The White Witch "Her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chatelaine of
Cair Paravel,
Empress of the Lone Islands, etc."
"I think of it
more as her evolution. ... Her crown melts. She goes from
icy white to midnight blue and then chain. Her silhouette
narrows and grows as her sense of power diminishes or is reinstated.
There is no in or out of her garments because she is not human,
she is a witch."
The first six of Jadis' gowns have a very
similar cut; therefore, instead of covering the same material
in each page, go to the White Witch
Fabric and Sillhouette page first.
For more detailed notes on each dress,
including some super high resolution images, see the individual
pages.
And, for even more details on Jadis' hair,
wand, furs, makeup, and ice crown, check out The
White Witch Look page.
Comments welcome,
as well as discussion over at the Costumes
area of the NarniaWeb forum.
" . . . it’s as if she
just covers herself up in a bit of Narnia. So the dress is
made out of a substance that’s a little bit like the bottom
of an amazing waterfall I saw in the middle of New Zealand.
So it’s like the White Witch is made of water or ice, or smoke,
or, something natural. And being the epitome of, of all evil,
of course, and this comes very strongly from the book, she’s
covered in fur. And she has hair that doesn’t look like hair,
it looks like it’s come from the ground - maybe it’s roots
or something. And her crown is made of ice, and it melts throughout
the film, so it’s not going to look like a costume that she
got out of a wardrobe anywhere."
"We broke her into
seven changes. We start when we first see her she has no idea
that there's any threat to her world ... She's in a beautiful
state of ice, she's in her sleigh, she's in the snow. We move
the second time to the dungeon. In the dungeon, her dress
fills out into what we call the full monte and changes into
exactly the environment of her castle.
And as the children enter,
and as her power starts to disappear, we start to see her
whole sillhouette melt and her colors get grayer, and she
starts to lose her crown. It's about 50% now. And, from there
we go to the white witch's camp, and her dress is completely
bottom-heavy. It's gone into a deeper gray smoke-color, and
her crown is smaller and smaller.
The next scene is Aslan's
Camp where she comes in professed as the Queen of Narnia,
in all her glory, carried by her four cyclops. And her dress
shoots out again and she's in platinum. It's like her coronating
herself again. From there we move to the execution, or the
Stone Table, where she is in midnight blue, with a black rooster
on her shoulder, which is a bit ritualistic, which is what
the whole scene is about."
"And then she becomes a warrior, and
goes into battle. Very tawny, and Byzantine, brutal, and there's
no hint of snow, or femininity, or softness. That Maire Antoinette
beauty is gone."
~Isis Mussenden and Tilda Swinton describing
Jadis' seven changes, from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Disc II Behind the Scenes, Creating Creatures: The White Witch
