My Life

“The design on the gown Belle wears at the end of the film once the spell has been lifted is taken from an original 18th century apron with a woven silk pattern I bought when I was a student. We found an artist in England who took the floral motif from that pattern and turned it into a painted design. “

- Jaqueline Durran

Check out the little featurette on Belle’s lovely celebration dress :

The limelight-loving pair of Madame de Garderobe and Cadenza — she's a singer, he's a harpsichordist — needed costumes to match their bold personalities. So Durran looked to classic 18th-century French fashions worn by royal performers and added subtle, enchanting details to their looks which were in keeping with the garb of the other castle denizens. For the outfit Stanley Tucci wears as Cadenza, she says, "we cut up gold lace fabric and appliquéd it on the coat and waistcoat to create the impression of embroidery. It was one of my favorite things in the film's costumes."

When it came to reimagining Belle's blue dress, "l wanted to show more to it, more than simply the blue outline of the animation," Durran says. So for that frock (and all of Belle's simple village-wear, including the red number in the next slide), she took the basic idea of animated Belle's clothing and infused it with 18th-century French period details, like delicate lacing on the bodice.

“We decided to take inspiration from there and enrich the world using historical details,” she says. “For instance how that works for Belle (played by Emma Watson) is Belle has the pockets hanging on the outside of her [blue] costume. The pockets are historical, people tied pockets around their waist, obviously we changed it a bit and put them on the outside and they became part of the kind of reinterpretation of Belle as an active heroine who does things and gets things done. The pockets act as a sort of toolbelt where she keeps all the things useful to her in her day to day life, those are the two elements we really looked for.” The pant-like bloomers Durran and her team added underneath the classic blue outfit were Watson’s favorite addition.“They’re nice, as you can tell,” says Durran. “But also again they were part of her being able to be more active, so that you don’t feel restricted by wearing a skirt because you can just pull it up and then just do whatever you were going to do.”

Now onto the Belle’s red costume:

Belle’s red costume, which she wears outdoors for her snowball fight with Beast (Dan Stevens), turned out to be Durran and her team’s most unique challenge in that it was eco-friendly.

“Because Emma is so interested in sustainability and fair trade, eco fabrics and eco fashion, we applied those criteria to making a costume from head to toe,” she says. “That [red] costume was made entirely from sustainable fabrics. We dyed it in vegetable dyes in our workroom, we had shoes made with eco leather and we did the whole thing from top to bottom to be as thorough as we could. People learned different skills in the work rooms to be able to do it, so they dyers learned to dye with strange vegetable dye. Sometimes it took two weeks to dye something because you’d have to leave it in there for that long to get a rich color, it really was a learning curve for all of us, I’d certainly never done that before.”

Emma Watson had another real-life princess moment; she paid tribute to the heroine she plays in Beauty and the Beast when she stepped out in wearing a sleeveless yellow gown by Dior Haute Couture (much like the one Belle wears in that iconic Beauty and the Beast ballroom scene) when she visited the New York Film Society Kids program. Watson's rendition featured thinner straps and a less voluminous skirt, and was paired with a diamond choker necklace and a few rings.

Also like Belle, Watson shared her love for reading with the children in the audience and read them a passage from Beauty and the Beast. This isn't the only time Watson has aligned with the princess' love for books. In recent months, the actress has been sharing her favorite reads on social media, and hiding novels in cities around the world for random passersby to find and enjoy. Belle would be proud.

For the Chinese premiere of the film in Shanghai, Emma Watson pulled out her most arresting look yet . In a beaded and jeweled champagne Elie Saab Couture gown with a lengthy cape that trailed behind her, Watson looked like she’d stepped out of a fairy tale.