Bringing a classic as beloved as Disney’s 1950 animated “Cinderella” to life is no small task. So when plans emerged for a live-action revamp, in theaters Friday, the filmmakers turned to Sandy Powell to bring a bit of “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” to the movie’s costumes.
The 54-year-old designer has won the Oscar for costumes three times — for “Shakespeare in Love,” “The Aviator” and “The Young Victoria.” Here, Powell reflects on some of her most noteworthy film work.
Cinderella (2015)
At first, Powell says, “I thought, ‘I’m not going to do the same old blue Cinderella dress, I’m going to try some other colors out. Then no other color felt appropriate, and I came back.”
The end result features layered variations of fine blue fabric over multiple petticoats to create a watercolor effect. Powell employed more than 270 yards of fabric and some 10,000 Swarovski crystals to create the voluminous stunner.
While star Lily James told The Post that the dress made her “four times heavier,” Powell scoffs at that.
“It’s heavier than wearing a T-shirt,” she says, laughing. “[But] it’s not even cumbersome. It’s such a huge diameter that she had to get used to maneuvering it . . . But it’s not causing any pressure.”
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
“Interview With the Vampire” was one of Powell’s first big films, and one Tom Cruise look in particular stands out for her.
“At the very end, when it’s contemporary [times], he wears that white shirt…with ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ [playing],” she recalls.
“It was like, this guy who’s immortal, what would he end up [wearing] in 1994? A pair of leather trousers and a kind of poofy-looking blouse?” the designer says, laughing.
So what did Cruise think of those leather pants?
“I’m sure he wouldn’t have worn them if he hadn’t liked them!”
Gangs of New York (2002)
Sometimes a director and actor have very different ideas about a character’s appearance.
“When I first talked to Marty [Scorsese] about the character of Bill the Butcher, Marty was absolutely insistent: He said, ‘This guy is a dandy. He’s a peacock. He’s to to be fabulous,’ ” says Powell. “And then I met Daniel [Day-Lewis] and talked to him about it, and . . . he thought [Bill] would be very down and grubby and greasy and dirty.”
Stuck in the middle, Powell went ahead and made a prototype of Scorsese’s concept. In the fitting, everything came together. “[Day-Lewis] put it on and said, ‘Yep, he’s right,’ This is what it should be,’ ” Powell says.
Far From Heaven (2002)
As preproduction on the film heated up, star Julianne Moore dropped a bomb on Powell.
“Julianne was pregnant, and she didn’t tell us till we just got started,” recalls Powell. “She said, ‘It’s OK, I’m only just pregnant and I won’t get very big!’ And she doubled in size during filming, practically. And we only had one [of each] dress. We were letting those dresses out till there was barely any stitching to hold them together.”
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Queen Elizabeth I’s extravagant peacock gown (as worn by Judi Dench) is Powell’s favorite look from this film, which earned the designer her first Oscar.
“Oh, goodness, it was so labor intensive,” she says. “We sent panels away to India to be embroidered and there were just so many hand-stitched stones on it. We were all doing it — I was sewing sequins and stones onto the dress myself.”
But the very thing that made the gown so memorable — the peacock collar — caused some alarm on set.
“Some people got a bit funny about it because some people think that peacock feathers are meant to be unlucky,” explains Powell. “But Judi, fortunately, was not superstitious.”
She also wasn’t a complainer.
“Talk about heavy — those gowns were heavy,” says Powell. “I mean, Cinderella’s gown is like a feather compared to the Elizabeth gowns.”
The Aviator (2004)
To portray Katharine Hepburn, actress Cate Blanchett donned a glamorous frock by Powell that has cheekily been called “the most expensive dress in film history” — and it has nothing to do with the cost of the material.
Director Martin Scorsese was experimenting with film-color techniques to differentiate time periods.
Although Powell was able to test fabrics ahead of time to see how the colors would come out, it didn’t always work. Such was the case for Blanchett’s dress, which Powell describes as “an acidic, mustardy, chartreusey yellow.
“Before the film was finished, I managed to get to see some of it cut together, and this dress…came out this hideous khaki beige color,” Powell explains.
“It was so ugly, and I was devastated.”
But the editor and the director of photography were on her side, and they agreed to go through with the monumental undertaking of restoring the color of the dress in the film — frame by frame.