How Elvira Inspired Winona Ryder’s ‘Ghost House’ Costume in ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’

In the opening sequence of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” audiences are introduced to Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz some 35 years after we last saw her.

Lydia is now hosting a reality show, “Ghost House” and often sees visions of the foul-mouthed demon Beetlejuice in her audience. According to costume designer Colleen Atwood, the goth-glam host’s outfit was inspired by none other than the mistress of the dark herself, Elvira. Atwood said, “We wanted to channel that kind of character for Lydia’s TV show. I found that dress at a thrift store. It was this jersey dress, and I did some modifications to it; adding some cleavage and changed it up a bit.”

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The four-time Oscar winner was the recipient of Variety’s Creative Impact award in costume design. Speaking with Variety at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, Atwood said she doesn’t take things for granted and never assumes she’ll get a call from director Tim Burton to call her.

“You never know what can happen,” she told the audience of aspiring storytellers. But having worked together on over a dozen projects, Burton almost always turns to her when assembling his team of artisans. Atwood has worked as his go-to costume designer on over a dozen projects including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Mars Attack” and Netflix’s “Wednesday.” Burton invited her to his London home and informed her he was going to be working on the sequel to 1988’s “Beetlejuice,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

Along with Ryder and Keaton, original star Catherine O’Hara also returns in the zany supernatural follow-up. Atwood’s approach to dressing these characters was simple. “It was about who these people had become. It’s like looking through a lens at your family, your weird relatives,” she said.

Atwood didn’t design the original outfits for the 1988 film (that was Aggie Guerard Rodgers). When it came to Beetlejuice’s iconic white and black striped outfit, Atwood built a new one for him. She made it moldier to reflect his time in the Afterlife and aged it a bit more. Atwood said, “He’s a little seedier and he’s a bit older. When I first met Michael, he was in really good shape, so I said, ‘We’re giving you a stomach.” She said adding that the character had probably been sitting around doing nothing all that time.

Atwood spoke about her collaboration with Burton and his attitude to costumes. “He loves to understand fabrics, a lot of which he embraces. I’ll watch his reaction to it, and I’ll go off and start building things that I feel he had a positive reaction to,” she said.

Designing costumes for the characters in the afterlife proved to be a collaborative effort, with Burton and makeup. They had to come up with different ways that characters had died, and what that would look like. The looks varied from a person drowning while copying Houdini’s water torture trick to someone being run over by a car to someone being eaten by a shark. “You have to show how something happened, and you have to see it right away,” Atwood said.