From generic to face character: Luna Lovegood

In my last post I talked about my generic Hogwarts uniform, for those days when you just want to be a background student, studying for your OWL rather than fighting Voldemort. That costume is so comfortable. It is a perfect con costume, to wear to the show floor when you just want to wander around and look at stuff, but still be in costume and be recognized as being in costume.

I don't want to be just a background character though, and since the basic uniform is the same you only need to add some accessories to turn the background character to a face character. In my case it was easy, I want to be my favorite Ravenclaw - Luna Lovegood.

Last year I made her distinct earrings and necklace. I also made a v.1 of her beetle ring. Since then I've remade the ring with tiny beads, but using the same tutorial. I have bought a replica wand, rather than trying to make my own.

The one thing I'm really proud about though is finding the perfect shoes.

This photo shows the shoes of Dumbledore's army. Luna being the character she is of course has shoes that are different from the rest. She is the one wearing the Mary Janes with assymmetrical straps.

http://www.rebelshaven.com/images/costumes/hp/shoesref.jpg

I started off by searching for assymetrical Mary Janes, but it turned out I could only find shoes with the strap going in opposite direction from the ones Luna is wearing.

I then started to think about "how would a costume designer approach the shoes for Luna?". I set up a few parameters:

1. The shoes are off the rack. This is not a character that is special enough to have specially made shoes. Also since there were young adults playing the characters it would probably need to be easy to find the shoes in different sizes, if the actor changed shoe size inbetween the films.

2. They are probably high quality, but not too expensive

3. The soft leather and chunky sole is the kind of style that is popular with alternate/hippie/nature inspired fashion.

With that in mind I started searching for shoe brands with words like organic, natural and things like that, and I immediately found the brand "El naturalista". As soon as I saw the first shoes I knew that I had found the right brand, they had that distinct chunky sole seam that Luna has on her shoes. Then it was a matter of sifting through the catalogue of El Naturalista shoes until I found Luna's shoes.

They even have that little button that Luna's shoes have. The only thing that the costume designer has done is to cut off the little brown and green brand tag on the outside. Now of course until the costume designers confirm that these are Luna's shoes I can't be 100% that they are right, but I'm 90% that this is the actual brand and style worn by Luna. Once I had identified them I found the shoes on Amazon.

They are definitely the most comfortoable costume shoes that I have. They look a bit worn, and that is because I wore them all summer long because they were so nice to walk in, especially at Medieval week in Visby.

The one part I'm a bit unsure of when it comes to my Luna costume is the wig.

Luna's hair ranges from very curly and almost white blond

To a more yellow blond and straight hair.

As of now I'm using a curly and white wig, but I am on a lookout for something more yellowish and straight. The wig I have is good enough to do for now, I'm just wondering if I can find something even better.