Sunday Spotlight: Fantastic Costumes and Where to Find Them

No spoilers I promise!

The wizarding community isn't exactly great at keeping up with muggle fashion trends, and as dress robes and tall pointed hats are definitely still considered stylish in 1990's era Harry Potter, I didn't expect their to be many beaded flapper dresses in the new Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Well lucky me, there were two very lovely beaded 1920s dresses but on the whole what impressed me the most about Colleen Attwood's costumes for the new film set in Joanne Rowling's magical world was her restraint. I mean, we all know Colleen Atwood (the costumer of such films as Little Women, Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, and most Tim Burton films) can do some epic costumes, like her recent work in Snow White and the Huntsman for example, so wish a setting as open and imaginative as the wizarding world she could have gone quite over the top and no one would have batted an eyelash. Instead the costumes feel grounded and real, which is probably a better choice in a film which already has a lot of fantasy elements going on, if everyone was wearing glittering capes and feathers it would have been way too much!

Of our two female leads, sisters Tina and Queenie (played by Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol respectively), Tina is the tomboy. Her clothes are more somber muted grays and she wears boxier menswear inspired silhouettes finished with flat practical man-ish shoes. Her hair isn't perfectly set, she's too busy running around getting stuff done as a MACUSA (the USA's version of the Ministry of Magic) employee. Her sister Queenie is the more traditionally feminine of the two, and wears mostly shades of pink and blush throughout the film, the exception being her midnight blue(/black?) dress. When we meet her in the sister's apartment she seems to have just been putting the finishing touches on said dark silk dress, as it's on a mannequin, and you can see a length of pink silk draped over an ironing table in the background. A witch who uses her magic to make deco dresses? Awesome!

(Images found here)

The men have nice costumes too, especially main character Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who has a great color scheme going on with his dark turquoise wool coat. I really enjoyed the film, but as a Potter fan I expected to of course! With JK Rowling writing the scripts everything is canon, plus a period setting, what more can a vintage loving fangirl ask for? Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find is set in 1926 and is the first of a five film series which will span 19 years (to 1945), so I look forward to seeing 1930s and 1940s costumes from the wizarding world perspective as well!

Did any of you rush out this weekend to see the film? I really can't wait to go see it again!