A black velvet cocktail dress with an internal corset, ripped hem and petticoat of white multi-layered silk mousseline was stunning; a floor-length gown in black velvet, with white beads shimmering along the throat and down the curves of a plunging back view was more Angelina Jolie than Maleficent, and all the better for it.
On the other hand, the whole point of this remake – and others, such as Maleficent, that are part of the same revisionist live-action project – is to reorient ancient name-brand Disney material for the Katy Perry generation, and Branagh turns out to be exactly the man for that job.
It is arguably not haute couture's finest hour when the muses of the day, in what is supposedly the most refined and sophisticated branch of fashion, are two children's movie heroines: Maleficent at Jean Paul Gaultier, and Frozen's Elsa at Elie Saab.
First, though, we will see her in Maleficent, a film about Sleeping Beauty's baddie, starring Angelina Jolie.
In 1982 a Tennessee construction journal carried on its cover a "wanted" poster of Paul Volcker and the other six Fed governors—"The Maleficent Seven"—accusing them of "premeditated and cold-blooded murder of millions of small businesses".
By denigrating reason, celebrating impulse and advocating repression and tyranny in the name of a loosely defined "general will", Rousseau's thinking, argues Mr Blom, was actively maleficent (and, unsurprisingly, venerated by Robespierre).
She later assumed the role of the titular villain in Maleficent (2014).
Because the Gnostics of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, who generally originated within Christianity, regarded the material world as outright evil or as the product of error, Archons were viewed as maleficent forces.
The masks representing beneficent and maleficent sacred or holy forces in religious dances particularly in Buddhist monasteries of Nepal, Tibet, and Japan and in many other societies constitute another category of sacred representational objects.
Jolie, who will next be seen on the big screen in the film Maleficent having not appeared in a movie since 2010, easily surpassed this year's Best Actress Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, who came in second with $26 million, and pushed Kristen Stewart of the Twilight series, who topped the list last year, into third place with earnings of $22 million.
"Aurora, there is an evil in this world and I cannot keep you from it," says Maleficent, moments before the princess pricks her finger on that fateful enchanted spinning wheel.
