Dave Stutler’s look was a little less eccentric. “I wanted Dave to seem a brilliant but scatterbrained NYU student who was more interested in science than clothes,” says Kaplan. “So his clothes don’t necessary always match. Dave has his little uniform of his hoodie, plaid shirt, blue jeans and sneakers, just stuff that he throws on every day. I wanted it to be cinematic, but not to look like he’d put a lot of time or care into it.”

Kaplan dressed Teresa Palmer’s Becky with effortless elegance in a student-like combination of sweaters, parkas, pants, scarves, blouses, skirts and boots. Alfred Molina’s Maxim Horvath, however, harkens back to the ’20s, the era in which he was imprisoned in the Grimhold; he wears the bowler hat and spats to prove it.

“Horvath is very dapper, very well dressed, always in beautiful suits and coats,” says Kaplan. “I tried to find fabrics that had metallic threads in them. It just added a level of mystique and I thought, perhaps, that his alchemy would work better if there was a fabric which was a conductor of electricity. He has an amazing fur-fringed coat with this material. Horvath wears a different homburg in each one of his scenes.”

Toby Kebbell’s character—complete with three-inch boot heels— drew much enthusiasm. “Drake Stone was so much fun to do,” says Kaplan. “I fashioned him after Las Vegas illusionists, no one in particular, but Drake is more over the top than any of them—he’s a rock star of the magician set. He wears beautiful snakeskin pants in one scene, he has tattoos and wears rings on every finger. Everything is emblazoned with his initials.”

Kaplan traveled through time for Monica Bellucci. “We see Monica Bellucci as Veronica in a few scenes,” says Kaplan. “First, there’s a contemporary costume when Balthazar thinks he sees her on a New York street, which is a trick that Horvath is playing on him. She has two medieval costumes: when she’s in the marketplace with Balthazar in happier times and when she first becomes possessed by Morgana.

“I wanted to find a way to separate Veronica from Morgana when they weren’t separate entities,” continues Kaplan, “so I came up with this idea to do mirrored contact lenses for Monica Bellucci which she wears when Veronica is possessed by Morgana.”

Sun Lok’s armored skirt was comprised of more than 1,000 hand-pounded leather plates, bound row by row…and the costume department fabricated two identical skirts for the character, an enormous amount of hand work by any standard. “I really loved doing the Sun Lok character,” Kaplan says. “Even though Sun Lok’s skirt was pretty accurate—we did lots of research—the rest of the costume was a little bit of a departure from reality. I just had a lot of fun, and Gregory Woo, who was cast as Sun Lok, was so excited about playing the character that he was willing to go along with what we did.”

Kaplan’s team created a hand-painted Chinese robe for the character, embroidered Chinese boots, long talons, metal ear tips and a wide breastplate bearing a dragon image. And not unlike other static creatures in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” this dragon sparks to life. Magically, of course.