AUTUMN 2019 ISSUE 101
EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE
Helen McCrory “In season 5 of Peaky Blinders, we wanted that feeling of Polly still smelling of Gitanes, but now it’s Gitanes with a splash of eau de cologne”
THE FLÂNEUR A celebration of the joys of walking without purpose
DOWNTON ABBEY
Meet the lady who designed the costumes for the big screen version
MAUREEN O’HARA
One of the last interviews with the Hollywood legend
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ISSUE 101
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Interview
HE LE N M c C R O R Y Gustav Temple meets the actress who has played Polly Gray in five seasons of Peaky Blinders, to find out how deeply she has become connected to the character
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For the last few years we’ve worked with Alison McCosh, who sources costumes from museums, costume houses, places people don’t usually use. She’ll go as far as Washington, Barcelona or Rome to find the right piece; she’s as obsessive as I am. So before we even start filming, we’ll have entire outfits, complete with shoes, gloves, earrings, hats, for the entire season. Polly definitely wears her clothes as armour and is comfortable in her own skin.
’ve talked to your co-star Paul Anderson and creator Steven Knight about the men’s styling of Peaky Blinders. What was your experience in the costume department? Did you have any say in what you wear as Aunt Polly? I’m a real pain in the neck when it comes to costume, because it’s really important to me. I’ve always really designed what I’ve been wearing alongside the designer, because it makes an enormous difference to how you move, how you’re perceived and how you feel. So right from the beginning when we started Peaky, I wanted Polly to have a very tight silhouette, so they were saying, ‘This is the period, it’s drop-waist…’ and I said, yeah, I’m not wearing that. We need a corset and a hobble skirt and boots up to the thigh, and everything a size too small, tailored within an inch of its life. We need massive hair, with pins I’m going to stab people with, things I can whip out of fur; I need a gun on the inside thigh in a garter. It should all make me feel a certain way.
“We need a corset and a hobble skirt and boots up to the thigh, and everything a size too small, tailored within an inch of its life.” What can we expect sartorially in season 5? I saw some stills and you looked a bit more masculine than usual, in a sexy Marlene Dietrich sort of way.
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Photo: Robert Viglasky / © Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd. 2019
Matt Squire / © Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd. 2019
It’s important to tell the story via the costumes, so there are a lot of conversations back and forth with each actor. Getting the emotions correct and whether they can move correctly in each costume. So Ada Thorne is a small-town girl who’s gone to America and done quite well. The clothing is a representation of who she now is. She collects art; she’s in a better social circle. So the choices in clothes make her feel like she belongs and she’s valuable and she’s worth it. It’s also reflected in her home styling.
She also said she often finds antique accessories for Polly and adds them to the outfits. Is that unusual, for an actor to bring their own props? If an actor’s on their journey with the character, it’s sometimes important for them to find something they connect with. So I think it’s quite valuable actually; I’m not opposed to that. If there’s a piece that helps them connect with the character, then that’s fantastic. She said you always used authentic vintage outfits. How does this compare to having costumes made from scratch? When you’re doing a period show, it’s important to capture as much period authenticity as possible. I find that today’s fabrics don’t tell the true story. So I find auction houses selling vintage clothes and fabrics, and then I’ll adapt from that. It ends up being a balance between vintage pieces and items made from vintage fabric. Sometimes we’ll have to re-weave a piece back together, but what you get is the right colour. What I’ve found is that when an actor walks into an authentic piece they really feel like they’re becoming the character, and that really helps them transition.
And she wears lots of fur? Yes! Obviously it isn’t PC nowadays, so all the fur is vintage pieces. We were ambivalent at first but decided that fur was correct for the period. For the male actors, how did you tackle taking over from the previous costume designer, with such an established, iconic look? The script really informed me where it should go. Because of Cillian’s character stepping up into the world and having more money, the clothes had to reflect that. So the script really lent itself to allowing me to move the costumes forward and make changes. Is the men’s costume all tailored? Yes, all the male lead’s costumes are tailored, the shirts, suits, hats, ties, everything. At the end of
Do you try to make each female character stand out, with her own look?
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Robert Viglasky / © Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd. 2019
Travel
TEXAS RANGER Sophia Conningsby takes her fishing rod to Texas and swaps it for submachine guns, rattlesnakes and flick knives
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’ve always wanted to go to Texas,” I said to my friend Comic. “Why?” “To see cowboys riding down dirt streets,” I said and he sniggered, looked embarrassed for me and said, “They don’t have cowboys anymore.” I’m from rural Devon and I’ve always been a country woman (except when I was a country child) and, given the choice, will avoid towns and cities. I spend my springs and summers fly-fishing the rivers of Devon. My autumns and winters I hunt with my sparrowhawk. Any time of year will
see me stalking with a gun. I knew that Texas was the state of ‘guns, God and country’ and I wanted to experience their guns and country. God could be experienced by someone else. I took a Vision 9' fly rod with me, a reel and floating line. For some insane reason I forgot to take tippet line, flies, pliers, priest…. I had no intention of hunting in Texas (unless it was offered to me) but I did want to shoot and investigate their countryside. My chap Andy and I flew to Austin, picked up a 4x4 and drove out to a ranch in Christoval, which is nearish to San Angelo (where I saw my first
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DRESSING DOWNTON ABBEY In an exclusive interview for The Chap, costume designer Anna Mary Scott Robbins tells Darcy Sullivan how the looks will change as the beloved show hits movie screens
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Deeper Into The 1920s
hose service bells are about to start tinkling downstairs. Millions of fans around the world are getting ready to visit Downton Abbey again. And while there’s a cosy familiarity about that, things will be different this time. To start with, you’ll be paying for your seat — Downton Abbey returns next month not in a seventh season but as a feature film. The storyline will be bigger too. It’s rare for a TV series to transition to a film with its cast intact — The X-Files may be the last live-action example — and it always entails a grander canvas. The costumes will be different too. Since the beginning, Downton Abbey has been class-A costume porn, its glamorous outfits the bedrock of the show’s appeal. Costume designer Anna Mary Scott Robbins told The Chap that, for a feature film, the only way to go was bigger. “My challenge for the film was to make it feel more cinematic,” says Robbins, who also designed the costumes for the last two series of the programme (2014-2015). “I had to create looks that could stand up on the big screen, so the quality of craftsmanship and original pieces had to be much higher than even on the TV series.”
The film takes place two years after the last series, in 1927. Even the trailer evoked the art deco style of Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby. How will this affect the characters’ looks? “I’m pushing toward a tipping point from the 1920s into the 30s,” Robbins explains. “There isn’t a clock that strikes midnight and it’s the 1930s; it was a gradual shifting. The younger generation would always embrace cutting-edge fashion more than the older, so you’ll see the transition with Lady Mary and Lady Edith more than others. Hemlines were at their shortest; it’s finding those little markers that show the dates. “With the film we had to be quite careful, because we had fewer costumes to tell the story than in the TV series, where we had hundreds of costumes, Here we had to find the signature looks for our favourite characters, but not make them too different. We’re not shifting Lady Mary’s palette, but there were micro trends I wanted to explore – embroidery techniques, frogging, detailing.” For her inspiration, Robbins looked at fashion plates from the time, and the styles of contemporary
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Film