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Holly Waddington: Costume Designer, Harry Potter HBO Series

By Does Your Duck Quack

Holly Waddington: character through clothing

Costume, detail and the everyday

Behind the scenes · Professional credits and original commentary

Holly Waddington is the series’ announced costume designer. She won the 2024 Academy Award for Costume Design for Poor Things.

Official creative department announcement ↗ · Checked 5 September 2026.

Academy Awards entry ↗ · Checked 5 September 2026.

What the role brings

Costume helps make a character’s circumstances visible. Fit, wear, texture and repetition can suggest how clothing is used, cared for or passed on. These choices also need to work with movement, lighting and the physical demands of a scene.

A viewing lens

Compare formal clothing with everyday clothing. What changes when a person wants to belong, impress or go unnoticed? An earlier award demonstrates a credited achievement; it does not establish what Hogwarts clothing will look like.

← Explore the full creative team

Holly Waddington is the costume designer for HBO’s Harry Potter series. She won the 2024 Oscar and BAFTA for the costume design of Poor Things, making that film a useful starting point for readers interested in her earlier work.

Holly Waddington’s confirmed department

Official: HarryPotter.com’s production-start announcement names Waddington as costume designer alongside the other department heads. The creative-team directory puts that role alongside production design, hair and make-up, photography and effects. These are different credited responsibilities, even when their work meets in the same shot.

Our viewing suggestion: begin with a character’s silhouette before looking for decorative details. What can be understood from the overall shape, the way a garment moves and the difference between one person’s clothing and another’s? Costume is particularly enjoyable to discuss when a scene gives several characters a shared setting.

Earlier work and Poor Things

Official: Disney’s UK press kit for Poor Things identifies Waddington as its costume designer and cites Lady Macbeth and War Horse among her previous work. The Academy’s information discusses her work on Poor Things and entries her first Oscar win for Costume Design.

Our suggestion for exploring that film is to choose a costume change and think about what has changed for the character around it. Consider colour, texture and movement together rather than deciding that a single colour must have one fixed meaning. A garment can have a practical job in a scene as well as an expressive one.

For a second look, follow a recurring item rather than an entire wardrobe. Does it seem comfortable, formal, awkward or well used? Those are observations a viewer can test against what is actually visible. They lead to a richer discussion than guessing the designer’s private intentions from a still image.

Oscar and BAFTA recognition

Official: the Academy’s 2024 ceremony page lists Poor Things and Holly Waddington as the winner for Costume Design. BAFTA’s costume-design history independently lists the film and Waddington as its 2024 winner. These award-body entries establish the category, production and year.

Our recommendation is to let those awards lead you towards the work and its collaborators. Costume does not appear in isolation: it is photographed, lit and worn by somebody moving through a setting. A strong discussion can recognise the credited designer while also noticing how the finished scene depends on the wider production.

Where to watch and what to notice

Official service checked on 17 October 2026: Disney+ has a UK page for Poor Things. Confirm current account access on the service itself. Read the film’s own age and content information; its suitability does not follow from Waddington’s later work on Harry Potter.

Our Hogwarts reading exercise: choose one scene involving school clothes and ask what the clothing tells you about belonging. Is the character trying to look like everybody else, trying to stand apart or simply concentrating on getting through the day? Those questions can be enjoyable for readers of different ages without requiring a purchase or a specialist vocabulary.

When television footage is available, compare a costume in motion with a promotional still you are allowed to view at its official source. A moving scene reveals how the wearer sits, runs or turns, and how the costume behaves in a group. Keep attention on those visible details rather than attempting to assign a hidden production explanation to everything.

For your own fan art, take the broad reading question and invent an original solution. Label the result as an illustration and avoid tracing an official photograph. The site’s image policy explains the distinction between original artwork and production imagery.

Continue with production departments, Mark Mylod and the Hogwarts guide.

A detail worth comparing

Our design exercise: describe one outfit using three ordinary observations about shape, material and movement. Then explain how it feels different from another outfit in the same scene. Avoid beginning with a hidden meaning; start with what is visible and let the interpretation follow. This keeps a discussion welcoming for somebody without design training and makes it easier to revisit the scene and see whether the observation still holds.

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