There is a wealth of period costumes cross the categories for Emmy voters to think about this season. In limited series, Oscar-winner Colleen Atwood built 200 to 300 leather jackets for AppleTV+’s World War II drama “Masters of the Air.” “It took six months to get them built,” Atwood says.
Procuring the right elements was a global process that included getting era-specific zippers from Japan and sheepskin from Scotland and England. Atwood also explained the unconventional aging process of the garments, saying that “once they were built, we had to shear the inside so they weren’t as thick, and then we put them in a vat of rocks inside a cement mixer to beat the leather up.” “Shōgun” ( now competing in drama series ) costume designer Carlos Rosario built over 2,000 costumes for the 10-part show set in feudal Japan.
Rosario found himself limited by what primary sources were available, but he found paintings insightful to his research process. One of the costumes for Lady Ochiba (Fumi Nikaido) was based on a painting of the “Lady Ochiba of that period,” he says. Rosario notes that the first time we see the character, she’s wearing a beautiful uchikake that was made from scratch.
“All those different layers — she’s wearing six or seven different layers — are actually all based on that painting. We studied the patterns of that painting, the layers of that painting, the meaning of those patterns, and then we reproduced that costume.” “The New .
