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How I Travel: Costume Designer Colleen Atwood Thinks London Has the Best Menswear

Her method of avoiding jet lag:

Most of the flights I take are long haul, to London or Paris, so I go to bed because a lot of times I wake up and go straight to work, not even to the hotel. I freshen up in the bathroom and put on my clean shirt and spend five or six hours working, because I find that jet lag doesn’t set in so badly if you go and get busy. Make your brain work.

What she prioritizes when traveling for leisure:

It’s a combination of interesting, beautiful sights that I haven’t seen before, and relaxing. I’m not a person that gets somewhere and has a plan every day; I like to discover as I go. I travel so much for work that it’s almost odd for me not to have a purpose. It takes me a minute! I tend to [extend] work trips, so if I’m in London, I’ll go to Milan or Madrid for a couple days, just to walk around.

Two design destinations she thinks are underrated:

A place I really like a lot is Turkey—not just Istanbul, but southern Turkey, which is very historically interesting, and they do a lot of textiles. India is so gigantic, and there’s parts that more people should see which are just spectacular.

The hotel amenity she cares a lot about:

For me, the bedding is really key. I love the way that Firmdale hotels do their beds. They have just like the right amount of blankets, and not just some duvet that you feel like a thousand people have slept under. It all feels clean. And I love the bathtubs.

Her favorite hotel in the world:

The Hotel de Russie in Rome. I love the aesthetics, the colors used in the rooms, and this one thing—I think a great hotel room doesn’t have too much furniture. I hate when you’re in a new environment and get out of bed and blast into some little table or something in your way. I like that there’s floor space, as opposed to decor.

Where she hopes to go next:

My favorite place I’ve never been is Egypt. It’s a country that is so rich. I just haven’t gotten my act together to go. I need to go look at the pyramids, examine that scale and that culture.