"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" costume designer Jany Temime has been accused of fashion plagiarism by fans of the late designer Alexander McQueen.
Temime has come under fire from fashion industry insiders who claim that she ripped off an acclaimed design by McQueen for a climactic scene in which Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy) marries Bill Weasley (Domhnall Gleeson) while wearing a 'phoenix' wedding dress that bares more than a passing resemblance to McQueen's iconic peacock dress from his autumn/winter 2008 collection.
TheWrap's requests for comment from Warner Bros. and Temime's representation at Gersh were not immediately returned Wednesday.
Costume designers frequently take their cues from high fashion, as Variety critic Leslie Felperin notes of Oscar winner Sandy Powell in her review of Julie Taymor's "The Tempest," but the reason bloggers are up in arms over Temime's reinterpretation of McQueen's design is that she failed to give him proper credit in a recent interview with the L.A. Times in which she discusses her inspiration for the "Deathly Hallows" costumes, particularly the dress in question.
"For the wedding dress, I wanted it to be a witch wedding dress but not a Halloween dress. The dress is white but it needed to have something fantastic to it. So there is the phoenix [motif], the bird, which is a symbol of love in a way because there is rebirth, love never dies, it is born again. So we have that in front of the dress to give a feeling of eternal love. It was the symbol of Dumbledore, too, but it is the symbol of love for the dress," explained Temime.
McQueen's dress famously featured peacocks, and while Temime did alter the crest on the birds' heads to make them more 'phoenixy', she didn't change any other details, including the peacock feathers detailed on the back of the dress.
Coincidences happen all the time in the film and fashion industries, but this one appears a little too close for comfort.
Warner Bros. will release "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" in 2D on Nov. 19. Don't be surprised if the closing credits address this costume controversy with a special thank you to McQueen, which, as InContention suggests, would be the right thing to do in this unfortunate scenario.
