LOLO’s detailed costumes in Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe
LOLO designs haute couture costumes for the park employees and topical settings inside the Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe theme park in Florida, US. From June 2025, the adventure park showcases the detailed and thorough craftsmanship by the London-based design studio for the location’s The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic and Dark Universe. LOLO’s founder, Laurent Guinci, sits down with designboom and lets us into the studio’s design process, one that studies eachworld’s backstory, periods, colors, and materiality, to name a few.
He tells us in our interview, ‘we design costumes that belong to a world, whether we’re designing the waterpark, wizarding world, or epic universe, the approach is always the same. It’s story, fashion, function for the garments. We try to have the same energy in the designs that we bring. Everything is character driven. This is why I call them costumes. They’re not staff uniforms anymore.’ For the founder, it’s about bringing an element of fashion into our garments and an immersive experience so that visitors live and feel as if they were in the world that the costumes refer to, such as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, alongside the Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe.
Dobby’s costume for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic | all images courtesy of Universal, unless stated
Design process from sketches and fabrics to accessories
LOLO’s costume design process begins with a brief from the Universal’s team. The research process starts, and it takes the team into studying and explaining each of the world’s background stories and identities. ‘We treat each world like a couture house. They all have their own palettes and tailoring language, their DNA. No matter how many worlds we juggle with, LOLO designs them from inside out. We try to be faithful to our language and the message we want to show,’ says the studio founder. He adds that no matter what the lands they need to design the costumes for, they easily jump from one world to another. They go from Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe theme park to Fantastic Beasts, 1930s Paris, then to a more modern Harry Potter, and even to Nintendo and Minions, the projects they’ve worked on before. Laurent Guinci shares with designboom that it’s about juggling all these projects and having different views and approaches for each of them.
‘Despite the fact that we do a creative job, there’s a certain discipline in our way of working that allows us to shift gears while keeping every stitch grounded to the storytelling and the style of what we want to show,’ he says. The design team develops sketches, selects fabrics, and chooses accessories for each costume. Some characters receive items like wand holsters, umbrellas, or jewelry pieces. Others need hidden support structures to work with animatronic elements. Take The Wizarding World section, which combines elements from 1920s wizarding Paris and the British Ministry of Magic. Staff costumes include period-appropriate clothing for ministry workers, ride attendants, and other characters. Dark Universe features gothic horror themes based on classic Universal monster movies, including Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man stories. These pieces, so detailed in their visuals, create the horror atmosphere that their respective movies have long made the viewers experience.
haute couture costumes for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Ministry of Magic on stage
printed linings and frayed hems add to worldbuilding
LOLO has worked on previous Universal projects, including Volcano Bay water park and Universal Beijing Resort. The studio also designed costumes for Super Nintendo World in Osaka and Warner Bros. Studio Tours in London and Tokyo. Designing the costumes for Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe is already informed by the myriad of haute couture experiences of the founder and his team, not to mention charged by his degrees in Mathematics, Astronomy and Physics and backgrounds in fashion, design, and long-term working in the movie industry. It’s these combinations that also allow him to emphasize the costumes’ storytelling through clothing details. Small elements like printed linings, frayed hems, or shaped clasps contribute to character development and worldbuilding, and while these details may go unnoticed individually, they create overall realistic settings for the visitors.
‘One example is a garment we created for the new Ministry characters at Epic Universe, a kind of elegant bureaucrat in a magical world. We layered pinstriped civil servant tailoring with Wizarding collar gowns infused with a cinematic blue and purple palette reminiscent of films, but also the fact that Shacklebolt is head of the MOM, and I wanted this to come out in the costumes of the Staff at the MOM,’ Laurent Guinci explains to designboom. The end result was a three-piece ensemble that felt and looked steeped in realism touched by something fantastical. ‘That’s a LOLO hallmark: fashion history colliding with fiction,’ he says. In the rest of our interview with the designer and LOLO’s studio founder, he walks us through the hidden animatronic-support structures in some costumes, the design and detail requirements of the costumes, and how the studio ensures coherence in their visuals, as well as turning these works of art and design into objects outside of Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe.
costume for Dugold McPhail | all costume views courtesy of LOLO
Interview with LOLO’s studio founder Laurent Guinci
Designboom (DB): Each costume reflects the kind of setting that’s tailored to a particular theme park or setting. What does your research phase look like? When you receive a brief, for example, from Universal, how do you go from having this concept to actual designs?
Laurent Guinci (LG): A lot of research goes into it, as well as team effort. We usually get the idea and then look into the script if there’s a script. We do our research in terms of historical period documents. We also work by feelings and fashionable elements we could include in our presentations, and we look at color schemes we want to use for the designs of the costumes.
Then, we either work individually and regroup or start working as a group and go in different directions. We develop prints according to the period and the job, and that part of the job is important because it allows us to work quickly afterwards and make decisions and directions. I manage to have a vision quickly of what I want, and once we’ve got all those mood boards established, we know what direction to take and move forward from there.
view of the Librarian Ghost’s costume
DB: How do you go with the color schemes? Is it based on the research you were doing, or is it more intuitive, as you mentioned you also have partly intuitive feelings for this?
LG: Different elements and concepts depend on the environment. Sometimes I decide to go as per intuitions. It’s a lot of feeling, but it also depends on the environment we want to create. For example, when we create for Harry Potter, we try to be down to earth and faithful to the films and the color scheme in the films. The colors are important to me. Sometimes I joke that what you see as blue and what I see as blue are two different colors.
Still, we are accurate with the pantones we want to use. For example, the bathroom in the films is from the 1990s, but the costumes we created for Epic Universe are from the 1930s. It’s still blue, but it’s a different blue. It’s still blue, but it’s more powdery. I wanted to feel that period element by looking at the color.
costume view of Cassandra Trelaney
DB: What are the usual materials you work with, and have you experimented with biomaterials or alternative materials in your costumes?
LG: In terms of theme park work and costumes for the show, one thing we are conscious about is the quantity and the needs in operation. Unfortunately, we are not able to use materials we would normally use on a film or on a one-off garment in a video (for example, silk is a no when you use it in a theme park because they want to wash it many times). We have a clear idea of the feel, the texture, and the way the fabric is woven, but at times we have to compromise because the operation found a fabric that is more suitable and because they need to wash it 100 times and it still needs to feel alive.
I’m pushing the boundaries in terms of finishes, stitches, and raw edges. Some of the costumes have stitches and paint with different effects. When I first started, raw edges were something the clients didn’t want to hear about. The first time I talked about distressing or damaging a garment, it was outrageous for them, but now they understand that according to world we want to show, we have to come to this at times.
studio founder Laurent Guinci tells us they ‘design costumes that belong to a world’
DB: So it’s constant innovation and generation of ideas.
LG: This is why LOLO has been successful. As you said early in this interview, we don’t treat them as staff uniforms. We treat them as costumes. It’s a fashion statement we bring into the theme park.
DB: They’re a fashion statement, and some of the costumes even have animatronics installed. Did you face any technical challenges in terms of combining or retaining that feel of the costumes while using technology, including the overall weight and flexibility?
LG: This is where my years on films became handy (I also worked on the technical side of films). When we have to work with animatronics, I feel comfortable and face all the problems and see first what the movement is. If an animatronic moves the arms all the time, then there’s going to be a problem with the fabrics there. On films, you learn to adapt quickly and efficiently. It’s the same process I have in theme parks when they talk to me about animatronics, like in the dark ride at Epic Universe or Hagrid for the motorbike rides in the Wizarding World. It’s different work because the fabrics need to be more durable.
the visuals are character driven
LG (continue): A lot of the time they need to be lined with different materials so they don’t create friction or interfere with the wires or the mechanism. You think differently about the way you cut your costume or have wider sleeves because the arms are going to go up and down. You adapt to the movement and the environment.
For example, talking about the Hagrid ride, not that you see it or anyone would know because the costume looks identical to the one in the film. But that costume is completely weatherproof because Hagrid is in the outside elements. He is in the hut, which is covered, but the hut is open to the elements. In Orlando, we have to protect it from humidity, heat, and rain. Despite the fact that you don’t realize it, that costume is completely different and treated as a totally different element. We do not use silk on this garment.
costume view of Simon Merchant
DB: You’ve designed many collections. Do you have a costume or masterwork that you resonate with?
LG: As a designer, I evolve all the time. At one time I would have one favorite or one thing that inspires me, then I do another job and like that one instead. There have been influential designs in my path, however. The designs I did for the Hulk were influential in my work because we won an award for it. Then, the work we did for Skull Island was the same. Then, we jumped to Volcano Bay and got awards for it, too. It’s a progression.
There are designs I love more because I’ve matured and put more effort into them. Now Universal, or other clients like Warner Brothers, are not scared of trusting us and pushing our creative envelope. They let us do things we didn’t have the liberty to do at the beginning. It’s more satisfying. Do I have a favorite costume? No. They all have a reason to be. They all have a raison d’être, as we say in French. They have a purpose in the story they’re telling and a fashion statement to make, whether it’s bringing a period element into something more modern or linking a fashion element into a theme park.
costume view of Mad-Eye Moody
DB: Do you see your costumes and designs living outside their designated collections?
LG: Some of them are. Some of our elements or graphics are taken into merchandising. For me, this is the most rewarding thing. It’s like an evolution of my costumes and designs into another step. It’s never just about the costume. It’s wearable storytelling. The fact that our pieces or accessories or a print influence merchandising and they use it to do something else, I’m proud of it. It allows visitors to have a bit of the world we create.
It’s not cosplay anymore. It’s fashion from one of our universes. We are currently exploring a full merchandising collection where guests can wear the world they live in. I’m fashion forward and fashion thinking. There are great technologies in fabrics now. Some are expensive to develop, but there are more techniques we can use.
Frankenstein’s haute couture costume at Dark Universe
LG (continues): I’m keen to get inspired, go to shows, and see new products we could use. I’m interested in shapes and comfort because if we design a staff uniform, my main objective is comfort. Of course I try to do something beautiful, but it’s got to be stretched, comfortable, with gussets when needed or elasticated bands on the waistband you don’t see at the back. I keep grabbing ideas from shows, exhibits, or magazines.
A lot of it is from my gut. I like to be different and grow all the time. I like to change things. I like to offer something slightly different all the time. It’s fresh, new, and interesting. It’s not déjà vu. It’s about offering something new all the time in the products we do. Talking about evolution and being in an immersive environment, we design so that fashion becomes atmosphere. This is a very important vision we have.
view of the Wolf Man costume at Dark Universe
elements like printed linings add to worldbuilding of the costumes
project info:
theme park: Universal Orlando’s Epic Universe
studio: LOLO | @lolocreativedesign
founder: Laurent Guinci | @laurentguinci
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