This week it was my birthday - yay!! I treated myself to the Harry Potter Exhibition that is currently at the Discovery Center in New York, just off of Times Square.
If you haven't managed to catch this exhibition as it tours the US, you are missing out! As a complete costume geek this exhibition was a real treat. The displays are set out in groups based on areas of the movies, for example, Griffindor Tower, Hagrid's Hut, The Forbidden Forest, Herbology etc. In each section there is a very well presented display of props, costumes and artifacts from the Harry Potter movies. Now, I am not a big fan of the movies, preferring the books instead, but it is the attention to detail that has made these movies successful despite my own opinions of them. Mostly, the costumes are well designed (I have a personal problem with the 'school uniform' aspect though) and there are quirky little touches that destinquish the wizards and witches from the muggles. For me, these were the most interesting things on display at the exhibition. Things like Sirius Black having a double collar on his button down shirt, Bellatrix Lastrange having a leather wand sheath sewn into the design of her corset, the intricate engravings on the Deatheater masks and the overlaid dyeing on the invisibility cloak are just a few I picked up.
This exhibition is fun and a visual feast. The props and sets are just as detailed as the costumes to create a world that you wish was real. The one thing that really surprised me was how big Hagrid actually was. I expected his size to be camera tricks and therefore the actually costume to be regular human sized. This is not the case! Hagrid is actually bigger than the other humans so Robbie Coltraine has a huge costume that must have been padded and stilted to the nines! Very interesting indeed!
