The Fashion Designer Behind Nicole Kidman’s Iconic Dress in ‘Practical Magic’ is Still Making Magic, One Hand-Dyed Garment At a Time

Fashion designer Monah Li’s jewel-toned velvet dresses have become the unofficial uniform for hot witches, thanks in no small part to their appearances on Stevie Nicks, Cher, Nicole Kidman, and the sisters of “Charmed.” If you have a Pinterest account, you’ve likely seen her silhouettes before, made synonymous with a witchy nineties mysticism most famously epitomized by the green dress worn by Gillian Owens (Nicole Kidman) in 1998’s “Practical Magic.” The dressmaker is still making garments today out of her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, many of which are inspired by the very design featured in the witchy cult classic. 

Li never set out to dress witches or celebrities; instead, they found her. “I'm not a witch myself,” Li states at the onset of our interview, “[but] I totally get why everybody wants to be one.” Adorned in a fabulous green dress of her own design, Li exudes a free-spirited mysticism on par with the characters she helped costume. When it comes to all things pop culture, Li is remarkably out of the loop. Growing up in Austria without television, Li had to find other ways to entertain herself. “I resented it big time then, but I'm glad now because that's how I learned to do things instead of being entertained,” Li says. 

To this day, she remains blissfully disconnected from the pop culture moments she helped create. Li learned that her design was in “Practical Magic” only last year while scrolling through Reddit, nearly three decades after the film’s release. Upon searching her name on Google, she found a post inquiring about the original designer of Gillian’s green dress, which she recognized to be her own design. “While it was happening, I was the last one to know. At night I would be in 12 step meetings and I never had a TV,” Li says. After watching the film for the first time in 2025, Li identified a few upcycled cashmere cardigans from her children’s line on younger actors in the film.

The film’s costume designer, Judianna Makovsky, purchased the garment from Fred Segal and refashioned it into a dress based on a different, adjacent Monah Li design. The end result has distinctive hook-and-eye closure with a velvet bust and a bias-cut skirt based on Li’s dresses. Li’s friend—who worked at Fred Segal in the nineties—recalls selling the exact top to Makovsky at the then iconic LA clothing store. At the time, Li operated a boutique in Los Feliz and sold select garments to Fred Segal, her biggest stockist. 

Li continues to make dresses on a piece-by-piece, commissioned basis. “I make every dress like my life depends on it, and [the fact] that other people like it is just extreme luck,” Li says. Her dresses are available on a made-to-order basis via direct message outreach on Instagram, @monahli, and at the weekly El Museo flea market in Santa Fe. “I like the slowness of it. I put so much of myself in every dress I make,” Li says.

Today, her process is even slower, and more sustainable, than it was when she ran production in the ’90s. Customers describe what they want and send a few reference pictures to Li, who uses their input to make sketches. Once approved, her designs are repurposed out of old rayon garments from the eighties and embellished with antique laces and buttons. Bringing new life into vintage pieces requires removing the fabric’s existing dye. After dyeing everything in one color, Li awaits the big reveal. “I never know how it's gonna come out, and that's one of the reasons I have never been bored, even though I've been doing this for 50 years,” Li says.

In light of Gen Z’s newfound interest in “Practical Magic,” Li has gotten back in touch with the same Los Angeles sample maker she used in 1994 to help her meet the demand for modern-day replicas of the dress. She continues to follow the most sustainable of business models, custom-making the dresses one at a time. “Even [my sample maker] is cutting each dress one by one, because it's a very difficult dress to make,” Li explains. “You cannot cut 100 pieces at once.” After her 30-year stint making dresses in Los Angeles, Li is currently looking for a factory in Albuquerque to do small runs.

While witchcraft has come to define Li’s brand identity in the public eye (or at least the Pinterest eye) Li does not conceptualize her brand in the same explicitly magical framework. “I haven't come up with a real word to describe [my brand],” Li says. “I just make what I want to see, and when I was much younger I never felt pretty, so I felt like a dress was gonna save my life. It was like my religion in a way, and I think it still is.”