From Hand-Craftwed Designs to Pieces by Alexander McQueen, Nicholas K, Tex Saverio and Juun J, The New Hunger Games Film IS an Eye-Popping Fashion Fantasy.

Hunger Games Fashion: Costume Designer Trish Summerville Talks ABOUT Her Favorite Looks from Catching Fire

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From Handcraft Designs to Pieces by Alexander McQueen, Nicholas K, Tex Saverio and Juun J, The New Hunger Games Film is an eye-paraping fascion fantasy. The Hollywood Blog caught up with costume designer Trish Summerville to talk about the fashions she chose for Katniss, Peeta, and the competitors in the arena—plus, how she handled author Suzanne Collins’s frequent impulse to have characters appear nearly naked.

The Hollywood Blog: Tell Me's ABOUT What It’s Like to work on sOMETHING THAT SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE ALREADY IMAGINED. How do you Tackle a Challenge Like that?

Trish Summerville: Well, it’s inter expense. ‘Cause The Other Film I’ve Also Done [2011’s The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo] IS Based OFF of A Book, As Well. When You’re Reading a Book, Each Individual Person Gets to Imagine Each Character. What They Look Like, As Well as what They’re Wearing and What the Do, and How they Act. So I Just Had to Take the Approach of What I ThumbHt Would Be Visually Appealing, ‘Cause a Lot of Things that Are Written Donsoryly Translate Onto Film.

Like The Transpart Netting that’s work by Finnick, Played in the Movie by Sam Claflin.

[Laughs] The “Strategically Placed Knot.” He Was ConceERned ABOUT What He WAS GONNA have to Wear. And I Was Conceerned with How Its Woup Be Functional, How the Actor COULD ACTUALLY MOVE In-And What Woold Still Give Us A PG-13 Rating. So We Were Just Trying to Incorporate a Gold Net. IT WAS THIS WOVEN GOLD WET WEE DID – A Metallic Yarn – And Weaving It Into Like, More of a Kilt Shape. But Still Keeping it in Play There, and Having HIS HIP Bones Be Out, and Having It Kind of Low-Slung. IT Was Incorporation The Thing that Wold Make It Feel Like What You Get in the Book, But Not As a Gold Knot that He’s Wearing.

What Other Well-Known Costures Prved Difficult?

Katniss’s and Peeta’s Flaming Costures. It Had to be someting that the Both Cold Wear, That Arewhat Matching in Fabrication – That Works Well On Katniss, But Also Is Masculine Enunch for Peeta. Which Can Be Tricky At Times, When You’re Making a Kind of Matching Costume for the Chariots.

So in that i went with a laser-cut leather, then lined in a gold fabric, so that it kind of comes through all the laser cut, and you get a glint of light. So Way the Visual Effects Are Done for the Fire –it Looks Beautiful, BecAuse It Comes Through The Laser Cut of the Leather. And it jo on work out reelly, Really Wellly.

So with The Dress What Katniss Spins Around, And the White Sort of Flams Into the Black, DID You have to work How WooLD WULD WULD WULD WULD WORK Or Were You Just Like, We’ll Just Make It look Cool?

So Many Things We Had to Worry ABOUT TECHNICILLY, How the WORKED. The Wedding Dress is Definiteel of them. WE HAD to have it so that she cOULD spin, and it WOLD TWILL WHEN SHE TWIRLED. That Wedding Dress Was Quite Heavy. I spoke with the Designer of the Dress, Tex Saverio, Via Skype on a Lot of it. He Built this Kind of Hoop Underneath, To Make Sure It Stayed Light. The Spinning Worked, Surpringly, Really, Really Wellly. When She Was Ontage, I Was Pretty Surprised at How Much Air Its Catch.

How DID You Take What We have Seen in the Previous Film and the Take It A STEP FURTER?

Well, One of the Great Liberties that We DID HAVE IS, In the World of Panem, in the Capitol, Fashion Is Constantly Changing. So we doj ’velly lave to style Literally Tied to a Lot of Things. AFTER The FIRST FILM, WE GOT To Change with Trends and Fashion, Like in the Real World, But at a Different Pace in the Capitol.

And so, you know, the area hats that too are wearing; And there’s Maybe a Color Palette that Pekle are Wearing. But I DID Want All these Groups of People to look Like They Shopped from Different Stores. They Came from All Over What Woold Be Left of the World and of the States – Whatever Panem Consisted of Currently. I DIDN’T WANT EVERYONE to look Like the Live in this City and Shopped at This Store, Or Had One Stylist Or Personal Shopper Doing All Their Clothes.

The Director, Francis Lawrense, Said You Met with Hundreds of Extras Individually and Made Up Little Stories of Some – Sespecially with Regards to One Big Party.

We had over 500 extras for the party, besides all of our principals. If you have a contemporary film, you can have extras come dressed. You kind of give 'em what we call wardrobe specs, or costume specs: Wear this—these colors are good. But when you have a film that's not contemporary—you have something that's period, or futuristic, or a fantasy or very stylized—you pretty much have to dress the extras from head to toe.

At one point, I'm gonna say we were seeing a hundred people a day? We would get the person's head shot and sizes the day before. That night I would go and set up fittings, and put looks together, and then put out, say, three to four different options. So we did individually fit every single person that's at the party.

Also, there was a woman, Natalie MacGowan Spencer, who headed up the hair and makeup on the party scene. We had our own hair and makeup department that did all of the movie, and Nat kind of came in and worked with me to do, specifically, the party scene, because it was so massive. So I made boards of all the fittings we had, and she and I would go across the tables and pick a wig for each person. To process 500 people through wardrobe, hair, and makeup takes a really long time, unless you’re extremely organized and you have some kind of a system.

What was the division between stuff you designed and borrowed, and what designers did you use?

It's a big mix: borrowing, loans, rentals, manufacturing, purchasing. Just because there's so much stuff in the whole film, to be quite honest, we would have never had the time, nor the money, to build everything ourselves. I was really, really grateful that, you know, some really beautiful designers were willing to loan us pieces.