The Sanderson Sisters are back and more glorious than ever in Hocus Pocus 2.
Sure, Thackery Binx once told the witchy trio that there were not enough children in the world to make them young and beautiful. But with one man's magical touch, Winnifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy) flew into 2022 in style.
That fashion wizard was, of course, Salvador Perez, known for his work on The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever.
Known for his work on The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever, the costume designer and president of the the Costume Designers Guild told E! News that he was "so giddy" when he got the call about working on the highly anticipated sequel, admitting, "I have probably seen Hocus Pocus 40 times."
As a fan of the 1993 movie, Perez—the president of the Costume Designers Guild—found it tricky to strike the right the balance between paying homage to the original costumes created by Mary Voght and updating the witchy trio's looks for the Disney+ follow-up.
You're trying to reinvent the costumes," Perez explained. "Don't make them too identical but don't change them so drastically that they lose their soul."
So, he relied on Voght, a close friend of his, for advice on how she crafted those looks in the '90s.
"One of the things that I asked Mary about was 'What are the symbols on the costumes? What do they mean?'" Perez shared. "She said, 'We just made stuff up. There was no real meaning behind them.'"
Adding significant details to the costumes was a priority for director Anne Fletcher, who Perez said advised him "to give everything a backstory. Don't just arbitrarily put it on it. Give it a meaning and a bit of history."
So, prepare to run amok, amok, amok as Perez breaks down how he managed to update the iconic costumes for each of the Sanderson sisters. Plus, he reveals the hidden messages you might have missed:
A longtime fan of Bette Midler's, costume designer Salvador Perez admitted he's "still giddy" that he got to work with her even though he was "intimated."
"Here she is coming into my fitting and I have to reinvent the wheel for her," he explained. "At first, she was like, 'What are you doing? This is different.'"
And though Perez admitted the actress had "a lot of opinion," she was involved throughout the process. So much so that he said "she really trusted me and called on me for small details—even for the lipstick and the nails, she wanted my input."
The first step in recreating Winnie's green gown was updating the color "because the original movie was done on film, and this was done digitally," Perez shared. "The director of photography said, 'You cannot go too dark because it will disappear.' So, as opposed to that emerald green, we went for a dark charmeuse."
Next, Perez focused on her boots, which he described as "a 1990s heel that they literally put a pointy toe on" in the original movie. "I was like, ‘No, no, no. We are going to have actual custom shoes made with the toe on them."
While she's only in one scene, Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham makes quite the glamorous entrance in the movie's opening flashback that gives fans' the backstory of the Sanderson sisters.
"My question was, 'Does she have to be mean, does she have to scary?'" Perez said of plotting out the new character's look. "And [director] Anne Fletcher was like, 'No, she has to be gorgeous, she has to be stunning.'"
So, Perez and team went what he called "full glamour," giving her a detailed blood red gown with hand beaded crystals.
As for Mother Witch's showstopping cloak? That was inspired by the raven she turns into. "We wanted the cape to look like the bird," Perez explained. "So the shoulders are shredded silk so it can look like feathers."
For her part, Waddingham had one just request.
"In the fitting, we had train very long and I was going to cut it," he explained. "Hannah put it on and was like, 'Don't you dare cut my train! I want every bit of it.' I was like, 'Honey, you're going to be in the forest!' But she got on set and she worked [it]. She just loved her cape."
Of course, the key element of Winnie's ensemble is her green cloak. For the original movie, it was dyed fabric green and then sprayed with bleach to get the pattern. As Perez joked, "I'm like, 'That's not very 17th century!'"
For the 2022 take on the iconic piece, he hand-embroidered a silk-velvet fabric with real crystals before adding a pattern of the three moons and the three goddesses so that it would tell the story of Winnie's witchy origin.
"You see them on the Mother Witch first," he revealed of the symbols. "Winnie was inspired by the Mother Witch, so the symbols are on her arm and then Winnie put them on her coat."
As for the buckles on her cloak, the original design was two silver snakes, which Perez replaced with forest trees, the moon and a pentagram with the same malachite stone. "There were going to be two of them, but in the fitting, Bette was like, 'They're too big, let's just do one!'" he recalled. "If that's what Bette wants, that's what Bette gets!"
The brooch connected Winnie to the Mother Witch, who had the same pattern but with a carnelian gemstone. As he shared, "I just wanted to have a back history of where all this came from."
Because Sarah Jessica Parker was filming And Just Like That... while Perez was prepping the costumes, he flew from Los Angeles to New York three times to go to Parker's home to update the flighty sister's look. And the experience was a memorable one for Perez.
"Putting her into the costume for the first time, I have these great fitting videos of her just twirling in her bathroom," Perez said, "because she loved the movement and it was light and moved so well."
After playing one of TV's biggest fashion icons, Parker had a lot of ideas about the costume, specifically the gown's sleeves, which were mesh in the original movie.
"She was like, 'Well, what would be more authentic? Could they be more spider-webby?'" he recalled. "And I was like, 'Well, why don't we literally have spiderwebs?' I worked with a knitter who actually crocheted individual spiderwebs and then joined them to make the sleeves."
The new additions were made out of cashmere, both because it would "look pretty and have a gossamer feel, " Perez said, but also because it would keep Parker warm while they filmed in 30-degree weather.
When Perez asked Kathy Najimy what she disliked about her OG look, she noted it was too heavy for her back. So, he set out to solve the issue, which was no easy feat as Perez was specifically looking for a tartan print that look similar and authentic for the time period.
An unexpected run-in with RuPaul's Drag Race costume designer Zaldy in New York City lead him to a fabric store where "they had this one piece of textured silk that was almost identical to the pattern of Mary's original apron," Perez explained. "It was just kismet and there was just enough left to make the eight I had to make it."
The final touch on updating Mary's look was swapping out the metal curtain rod rings that were used—"I was like, 'Well, that's not cool,'" Perez admitted—with custom-made brass pieces made by a jeweler that were engraved with "air, earth, fire, water" in Sigils, a wiccan language.
"It's little things that fans aren't going to see, but Kathy knew they were there," Perez said. "Everything has a story behind it."
When it came to Winnifred's zombie ex-boyfriend, played by Doug Jones, Perez looked for practicality.
"In the first movie, the three ladies disintegrated so I justified them having new clothes," he explained. "But Billy went back into the grave, so my plan was to have him look as identical as possible to the original costume."
Fortunately, Perez had access to the original outfit and ultimately found a similar fabric to match. The only issue? The stripes were too far apart. "I had my workroom take that fabric," Perez said, "cut it up and re-sow it back together so they were one inch apart."
Perez explained that the lace on his shirt and sleeves in the original movie was the very same fabric that Winnie had on her dress, which he was not a fan of. "I thought, ‘no, no,'" he said with a laugh. "I found a really beautiful French Chantilly lace that this was in this weird teal, spooky green color. I understand why no one ever bought it, but it was great for him."
The lace on his shirt and sleeves in the original movie was the very same fabric that Winnie had on her dress, which Perez was not a fan of. "I thought, 'No, no,'" he said with a laugh. "I found a really beautiful French Chantilly lace that this was in this weird teal, spooky green color. I understand why no one ever bought it, but it was great for him."
Of course, after making the updated costume, the final step was, as Perez explained, to "literally destroy" it to make it seem as though Billy had been wearing it for 100s of years.
"We almost went too far," Perez admitted. "Doug put it on and he said, 'Is this the same costume?' He thought it was the real one because it looked that close."
A challenge for Perez was having the movie's new coven—high school students Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) and Becca (Lilia Buckingham)—"harken" back to the Sanderson sisters in an organic way.
"How do you do it subtly where people get it but it's not so obvious?" Perez wondered, adding that each actress' costume mirrored one of the colors of the older witches. "You don't really see them, but we made them these little charms that they all wear that have wiccan symbols on them and then they have stones that match the ladies. There's witchcraft in their world, so there are these cute little charms they wear that have peridote, garnite and amethyst."
In one of the movie's most extravagant scenes, the Sanderson sisters take the stage to perform a musical number with RuPaul's Drag Race alums Ginger Minj, Kahmora Hall and Kornbread "The Snack" Jeté, who are all dressed as drag versions of the trio.
While Perez and his team had months to work on the costumes for Midler, Parker and Najimy, they had just three days to finish the drag queens' gowns.
"There has to be this whimsy," he shared. "It's a drag queen! It's over the top!" For Perez, that meant "lots of trim, lots of glitter and make it fancier."
Perez made sure to sprinkle in nods to the original Hocus Pocus through the costumes—including a pair dressed up as the late Garry and Penny Marshall's characters. He also put Buckingham in a tie-dye shirt as an homage to Omri Katz's Max Dennison. And, one of the biggest Easter eggs was, as Perez put it, "a happy accident."
"If you look at pictures of Winnie's coat with the broach at the center, without trying, it looks like Mickey Mouse," Perez revealed. "We didn't do it on purpose! After our first day of shooting...I was like, 'What? Oh my god, I put Mickey on a costume. I am so going to get fired for this!'"
Hocus Pocus 2 is streaming on Disney+.