Variety Artisans: Behind the Seams: How ‘Masters of the Air’ Costume Designer Colleen Atwood Recreated World War II Flight Suits and Styled Austin Butler

Procuring 200 to 300 leather jackets for Apple TV+’s limited series “Masters of the Air” was a global undertaking for costume designer Colleen Atwood.

Atwood, who has worked on “Chicago,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” and the upcoming “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” might have over 80 credits to her name and four Academy Awards under her belt, but World War II had somehow eluded her until now.

Sitting down with Variety’s senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay for Variety’s Behind the Seams, Atwood explains how she had to get era-specific zippers from Japan and sheepskin from Scotland and England to create the costumes for the 1940s-set series. Through research and archive photography, Atwood studied in detail what these pilots looked like and assessed their style.

The process of manufacturing the 200 to 300 jackets used in the show took about nine months. Leather specialist Gary Eastman provided Atwood with the material, but she also needed the leather to look worn and weathered. To achieve that, Atwood says, “We put them in a vat of rocks and a cement mixer, literally, to beat up the leather, to get it to look like somebody had been wearing it for a few months, and as the journey went on they were aged more in that way.” Atwood adds, “We had to sheer the insides so they weren’t as thick as they were otherwise we would all look like Michelin guys.”

Adapted from Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, the miniseries dramatizes the wartime ventures of the 100th Bomb Group, who performed dangerous aviation raids over Nazi Germany. The series boasts a deep ensemble that includes Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Barry Keoghan, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook and Ncuti Gatwa.

When it came to accessorizing the characters, the hats were the most challenging to find.

“There were a few original ones that I got from a place here in Los Angeles. But in order to have them fit on human heads — because they were so small — I had to find somebody that could replicate them with the buttons, the leather and all the elements that make them spectacular,” Atwood explains.

The masks the pilots wear in the plane were also original, but refit and repurposed, while the boots were sourced from reproduction houses.

Atwood styled Butler based on the real-life pilot he plays. She says, “Austin Butler’s character was one of the great romantic pilots of the period.” To capture the beauty of the character, Atwood used an original flight suit, handmade ties and a specific watch and glasses. “When Austin came to the fitting, we just put all this stuff together,” she says. “Austin Butler looks beautiful in everything, but it was really fun to really find the character together with him in the room with the costumes.”

Dressing female workers during a predominantly male-dominant era was exciting for Atwood, especially making party clothes for any of the dance sequences. “They’re not super high-end, fancy clothes for the period because people were rationed in the U.K. for fabric, for materials,” Atwood says. “A lot of people made their own clothes or repurposed clothes and made their outfits, but it was a really fun investigation of a time and a place that isn’t American and the way it affected the general population during the war.”

Atwood enjoyed exploring the female characters in the series. Bel Powley plays Sandra Westgate, a spy. In one scene, she visits an art dealer whose Paris store is a front for espionage.

Director Dee Rees wanted Powley to pop in the environment, so Atwood came back with a blue
coat. Her fuchsia dress is an homage to Atwood’s own grandmother’s wedding dress. “The shoes are a reproduction. We couldn’t use things all the time in those ways because of the size of people now compared to then,” she says. “But we tried to be as honest and honor the period as much as we could.”

Watch the full conversation above.