Extracted from Harry Potter Film Wizardry

In the first two films, the players’ robes were quite thick. However, for the match in Prisoner of Azkaban, the players wore lighter, sportier robes with their names and numbers on the back.

‘The idea,’ says costume designer Jany Temime, ‘was to create a look that kids who watch football, rugby, or whatever would recognise so that they would instantly see Quidditch as a sport.’

In Half-Blood Prince, the Quidditch players were given modern tracksuit-style clothes for training, but their match gear was a sophisticated blend of the contemporary and the historical. The elbow and knee pads and helmets they don during games are reminiscent of the protective wear worn by early American football players, while the padded leather arm, chest and shin guards are reminiscent of the kind of body armour worn by sportsmen in Edwardian England.

This sort of padding was needed because, according to director David Yates, Quidditch is a violent sport. For him, the championship game between Gryffindor and Slytherin represents ‘the terrible violence that Quidditch entails. It always looks really fun, but when you’re flying along on a broomstick at 60mph, whenever you collide or don’t get the Quaffle and end up falling about 50 feet, it’s very precarious.’