Jennifer Lopez Can ‘Do Anything’ in Her <i>Kiss of the Spider Woman</i> Costumes

In Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, Jennifer Lopez illuminates the big screen in a role she seems destined to play: Ingrid Luna—or “La Luna”—an Old Hollywood icon starring in the movie within the musical drama. Through Lopez’s signature dancefloor mastery and breathtaking 1940s-inspired gowns, La Luna provides refuge for windowdresser Luis Molina (Tonatiuh). Sentenced to eight years for public indecency in 1983 Argentina, under a brutal military dictatorship, he withstands the horrors of prison by escaping into his vivid, color-saturated imagination, alive with silver screen romances.

“I’ve made up my mind to think only of things that make me happy,” Molina says to his new cellmate, Valentín Arregui (Diego Luna).

Trying to build a connection with the stoic, guarded political prisoner, Molina recounts his favorite MGM-style musical, headlined by La Luna as Aurora, a glamorous fashion editor cursed from finding true love. Proclaiming to “hate musicals” at first, Valentìn quickly falls for the allure of cinema and La Luna. Engagingly narrated and reenacted by Molina, the musical numbers burst to life through Lopez’s jaw-dropping triple-threat performance and her show-stopping, Old Hollywood finery.

“She’s one of the most prepared actors I've ever worked with, and also one of the most talented,” says Colleen Atwood, who designed costumes for the movie with Christine L. Cantella. “She was totally impressive on all levels of work—beyond belief. Everything's for a reason. She was really amazing for me to work with because we really figured out stuff together.”

Ahead, Atwood—who won one of her four Oscars for the 2002 big-screen musical, Chicago, co-written by Condon—shares the details behind Lopez’s stunning gowns and performance ensembles.

As Molina sets the stage for Aurora’s spellbinding story, the dreary, muted grays of the prison cell transform into sumptuous Technicolor and radiant sparkle. A platinum blonde Aurora peruses her lavish dressing room closets to land on a seductively shimmering gilded gown for a night out at the jazz club.

“It was her entrance dress—that ‘ta da!’ dress,” says Atwood, who took inspiration from a black-and-white gown by Gilbert Adrian, known as Adrian, MGM’s renowned costume designer and couturier of Golden Age Hollywood.

On the dance floor, a lovelorn Aurora anticipates meeting a mysterious stranger. As she croons and moves through the number “I Will Dance Alone,” her gown ripples and shines like liquid gold. You wouldn’t be able to tell from Lopez’s gracefully nimble dance moves, but the dress weighed in at 50 pounds.

“It’s all hand-beaded, which is what they used to do [in Old Hollywood],” says Atwood. “It’s quite heavy because it's all glass beads, not plastic. The lines [of hand-sewn beads] reflect the shape of your body, so it looks very fluid and water-like.”

Atwood also engineered the gown—and all of Lopez’s costumes—based on Sergio Trujillo’s choreography, such as incorporating a generous slit for Lopez’s Fly Girl-honed high-kicks. A dramatic train was then nixed to accommodate her rhythmic backward walks.

“Everything's built onto a corseted piece that stays in place,” says Atwood. “So her body can do pretty much anything in that dress, except a cartwheel. Maybe.”

Aurora does meet an intriguing stranger, photographer Armando (played by Valentìn in Molina’s imagination). They flirt in Armando’s dark room à la Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with Aurora commanding the screen in a ’40s-style royal-blue skirt suit, livened up with aqua blocking and godet pleats.

Atwood referenced a photo of Rosalind Russell, famed for playing an intrepid reporter opposite Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, in a two-tone suit. “I thought, ‘Well, what color should I make it?’ and then I found that blue,” says Atwood. “It’s also really pretty when [Aurora] loses the jacket and she's just in that really beautiful blue chiffon blouse. It just seemed right for the mood.”

Fittingly, behind the scenes, Atwood also referenced fashion and film photography from the ‘40s. “That was really my big visual influence,” she says. “I love Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who worked for Harper’s Bazaar. The way she used color in her photography is always inspirational to me.”

In a pulsing, tropical-themed Latin nightclub, Aurora brazenly accepts gangster Johnny’s (Tony Dovolani) invitation for a steamy dance, amplifying an already tense situation with Armando. Her brilliant copper and black drop-waist dress, with intricate embellishments and appliqués, almost takes on a life of its own—as Lopez outdoes herself in a near-acrobatic fusion of Latin and jazz movements.

Atwood found a glittering craft-sequin fabric with “oblong, jungle-looking leaves,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, it's perfect for that scene.” Atwood then meticulously cut the leaf patterns out to reconfigure them into opulent shoulder adornments and an abstract motif on the bodice.

She countered the elaborate corseted top with dynamic floor-length black fringe instead of skirting.

“So [Lopez] could have full movement for the dance,” says Atwood. “She could pretty much do anything.”

At one harrowing point, Molina takes refuge with La Luna in his dreamworld. The bright lights and glamour of the Bob Fosse-style number, “Where You Are,” create an escapist vision of prison that contrasts with Molina’s bleak surroundings. Ingrid, in a white blazer mini-dress and jaunty fedora, leads a chorus line. “Learn how to not see what you see,” she tells Molina.

Her white monochrome ensemble pays homage to Chita Rivera, the Tony-winning legend who embodied La Luna in a white three-piece pantsuit, in the 1993 Broadway production of Kiss of the Spider Woman. But, of course, Atwood created an entirely new version befitting La Lopez.

“I started with more of a burlesque-style costume with pants, a waistcoat, and a little tailcoat. Then it became shorts, and then it just became the jacket,” says Atwood. “All about the legs.”

Aurora considers parting ways with Armando to save him from her curse. She expresses passion and fearlessness in a bold Kelly green bolero over an exquisitely draped dress with an ethereal ombré effect. “It’s a changeable fabric woven with two different color threads,” explains Atwood.

Aurora steps into her own thrilling dreamworld, awash in rich, spicy reds. As she wrestles with her intense feelings for Armando, she sheds her jacket to reveal a spaghetti-strap halter silhouette. In the electrifying crescendo, she tears off the gossamer-light skirting—transforming her dress into a bodysuit.

Atwood referenced Cyd Charisse’s green, leg-baring flapper dress, in which she kicks and twirls with Fred Astaire, against a flaming red backdrop, in Singin’ in the Rain.

“The idea is that [Aurora] goes from ‘good girl’ to ‘bad girl,’” says Atwood. “She starts more modestly with the skirt piece and the little bolero, and then it goes to a whole other thing.”

As Atwood paid tribute to the Silver Screen classics, she also celebrated the time-honored artistry behind the scenes through Lopez’s dazzling—and functional—song-and-dance costumes.

“It’s figuring out the look, and then backing into it, to figure out the mechanics of how it works for the music,” says Atwood. “That’s how clothes were made in the Old Hollywood musicals. They were made for the movement, not just to look at.”