"Bridgerton" Costumes Are A Historical Mess, But They Kinda Work

wow that's flawless bridgeton costumes if you thought you're getting a jane austen style show you're mistaken i'd say the overall mood of the series is like jane austen fanfic or like regency era fanfic in general as in it's how we imagine regency era was like it also maybe it's just me but it also feels very what americans think british people are like so before we jump into costumes just a disclaimer that yes i do understand that not everything is actually damn it my clock is ticking i should silence it so yeah i do know that not everything about costume design when it comes to period dramas has to be about accuracy accuracy accuracy and a lot of it is the designers and the show runners preferences it embodies the ideas they had about the show but i still like to analyze what would you know fit into era that the show is set in and what is like a total no-no so i was thinking about it i don't think i will do the usual unpacking of like every character's styles and particular dresses because well there's a lot of people and there is a lot of costumes in this series but focusing on like the overall feel and style of the designs and costumes in the series they all have a very plastic feel to them as in you can tell that none of the fabrics are made from natural fibers you can tell that the jewelry feels plastic the wigs feel plastic sometimes you can basically just sense the piles of polyester from a distance and you know that is not always a bad thing it often can add something new to this design and you know you can find a lot of great looking polyester or plastic fabrics but something about it it just ain't it i found this really interesting interview with the show's costume designer and i can't pronounce the name but where it said that the fashion in bridger tone is an interpretation of what people would have been wearing at the time but with a contemporary upgrade for example the featherington family wears floral prints in bright pinks yellows and oranges which feel more 2020s than 1810 and the heavy jaw embellishments on the gowns are more extravagant than they would have been in the actual time period so the designer wanted to overlay the look of the regency era with a bit of a modern sensibility make it aspirational intriguing and with somewhat of a layer that would actually be very imaginative modernizing historical clothing for the sake of storytelling works best when you respect the basic fashion rules of the era respect the drip karen for example in the favorite they used completely modern fabrics but it wasn't as jarring because the silhouette of the mantua dress which was the most common dress at the time was still there characters also have pretty historically accurate hairstyles so even though the costumes are nothing that would have been worn in 1704 or whatever it's said you still get the feel of the era while at the same time achieving the unique aesthetic that the designer had in mind i think the same goes with anna karenina to a certain degree some costumes are more 1950s dior than 1870s russia but because they stuck to a particular silhouette the bustled dresses the tight bodices the off-shoulder sleeves in ball gowns you just don't feel taken out of the story the biggest problem for me with modernizing historical fashion is that in order for it to really work you have to have a clear understanding of what you're modernizing because you know you could say those awful cheap halloween costumes are modernized too but are they good so without understanding your source material and without doing an extensive research on the period it is very difficult to create a believable costume style and with bridgerton i feel like it was mixed some of the outfits and costumes worked really well because they applied the principles of regency era fashion and some simply did not did not work i'd say some were balancing on rain level bad and there is several reasons for that so first of all historical dresses and historical costumes are very labor intense and that shows like if you if you look at accident garments the number of pleats gathers raffles embroidery honeycomb gathering it's it's just insane it's nothing like we see nowadays even in odd couture it's rarely this level and that's why it's so difficult to recreate that for a film because it's just so much work and obviously with the film industry there is very limited time to do that which is why most designers stay away from the styles and trends from the era that are too intense so in most of the cases there is only a couple of very complicated garments in one movie or show and in that aspect bridgerton seems like an impossible freaking job and i'm really impressed by the designer taking it on the series wardrobe was apparently over 7 000 pieces so it makes absolute sense that a lot of these pieces were not super complex they they had a whole big-ass scene with a court presentation and sierra court gowns are one of the most complex dresses i've ever seen that being said some of the designs in the series looked like a high school jane austen style costume and i guess the bright colors and the modern patterns florals and all that stuff didn't necessarily help removing that impression because that's exactly what a teenage seamstress would make like no disrespect to high school so it's out there i've been there we all start somewhere but that's not necessarily the level a big budget tv show should aspire to you know what i mean another regency era fashion rule was that dresses were not made of embroidered fabric fabric was embroidered to be made into dresses so embroidery replacement wasn't random it was usually symmetrical and very well thought through and obviously you would not have a whole dress heavily embroidered because it would take years to do it like they did it by hand and no one was that rich and it's something that the regular viewer probably won't notice but to me it made a lot of difference like think about the embroidered pink dress in emma which was based on an accident garment think about embroidery replacement there versus daphne or featherington sister's dresses another thing is the fit so despite the whole oh we only wear dresses once and then throw them away and we buy new ones trope red and sierra women actually didn't own that many clothes every single piece was handmade it was pre-sewing machine era it was extremely expensive the fabric was expensive and you simply couldn't afford a new gown for every ball you attend most of the wealthy people usually got new stuff at the very beginning of the season for the whole season which lasted a couple of months and that one or two dresses would have been impeccably fit and not fit as in damn this bridge are done you look fit but fit as in actually fitting your body perfectly and not a single piece of fabric would be redundant simply because you just couldn't afford that and dresses back then were also made in a way that allowed numerous alterations so depending on whether you lost weight you gained weight your body changed you would just alter your dress to make it fit you better it wasn't that uncommon to take a little bit in or a little bit out to adjust the dress to your changing body and some dresses in the series well they just don't fit they don't fit one of my biggest pet peeves with regency era is the overbooked bodice which is when the bodice is too short and cuts your boobs in half and you can see the rest of the book peeking out like underneath the bodice it's just you know i've been there i've done that myself it ain't right if you can show off your boobs why not do that you know another thing is timing and cause inconsistency so the show is apparently set in 1813 that's what they say at the very beginning then we have flashbacks to simon's childhood and lady danbury wears 1780s fashions which kind of makes sense if you count like how young he would be back then but back in 1813 the queen and her court is dressing something that looks 1770s sometimes even earlier than that like 1760s 50s and that on the other hand doesn't make a lot of sense at all because while it is true that older people didn't follow fashions as closely and they often you know stuck to the older style those dresses would mean not only that queen charlotte is wearing something that is 50 years old or is made in a style that was fashionable 50 years ago but i also mean judging by the character's age that she's wearing something that was fashionable back when she was a child and don't even get me started on those awful court wigs that look nothing that ever existed in history i think the closest they come is i don't know 1750s which is when queen quinchell was like seven and you know not gonna lie origin sierra british corridor dresses were kind of a mess it was somewhat comical i would say because the fashionable silhouette was narrow skirts and raised waistlines whereas the court still demanded ladies to wear hoop skirts which resulted in like some some fashion atrocities let's just say that but they didn't just you know dig up the dresses that were 40 years old and wear them no they took the modern fashions they adapted the modern fashions and they were hairstyles that were completely fashionable they tried to merge radiancy fashions with hoop skirts which of course looked pretty awful like it's just not working and you know queen charlotte wore robes ella francaise and big white hair and all that jazz but she did it like 40 years prior back when it was fashionable when fashions changed and you can see that in her portraits her fashion style also changed she she adapted to the new style anyway there is a couple of historical abominations throughout the show mainly the corset trope if you watch my channel regularly you know i ain't got no time for corset and richardson unfortunately perpetuates that killer corset trope from the very first scene if someone wanted to shoot something especially to piss me off that's what you would do you would just put it in the first minute what i'm most pissed about is not like portraying choruses as those bad torture machines because we've seen that before there's nothing new in that you know it's it's a very popular stereotype but it's just like not understanding the basic physics of a corset first of all not only are courses in the show worn without any type of undergarments which results in like painful bloody chafings which totally makes sense like if you have a garment that can protect you from that why use it but they are also worn extremely tight which absolutely makes no sense it's the regency era they're stays they're they're fully made of cotton they feature no boning so trying to make them tighter to make your waist nipped in more would we would be kind of pointless not to mention it could easily damage the corset because metal eyelids were not invented yet so you would just tear the corset apart i honestly failed to see the logic in making your corsets tighter so your waist looks nice and then completely covering it with loose skirts because the waist is raised and you can't see your natural waist at all um make it make sense stays are basically like a cotton brow waistcoat literally the only uncomfortable element about it is the wooden bask in front and it's not even always there and the designer even noted how the actresses actually found the corsets aka stays more comfortable than they thought another thing that bothered me was disrespecting the societal norms regarding fashion at the time if you make a show where societal norms literally decide the fate of the main characters shouldn't those norms be also accentuated when it comes to clothing because fashion played a huge part in your social position at the time and the rules about what to wear what not to wear where to wear it were very strict for example trains were reserved mostly for if they were so were short sleeves and sewer long gloves speaking of which i don't think they used leather gloves in the show i'm pretty certain they'd use some type of stretchy fabric and i did not appreciate that your boobs would usually be covered for the day and middle-aged married women would most certainly wear caps which of course didn't happen because we hate caps hidden underneath the cap and also zippers are kind of a big no-no i'm so sorry i think the biggest historical abomination in the series in a form of a character is the character of mrs featherington you know mixing a retro influence with historical clothing is absolutely nothing new we've seen it in cinderella we've seen it in anna karenina we've seen it in outlander but it's kind of like making a magic potion you have to mix the ingredients really well otherwise it will explode it will explode mrs featherington's character has a hairstyle that is kind of 1960s or 1940s depending which side you look at she has a 2010 style makeup but i think the weirdest part of her look is her silhouette what what is that what what's going on so for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to take a regency era silhouette which is you know loose flowy skirts very raised waistline that ends right under your boobs very push-up boobs so they decided to take that and make it tight and fitting bruh you don't take a raised waistline and try to make a natural waistline show honey it's just not not right regarding colors the designer said something really interesting if you open up a harper's bazaar magazine of december 100 years ago it would be dull it would be faded the pages could be yellowed and it could be kind of tattered right she says but when you open up harper's bazaar today it's crisp it's clear it's huge it's either intense or pale or however the photographer feels about the subject that is being photographed it's rich and it's of the moment and it's clean right and i actually agree with that the richness of colors that were used in the clothing back then is kind of lost nowadays because we look at extant dresses with faded dyes and we look at faded fashion plates and old paintings and we go well i guess that's what it looked like back then and we tend to ignore that rich people loved vibrant colors they were obsessed with vibrant colors also because the colors that rich people could afford were so much more vibrant and so different to what poor people could achieve with their like cheap hair planned dyes obviously some of the colors would not have existed back then a lot of them were like fluorescent or just straight up hues that didn't exist back then in clothing dies uh for example magenta was only discovered in like mid 19th century 1860s i think to be exact but the overall look of the costumes in the series is quite unique and you know it would be silly to dismiss that it is a very unique look we haven't seen that before in regency era series and it's definitely something fresh and new and here we get to the point where i say why i think they're kind of working because to me it's not a historical romance it's a historical fantasy you know obviously the whole world is created it didn't happen it's a world where you can refuse a prussian prince because you're not in love with him a world where you know aristocrats invite their boxer friends to their weddings and no one is offended a world where people of color are equal in society and not treated inferior as they would be in regency era where you can invite an unmarried pregnant woman over and you will not be damned by the society where women only wear their dresses once and attend all female gambling clubs where you enter the ballroom to an ariana grande song and dance to a string quoted version of bad guy where the token feminist character is self-aware and hates her place in society and wants something more in life where queen sharla ships the main characters and is okay with just being pushed around for the sake of the love story and now go [Music] out at once and in that world all of this fluorescent color zippers modern fabrics visible eyeshadow machine embroidery and glitter you know totally fits in so in that aspect i think they did a good job and um speaking of good job hey i need some chocolate bye thanks for watching

Channel: Karolina Żebrowska

Views: 1,449,821

Rating: 4.9300537 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: d3e8d9nErUk

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/wyanmai]

Your pun 😭🤣

[u/dragonard]

The costumes didn't take me out of the story. I loved the Featherington outfits (because they were outlandish and slightly tasteless, thus fitting the family). Hated almost everything that Eloise wore.

[u/PenelopeSummer]

Oh my gosh I was just recommended Karoline on r/perioddramas 😂 can’t believe I didn’t know about her until now.

Another great one, Frock flicks’ review of Netflix Bridgerton. I’ve been eagerly waiting for this review for so long to!! I LOVE their snark!

These are such a funny way to learn about historical costuming/facts which I otherwise would have had no idea about.

[u/TrillianWasTaken]

Overboob seam! I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. There were such terrible costuming decisions it actually took me out of the story.

[u/imabadassinmymind]

This came up in my recommended this morning and I watched it. SO funny and I absolutely loved it.

[u/laura_blooms]

Somethings you can never "un-see."

Personally, I don't care about plastic jewelry or even synthetic wigs. BUT I will henceforth be analyzing eyebrows in historical shows. There really are people with box eyebrows playing the Regency era.

[u/novelfeelings]

Oh my goodness. I have gone down a fashion history YouTube spiral recently and this is an excellent video. I agree that the costumes were hit and miss; the corset/stays representation really bothers me too.

[u/2forUGlenCocoa]

She and I share the same view of corsets. I love her reviews!

[u/ninaa1]

I just watched this last night! And it made me even more frustrated with the detriments of the series.