Harry Potter costumes

Its still summer holidays here, though school goes back in a couple of weeks time. Yesterday we went to see the Harry Potter exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, here in Sydney. The oldest three of us are Harry fans, and the youngest of us – not much of a reader – knows just a little from what we have told her, and also from having had most of the first book read to her (we’re not quite finished yet!).

I really enjoyed the exhibition. There were quite a lot of the costumes on display, which was excellent to see. One thing about them really bothered me though: there was no technical information about the costumes. No information about the fabric, the techniques used, the designers and craftspeople. This information was not even included in the catalogue. For an exhibition that is being shown at a “design” museum, I felt that this was really disappointing and quite an oversight.

Three costumes, all displayed together, really stood out to me: two elaborate robes for the two different Dumbledores, and one set of elaborate robes for Professor McGonagall. Professor McGonagall’s robes were in a dark greeny-black-ish fabric, which had some really fabulous fabric manipulation. There was an interesting cross hatch of folds of the fabric, for the sleeves particularly, but also other sections. It was the same fabric as the rest of the unmanipulated fabric, and the contrast worked really well. I loved the texture and pattern created by the fabric manipulation. I would be very interested in learning the process behind it, but alas, that sort of detail was not included…

Because we had to stand a little way back from the exhibits, I could not really tell how the ornamentation on Dumbledore’s garments was done, but possibly there was some hand embroidery there. Once again, I’ll never know. 🙁

Loved the exhibition though.

For anyone who is thinking of joining us for our day out at the Powerhouse Museum to see the Love Lace exhibition on Thursday 2nd February, we’ll meet at the entrance to the museum, just inside the doors. That way if it is hot out, or wet, we’ll be sheltered. Please let me know if you’re planning to come, so that we can look out for you.