Crimson Peak's Costumes, and How Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Fashion

cough cough oh my god there is blood on it could it be i have tuberculosis you may have heard of this one it's pretty bad i've heard it's a pretty sexy disease i might go write a poem about this or something i am becoming so frail and thin and pale it's pretty attractive i guess you could say i'm being consumed by the illness okay we're back in business on the couch so hi today i'm gonna be ranting about the movie crimson peak and how a saucy little disease called tuberculosis influenced the fashion of the victorian era crimson peak has perfect costumes in set design and an unfortunate plot twist but hop into my hearse lads because it's going to be a tale of death and despair and pretty dresses death is as much a part of the victorian era as queen victoria herself influencing everything from art to fashion but especially fashion held tight by the boundaries of society and etiquette the victorians were also going about day-to-day life under the weight of their own mortality as a result of the tuberculosis epidemic that never seemed to end not to mention the hundreds of other easy ways one could die in the absence of proper medicine i mean tb was running in congruence with many other epidemics like typhoid and syphilis into the edwardian era things began to loosen up as well as a bit of hope for women's rights due to the budding suffragette movements and slow but steady advances in medicine director guillermo del toro is known never to shy away from a good opportunity to play with history and what better time period to poke his haunting sentiments at than the victorian era and so crimson peak was born in 2015. crimson peak utilizes the core elements of turn-of-the-century macabre fashion to create a unique symbolic atmosphere of beautiful horror first off to understand why the costume design team on crimson peak made the decisions that they did it's first vital to know how victorian and early edwardian fashion functioned and why so let's set the scene the victorian era stretches from 1837 all the way up to victoria's death in 1901. queen victoria terrible human being though she was was the ultimate trendsetter of her day and what she said and did was as good as cultural law it's during this time that etiquette became as impractical and convoluted as possible for seemingly no tangible reason and she saw her reign during one of the strongest tuberculosis epidemics in history at the time tuberculosis was referred to as consumption and consumption was easily one of the most common ways to die so it's no wonder that this disease found its way into every crevice of daily life becoming highly romanticized consumption was actually considered to be a rather sexy romantic disease not simply because of the pale skinny fragile way that it made victims look as they wasted away but also because it was considered to be very artistic many quotes of the era in regards to consumption read like this one in a letter written by percy shelley to the romantic poet john keats you continue to wear a consumptive appearance this consumption is a disease particularly fond of people who wrote such good verses as you have done understandably writers and artists made this disease the topic of their anguished works further cementing consumption's role as a romantic way to perish this also falls right in the light of the setting sun of a very chaotic and important era of medicine the heroic arab medicine which lasted from about 1780 to 1850. i talked about this earlier in my video about dracula and bram stoker the heroic era is quantified mostly as the era during which scientists and doctors decided to try pretty much anything in order to find a cure this often involved aggressive and vigorous bloodletting purging and sweating and more in order to shock the body back into a humoral balance the four humors were the keystone of medicine for hundreds of years even all the way up until germ theory was finally deduced the humors consisted of yellow bile black bile blood and phlegm and it was believed that these were the four main fluids that we all have in our bodies and help is achieved when all four are in balance and treating tuberculosis during the heroic era the aggressive treatments of choice often actually made the symptoms worse and people definitely died faster this only pushed the death-heavy culture of the time to extremes to the point where it was commonplace for women to sow their own burial shrouds and keep them under their beds by the time scientists managed to parse what actually causes tuberculosis and how to fix it after the invention of penicillin in 1928 it had already irreversibly made its mark on the world of fashion tuberculosis tended to enhance what was already considered marks of a beautiful woman especially in the upper class the height of what historian carolyn day calls consumptive chic comes in the mid-1800s when middle and upper-class women wore a more low-waisted corset some of them not all of them choosing to tight lace and applied most unnoticeable makeup so as to pale their skin and make their cheeks and lips redder it's important to note that most women in fact did not tight lace and the tiny waist look was mostly achieved through structural undergarments such as bust improvers bump pads hip pads and carefully tailored bodices after robert coke isolated the tuberculosis bacteria in 1882 many of these fashion elements came under loud criticism from men as exacerbating the causes of the disease it's like some men couldn't make up their damn minds as to whether the corsets were assisting women's health or killing them corsets were a structural underwear garment if anything they did support women's health by supporting their spines and helping with period cramps and and taking the weight of heavy skirts off of the body it's also hilarious because if a woman had gone around without wearing a corset these same dudes probably would have had a lot to say about that too but some things never change do they it also became very important to have a plethora of good morning wear since tuberculosis claimed so many lives in those days people spent much much longer in times of deep mourning literally wearing black during the whole period and attending far more funerals hence why we tend to associate dark colors with the victorian era don't get it twisted though the era is also full of bright colors queen victoria herself spent about 40 years in mourning after the death of her husband albert only making the trend of darkness stronger ever the trendsetter that she was the met museum curated a collection of her morning wear recounting that with these standards in place it was considered a social requisite to don black anywhere from between three months to two and a half years while grieving for the loved one or a monarch the stringent social custom existed for all classes and was available at all price points those who could not afford the change of dress often altered and dyed their regular garments black the amount of black to be worn was dictated by several different phases of mourning full morning ensembles were solid black while half morning allowed the wearer to add a small amount of white or purple it's for this reason that the goth subculture has every one of its roots in victorian aesthetics today goth as a lifestyle can mean many things due to the fact that it holds dozens of subcultures within itself but the original and strongest one is that the victorian classic gothic dark brooding colors lace floor-length dresses smart suits and all of the beautiful and morbid accessories that come with it gothic itself is a word that can almost be synonymous with victorian in many contexts visually speaking the only differences between them is that the modern gothic subculture's rules stake it in darkness and morbidity which certainly does not fully encompass the victorian era itself that middle ground between the two is where guillermo del toro sets up shop in the creation of macabre period film crimson peak this film draws its strength from its powerful symbolism in the fashion that the characters wear every outfit indicative of a particular part of the character's development their place in the story and how much we as viewers know about them [Music] so in case it wasn't obvious huge spoiler warning for everything in crimson peak if you haven't seen it yet i do recommend it it's good crimson peak centers around heiress and blooming young author edith cushing who lives in buffalo new york with her father she meets sir thomas sharp a penniless baronet from england who has arrived in america with her sister lucille to seek investors for his mining invention rejected by edith's father thomas then becomes romantically involved with edith who has been receiving ghostly warnings from her mother from beyond the grave before she can discover the suspicious truths about the sharp siblings that her father uncovered he's brutally murdered and thus edith and thomas are married and edith returns to england with the siblings to live at the haunting and isolated allerdale hall lucille is cold towards her and thomas bit distant which only grows worse when thomas and edith finally consummate their marriage and lucio lashes out all the while edith is visited by red ghosts and is growing more and more frail coughing up blood matching symptoms of tuberculosis but actually revealed later to be a slow poisoning at lucille's hands but notice how prevalent those sexy sexy consumption symptoms are instead of violent vomiting we get a oh no oh dear what's wrong with me after investigating edith discovers that thomas is married and poisoned three other wealthy women for their inheritances all while maintaining a an unacceptable familial relationship with lucille who murdered her mother to hide it mad with jealousy lucille murders thomas and then pursues edith and is murdered by her instead becoming the black ghost of allahdale hall doomed to remain there for eternity as it sinks into the red clay mines below also there's some guy named allen who's there also i guess he's not important fashion designer kate holly is the visionary behind this film's garments and has also worked on films such as the hobbit suicide route suicide room whoa suicide squad and pacific rim in talking about how she went about developing the looks of crimson peak she notes that victorian was merely the starting point the most important thing of course was to retain the silhouettes indicative of the era if you have that then you can play around with color size and other stylistic elements all you want and it'll still retain a very strong connection to the time period three main facets of symbolism are present in the film as a whole embedding themselves in the clothes size color and the concept of the moth lucille versus the butterfly edith holly remembers the production process in an interview with jezebel so we took it from an emotional point of view of the characters and we put some of the etiquette with certain modes of dress for instance we intentionally had lucille where essentially one dress in buffalo when we saw her through the eyes of edith they romanticized like they skipped out of a book and then we go to the world of allerdale where we take the glasses off and we see the reality of the world that they're in and everything becomes heightened it's sun and moon night and day winter and summer polar opposites she notes that the film feels like a two-part opera the first half is in buffalo all warm golds and yellows the world of home and safety edith is clad in these yellow tones throughout a good sixty percent of the film though the more time she spends with thomas and lucille we can see a few darker elements weave their way into her garments for example the picnic party frock which is a two-piece set consisting of a white blouse with lego mutton sleeves connected to a yellow skirt by a belt that takes the shape of two classed hands the belt part constructed of real woven human hair the belt part in particular is highly symbolic representing the grasp that the sharp siblings now have on her and the hair calling to the trends of victorian morning jewelry in which the hair of the deceased would often be woven into beautiful plaits and patterns and worn inside pendants and other accessories the outfit also has a black ribbon accents drawing from the black suit that thomas wears opposite edith lucille also wears an all black outfit in this scene a bright red rose on her breast referring to the dress we first saw her in an all red gown in which a long pooling train resembles a pool of blood and fabric twisted up her back gives her the emaciated starving look of a protruding spine edith and lucille are in every possible way complete opposites while edith's clothing stays more true to her era in the first half of the film early edwardian suffragette themes lucille remains completely dated in her wear every dress she has is a deep victorian went to quite literally show her aristocratic pennilessness she and her brother wanting for money have nothing but frocks over 20 years out of fashion tied permanently to a crumbling and haunted estate they are as much a part of the allerdale mansion physically as they are emotionally and every part of this is shown in lucille's wear her most iconic dress of the film the deep blue dress that she wears through most of the second half is decorated with a garland of dead black woven leaves literal representations of the diseased vines that cover the house lucille mentions these finds to edith solemnly saying nothing grows here anymore this garland surrounds her constricting her like every other element of her fashion her corset is tight and runs well below her hips limiting her movement and her hair is pulled back tightly away from her face every one of her dresses covers every inch of her but her head her clothes seem to asphyxiate her strangling her the same way that the house does and yet she has no escape from it and by this point she doesn't care lucille's dead blue world of allardale hall is the sharp foil to eat its glowing golden light but as edith spends more time at allerdale she too begins to become a part of their world her bright colors fade until she no longer has much yellow in her palette at all and slowly her clothes begin to drown her out making her seem smaller and more like the trap butterfly she is this butterfly shape accentuated by the leg of mutton sleeves becomes more prominent as edith's health progressively fails as lucille slowly poisons her with tea as the story comes to a head and everyone's secrets are revealed this is shown very plainly in the fashion edith and lucille spend most the last chunk of the film wearing huge flowing nightgowns of edith's iconic gown in particular holly stated that she's like a chrysalis at that point she's very fragile so the butterfly is dying and becoming this little husk it's all about running around in night dresses through long corridors that also blended to the fabric when guillermo said to me it's about a house that breathes that's why we chose the lightest fabric just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house edith wears this nightgown or is completely naked in her moments of vulnerability when she sees the red ghost especially the massive billowy nightgown is accentuated by her green embroidered robe and the way her hair is let down cascading all around her the decision to have her hair this way comes inspired by pre-raphaelite paintings and drawings of women with very long hair specifically the bridesmaid by john everett meier considering that this is the point in the story when edith is shown to have lost almost all of her power something she later reclaims she is wearing the victorian equivalent of nothing to the victorian era the nightgown is as good as naked while still wearing fabric edith's nakedness at the end is indicative of her powerlessness and entrapment at allardale hall where the only exit seems to be death lucille on the other hand also wears a white nightgown with a green robe over it hair finally let down for the first time only when edith has discovered her true intentions and identity the difference lies in the bright red belt she has tied around her waist that fabric tainted blood just like the role that the rose brooch played earlier in the story but unlike edith lucille has spent the entire film hiding her true self and it's here that she finally shows us who she truly is untethered uncorseted and unconcealed and though this is where she's at her most terrifying confronted and angry this is also where she is the freest she's been yet in addition this is the most that we see lucille move as well whereas before it would have been nearly impossible for her to get around with any speed or exaggeration now she's running up and down stairs through hallways all over the place the design of the gown is simple but the way it moves with her makes it seem all more complex as if she herself is already one of ellardale hall's ghosts crimson peak takes the finest morbid elements of late victorian fashion and uses it to its advantage twisting the macabre of real life and turning it into something truly horrifying in the most beautiful way beautiful horror in itself is a facet of the genre that finds its beginnings in the romantic literature of the victorian years as well as the decades leading up to it in the wake of the tuberculosis epidemic that ravaged the lives of these people a disease so ugly and terrible could still be somehow twisted into fodder for art and literature there's always a beauty and suffering in the eyes of an artist after all it's fitting that edith cushing herself is a writer having fallen into the grasp of two people who embody every element of victorian macabre towards the end of the film just as the credits begin to roll there's a hint or rather not really a hint at all but crimson peak was in fact a book that edith wrote of her experiences after she survives the horrors of allardyle estate romantic literature of the most gruesome and ugly parts of life something that the victorians did best thank you for watching and learning about victorian morbid fashion with me i love victorian fashion and i love crimson peaks costumes and set design and it was a lot of fun analyzing all the costumes so happy halloween wash thy hands wear thy mask and don't go to any [ __ ] halloween parties if you don't want to catch a certain current very unsexy disease [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Kaz Rowe

Views: 685,605

Keywords: crimson peak, history, consumption, epidemic, disease, victorian, fashion, tuberculosis, guillermo del torro, horror, macabre

Id: nwJ7xovktGU

Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020