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Rita Skeeter, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2009
And how can you possibly go wrong with a lime green satin cocktail suit with purple feathers?
Pretty easily, actually. I was very, very worried about this outfit- ever since all my clothes mysteriously shrank all at once a few years ago, fitting has been an extra challenge for me, and everybody who's ever worked with poly satin knows it's not at all forgiving even on people whose clothes don't shrink. If you don't sew it well, every line and bump and bad stitch will show. My solution was to underline the entire outfit in silk organza. That gave the satin enough body to stand away from mine a bit, and helped prevent it from wrinkling. I drafted all the patterns more or less from scratch, and spent three weeks trying to come up with a jacket that didn't have princess seams, as the original doesn't. It wasn't happening (as Miranda Richardson is professionally tiny and I am not so much), so I ended up drafting princess seams and an additional bust dart. The skirt is a slightly pegged pencil skirt. I used an interlining technique on the skirt that I got from one of Sandra Betzina's books, and I bound and mitered the hem. It's a pretty great skirt, no lie. The trim is marabou that I bought from M&J, and the jewelry is vintage. I used bound buttonholes for the first time here, and would have done welt pockets, but the flap was too small to cover over a real pocket, so they are false.
The wig started life as a straight pageboy. I trimmed it, curled it, and stitched in wefts from curly hair falls because the hot-curling job I was doing wasn't working quite well enough. The feather trim turned my neck purple the minute I started to sweat, and the bottom of the wig too.
No fewer than THREE Rita Skeeters showed up for the Young Adult Lit costume contest that year. I think each of us chose the outfit because we figured nobody else would. I haven't laughed so hard in all my life. This costume won a Judge's Award for Best Tailoring.
Photography courtesy of many kind bystanders at Dragon*Con 2009. Studio photography courtesy of Squeek Photography.
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