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Jon Morrell Interview
 

 
 

Costume Design

The 80 characters in the two plays making up His Dark Materials require the creation of more than 250 costumes ranging from contemporary and period clothing to witches, cliff ghasts and armoured bears.

Philip Pullman’s books are hugely evocative but contain few detailed descriptions of costume and scenery, leaving them to the reader’s imagination. The challenge for the costume designer is to create a definitive appearance for a multitude of characters across multiple worlds. Here you can find out where the ideas came from and how they developed as part of the overall design.

Costume designer Jon Morrell explains how he uses existing visual material as reference points to start the design and how he decided on a particular period feel for the principal characters of Lyra’s world. You can see the original sketches for the Bears and Gyptians and the fashion and tribal imagery that sparked the development of the spectacular Witches' Costumes. You can compare the original sketches for the children at Bolvangar to the completed costumes and see the Edwardian and inter-war origins of the Church and Scholars in Lyra’s Oxford.

 

From the National Theatre
His Dark Materials
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Giles_Cadle Giles Cadle
Set Designer
Jon_Morrell Jon Morrell
Costume Designer
Anna_Maxwell_Martin Anna Maxwell Martin
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Faith Truth And Blasphemy
Connections: Daemons | Costume Fitting | Set Design | Tech Rehearsal Cast