Once Upon A Time Costume Research

Once Upon a Time is an American fairy tale television series on ABC. The show takes place in the fictional seaside town of Storybrooke, Maine, whose residents are characters from various fairy tales transported to the "real world" town and robbed of their real memories by a powerful curse. It follows the heroine Emma Swan as she protects the town and its inhabitants from various curses and villains, sometimes involving travelling to other realms. Most episodes involve flashbacks telling its numerous characters' stories.

Eduardo Castro is the costume designer for Once Upon A Time. They import a lot of different fabric to get the right effects; they try to stay true to the Disney film for certain characters such as Elsa and Anna. One of Eduardo Castro's favourite pieces is Robin Hood’s costume, because of the detail and time that went into the piece.

The easiest piece for Castro to design was Snow White's wedding dress as it was the first costume to be designed and approved immediately by the network. It was very modern yet extravagant because of the feathers yardage from Paris. They fitted and constructed is in Los Angeles along with the "Evil Queen's" Costume; all other costumes were constructed in Vancouver. The most elaborate costume was Rumplestitlskin's, the first costume they came up with was rejected by the network although it was aesthetically pleasing it didn’t give off the message of danger and mystery, it was the first costume made in Vancouver. They got the idea of alligator skins when one of his assistants brought in a piece.

The most difficult costume was the "Siren" costume, it had to look good on two actresses and had to come out of water and back in, it had to do many things. They went through lots of different colours and materials before ending up with white stretchy white velvet, which they embellished with beaded embroidery. 

Castro continued to use feathers in black and red also imported from Paris. The fabrics in general for the Evil Queen are of the highest quality embellished silks and velvets, leather and heavy beading add to a “Luxe” feel.

“Rumple came about all by instinct; none of the costumes were over rationalized I went simply with my gut feeling most of the time. When my assistant brought me the baby Alligator skins, there was something very creepy about them, so we kept that tone through his designs, we added fur for his final sword fight with Charming and in his episode with “Belle’ we made his costumes rather elegant and were made of silk and brocades."

 Lots of his work was inspired by fairy tales but also modernised to help link each character, he also wanted to make sure the characteristics came through the actors clothes.