Helena Bonham Carter Wears a Three-Pound Wig in Alice in Wonderland

Photo: Disney Enterprises Inc.

Colleen Atwood's biggest challenge in designing costumes for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which comes out tomorrow (!!!), was avoiding the Halloween costume-from-a-plastic-bag look. Atwood, who also worked with Burton on Sweeney Todd and Big Fish, mostly studied illustrations from the early editions of the Lewis Carroll book for inspiration. She revealed some interesting facts about the costumes to WWD:

• Atwood put Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the Red Queen, in an Elizabethan dress designed to make her head seem larger. Though Bonham Carter's head is digitally enhanced to appear three times its normal size, she also wore a prosthetic forehead that pushed her hairline back, and a three-pound heart-shaped wig.

• Anne Hathaway, who plays the White Queen, wears a blonde wig made from real human hair. This shade of human-hair wig is apparently very rare. Atwood describes her white gown as "Stepford fairy princess." Her lips and brows were kept dark to keep things "a bit twisted," according to the film's hair chief, Terry Baliel.
• Johnny Depp, who plays the Mad Hatter, is made up to look like an actual Edwardian-era milliner. Atwood didn't want his costumes to distract from his character and "great amount of heart." He wears an orange wig, clown makeup, and tinted contacts. His crooked dentures are reportedly inspired by his wife, Vanessa Paradis, who has gaps in her teeth.
• Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice, wears nothing constricting, like corsets or hoop skirts. Atwood explains, "I didn’t want to convey anything other than that she was a girl who saw her life in a different way, and was a bit freer in how she dressed and how she thought about her clothes." While she grows and shrinks, her clothes do not.

You can see a lot of this stuff in the trailer:

Designing Costumes for Tim Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' [WWD]