporary Costumes. Building off the iconic Addams family lore, the second season followed Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) as she returned for another term at Nevermore Academy. Operating within strict color schemes, defiant style personalities, and character maturation from one season to the next, all posed questions for Atwood and Sutherland, who meticulously established the show's aesthetic in season one, which earned the pair the same award in 2023. This time around, a body swap episode and a 250-person party scene made for a season that demanded as much problem-solving as it did creativity. 

For a series that seems bound for virality, Atwood was never interested in cultivating Halloween-costume or Instagram posting potential. “Other people go, ‘we can make that Halloween marketing,’ but as costume designers and people that are creating the world of the Addams’, it’s not what we really think about.” The success of “Wednesday” season two matched the premiere season’s record-breaking popularity, and the series has a third season already underway. Wednesday, already a gothic cultural fixture, was catapulted back into the Gen Z consciousness with her iconic and instantly recognizable black and white wardrobe, dark pigtail braids,, opens in new tab and deadpan expression. “The sort of love that was out there, philosophically, we hope to keep,” Atwood says, but chasing or setting trends was never the goal. For her and Sutherland, the priority has always been world-building; getting inside the characters’ psyches rather than courting a moment. 

That world-building extends into a broader philosophy about dressing teenage characters. “One thing I liked about Wednesday Addams, and the one thing I really wanted to convey, is that she actually had on clothes,” Atwood jokes. In an often hypersexualized media landscape, these characters “were shyer” and “not having their bodies exposed to the world” in comparison to other teen shows. It’s a pointed distinction that sets “Wednesday” apart from a genre frequently criticized for how it dresses (and under-dresses) young female characters. To Atwood, this choice is a core throughline with the show’s predominantly young audience. 

That same intentionality shows up in more narrative-driven costume decisions throughout the season as well. Sutherland described the coat Wednesday wears in season two as “a nod to Sherlock Holmes.” The coat has been “leveled into an even more adult, more continental look” for the upcoming third season, while still remaining loyal to Wednesday’s eccentricity and detective missions. As Wednesday takes on a more active and investigative role throughout the episodes of season two, the clothing had to keep pace and match an increased athleticism. “We gave her those great tracksuit bottoms that we could open the bottoms of,” Sutherland says, referring to a scene with particular practical demands. Scenes taking place at nighttime also had additional dressing requirements, so they sourced a shiny patent leather “gilet to reflect some light” to pair with the trackpants.

The body swap between Wednesday and the cheerfully dressed werewolf Enid (Emma Myers) required extra attention from the costume department. Atwood spoke to the defined nature of the two characters’ styles—like many teenagers, “they’re really into certain things that are just their style and they don’t want anything else.” Wednesday and Enid have polar opposite visual identities, but translating one character into another would not have worked by simply swapping their wardrobes wholesale. “The idea was to do 80 percent of the costume from the other character and keep just 10 percent true to Wednesday or Enid,” Sutherland says. “[It] wasn’t as easy as just giving someone somebody else’s clothes.” 

To pull off the maneuver, Sutherland conducted careful, piece-by-piece fittings with the actresses and a gradual reversal of the swap as the characters return to their own bodies. Enid’s vibrant multicolored sweater, worn by Wednesday in the body swap episode, had not been specifically sourced for Wednesday to wear. In true body swap fashion, the sweater had been sitting in Enid’s closet, picked up from a vintage store in Ramsburg, NY in preparation for the season but with no particular scene in mind. "We don't even have the scripts a lot of times," Atwood explains. "We have the characters and we know who they are, and we see things and we're inspired by them. We just eclectically pull all this stuff together and then make outfits when we do the fittings."