Generic Hogwarts costume

So it's been around a year in the making, but I'm now finally happy with all the parts of my Hogwarts student costume. I haven't had time to take any photos of me in it yet, but I want to show you the components and also talk about how I developed it from a closet cosplay to an accurate costume.

Even if this is for a generic Hogwarts costume I'm going to use reference photos of the main characters.

My Hogwarts project started when I realized that I could make an easy closet cosplay from what I had at home. The main thing is that I own an official school cardigan, that I have bought from the Harry Potter Studio shop. I love it and it's comfy and I wear it a lot in the winter, and nobody knows that it's a Harry Potter piece. Overall I would say that official Harry Potter merchandise usually have a really high quality and is worth the price. The cardigans are pure wool, and are produced by the same factory that made the cardigans for the films.

This was my first try closet cosplay, I simply wore a black skirt and a white shirt together with my cardigan. I would say that Harry Potter is a great start if you want to cosplay. If you wear a school tie and a white shirt you will be instantly recognized as a Harry Potter character, without anyone looking closer on what kind of skirt or shirt you are wearing.

After the closet cosplay, I wanted something more accurate though, and I started with the skirt. For the girls' school uniform they actually switch skirt style. In the younger years they wear a pleated skirt, but in later films, or when they get older, they switch to a more simple version of the skirt. And looking at Ginny Weasly it seems to be ok for girls to wear slacks as well if they don't want to wear the skirt. The skirt is a wrap skirt, with a boxpleat to one side, and a fake boxpleat on the other side, that is the opening of the skirt. For the fabric I used a wool/polyester blend that I think is really, really close to the original. It's a suiting weight fabric that I found on ebay more than a year ago.

Rebelshaven.org has a great tutorial on the skirt, with photos to show off all the details.

This is the closure on my skirt, showing the pleat. The screen used skirts have a gold button at the closure and possibly one above the other pleat as well, they're not really seen though so I haven't added them yet, I might do that in the future. That would be more for me though, since it will never be visible.

The length of the skirt varies between characters, and can be anything from just below mid thigh down to just above the knee. If there is one thing with my skirt I'm not totally happy with is that is' shorter than I would usually be comfortable with, but that's the length that Luna Lovegood has.

The next thing that I switched was the shirt.

According once again to Rebelshaven the shirt is a man's shirt, with one breast pocked. The breast pocked is usually invisible, so that's not very important. It is important to note though that the shirt isn't white, it's that kind of hard to define colour that is somewhere between offwhit and light beige. I simply picked up a shirt at a local second hand store that was in the right colour.

To the skirt and shirt black or very dark grey tights are worn. After that it's time to add the house specific elements.

In my case it's my Ravenclaw cardigan and a Ravenclaw tie. The cardigan as mentioned is the official school cardigan from the Harry Potter Studios shop. Students are also seen wearing sweaters and vests, but I can't find the vest in the store. The store also carries official house ties, but they can be picked up a lot cheaper on ebay and other selling sites. It's important to note that the film ties did not have any house crests on them.

As for shoes there are a lot of options. This photos is also from Rebelshaven and shows Dumbledore's Army.

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

With one exception the shoes are not very specific to different characters. They show a mix of lace-up, loafers and Mary Janes in dark colours. I'm using a pair of soft black ballerina-shoes, simply because I already have them, I haven't bought them especially for the costume. 

Then of course no Hogwarts costume can be complete without some magic accessories, and I have my wand and my pygmy puff.

The pygmy puff was described here. The wand is made from a chopstick covered in black worbla and painted brown, it's still pretty dark though.

The final piece of my Hogwarts uniform is my Hogwarts robe. I was really deliberating if I should make my own or buy the official one. In the end I realized that the quality of the official robe is so good that I would not be able to make it cheaper and better. Last week when part of my sister's family was at the Harry Potter Studios they picked one up for me, so that I wouldn't have to pay for the shipping.

So that is my generic Hogwarts uniform.

From top to bottom it consists of:
Black shoes
Black tights
Dark grey wool wrap skirt
Off white man's shirt
Ravenclaw tie
Ravenclaw cardigan
Ravenclaw robe
Wand

It is a mix of thrift shop finds, things I've made myself and official products. I'm hoping to take some photos of me in it fairly soon.