We speak with Johnston about outfitting Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer in acclaimed director Robert Zemeckis' new adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved story

With a track record that includes the critically-acclaimed titles <a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/Culture/12-classic-90s-films-to-stream-while-stuck-at-home">Forrest Gump</a>, War Horse and Lincoln,&nbsp;costume designer Joanna Johnston has had a hand some of Hollywood&#39;s most influential movies. It comes with the territory of collaborating&nbsp;with film mavericks like Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, whom&nbsp;Johnston has worked closely with for over two decades.

Her latest&nbsp;project with Zemeckis is a new adaptation of <a href="https://www.lofficielsingapore.com/Culture/roald-dahl-witches-anne-hathaway">Roald Dahl&rsquo;s The Witches</a>,&nbsp;designing costumes for a coven of terrifying witches who front as normal women and lure children to their demise.&nbsp;Zemeckis&#39;&nbsp;take on the 1983 children&rsquo;s fantasy novel places the characters&nbsp;in 1960s Alabama&nbsp;with an African American protagonist and his grandmother,&nbsp;giving the story an inclusive update.&nbsp;

Juxtaposing&nbsp;the witches that roam the&nbsp;Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel (where the story is set),&nbsp; Octavia Spencer&#39;s Grandma offers a sense of warmth and home,&nbsp;outfitted in floral prints&nbsp;and comfortable house dresses.&nbsp;In sharp contrast&nbsp;is Anne Hathaway&#39;s Grand High Witch, whose red lips give way to a wicked,&nbsp;sharp-toothed grin; coiffed wigs and&nbsp;chic hats cover a bald head; and gloves and pointed-toe heels conceal claws. Fans of Anjelica Huston&#39;s Grand High Witch from the &#39;90s won&#39;t see the same horror-level makeup, as CGI and strategic prosthetics transform Hathaway on-screen. Joined by dozens of&nbsp;witches from around the world, the&nbsp;costumes act as the&nbsp;ultimate disguises&nbsp;to their true&nbsp;forms.

Below, L&#39;Officiel speaks with&nbsp;Johnston about the defining features of&nbsp;the witches&#39;&nbsp;costumes, from drawing on&nbsp;Spencer&#39;s personal background to paying homage to the beginning of her own costuming career.

You&#39;ve worked on a couple of children&#39;s movies before,&nbsp;but they&#39;ve been few and far between your other work on period pieces and action films. What drew you to The Witches?

I don&#39;t usually choose films for the genres, but rather,&nbsp;for the storytelling. For instance, I used to say I was never interested in doing sci-fi, and&nbsp;then&nbsp;I ended up doing a partly science fiction film, because the story was so amazing. I think it&#39;s about&nbsp;the story and the directors. The BFG, Polar Express and The Witches all fall between Bob Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg &mdash; they&#39;re the two directors that I work with most frequently. It was them more than the type of films, so to speak.

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This telling of&nbsp;The Witches&nbsp;may be a new generation&#39;s&nbsp;first introduction to the story. How did you, Robert and the rest of the team begin imagining the world you wanted to create?

Roald Dahl is majorly important as a storyteller, and he&#39;s enormous in Great Britain. There are very few children, as I understand it, who haven&#39;t been introduced to his stories in one form or another, and&nbsp;The Witches&nbsp;is a huge point of reference. Perhaps&nbsp;less so in America, but here, Road Dahl is ever-present&nbsp;in the psyche of storytelling.&nbsp;The icing on the cake was that [Robert&nbsp;Zemeckis] moved the story from the 1980s, when it was written, to the 1960s, and then set it in America.

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Since the film&nbsp;is&nbsp;set in Alabama, did you do any research into the fashion of&nbsp;that particular period and place?

It was actually an international research, because the witches at the convention come from all over the world, so we had a whole lot of witches&nbsp;representing their respective countries. I went all over the place. It was an extensive research platform to play on.

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What were the influences behind Anne Hathaway&rsquo;s Grand High Witch costumes?

There were some icons of the &lsquo;60s, and I did an&nbsp;homage to my boss Anthony Powell, who I worked with back when I was an assistant. He&nbsp;used to do these fabulous, dramatic black-and-white [costumes] as one of his specialties. I wanted [Hathaway] to be glamorous,&nbsp;the one that&nbsp;the other witches would look up to, so she had the greatest impact out of everyone. It&#39;s all about her vanity and her projection.&nbsp;

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Octavia Spencer&#39;s character, Grandma,&nbsp;wears a lot of prints.&nbsp;What was the choice behind that?

She has great standards in her dressing and she always looks lovely. Early&nbsp;on, I decided that I wanted her to be in print pretty much all the time.&nbsp;Flowers and details &mdash; she&#39;s the polar opposite of the Grand High Witch.

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Octavia is actually from Alabama. Did she give you any input,&nbsp;since she&#39;s familiar with the setting?

I talked to her about her childhood. I&nbsp;knew that women during that time would wear housecoats when doing domestic chores, and she reiterated that to me about her own family &mdash; you&#39;d keep&nbsp;all your better clothes for going out, but at home,&nbsp;you&#39;d have&nbsp;these house dresses. They&#39;re practical, but they can also be very good-looking, made out of cottons and nylons. I definitely tapped into her&nbsp;experiences.

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Accessories are a main component of the witches&#39;&nbsp;identities. What was it like coordinating those elements&nbsp;for so many characters?

Complicated! Witches have claws as&nbsp;hands and feet, so I came up with this concept where all the witches wear gloves to cover up their clawed hands. They have two fingers, which are false&nbsp;in a five-fingered glove &mdash; if you look at the film closely, they&#39;re rigid. They don&#39;t move because they&#39;re actually stuffed. And the shoes had to be long and pointy, so they were elongated to accommodate their clawed feet.&nbsp;

Costume Designer Joanna Johnston On Creating Fashion Magic For "The Witches"

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