Dress Historian Kate Strasdin Breaks Down Period Costuming in TV & Film

consider the household of the baron fetherington miss it okay corset myth Bonanza here hi my name is Kate strasden author and dress historian and I'm going to talk to you today about some period dramas and break down some of the accuracies or inaccuracies in some of these clips this clip is from the personal history of David Copperfield and we're going to look at the scene with the donkeys hello can you wake up medicine Reviving you so what I love about this particular adaptation of David Copperfield and what you see here is real saturation of color and there's no particular intention to be 100 accurate this isn't necessarily about accuracy it's about creating a kind of fantasy of of early Victorian dress and because it's intentional it's really successful you have Tilda Swinton in This brilliant kind of Golden Bronze dress and there are details that are really accurate so they're kind of smocking on the sleeve that was very much a period detail from that decade then you have different details that make it slightly that just kind of bend it slightly and make it unexpected but but I think it works because it's intentional so David Copperfield is representing the working class he's wearing the a knotted scarf and this plaid shirt and working dress doesn't survive so whereas designers often have access to surviving garments from the middle and upper classes you don't get very much so very often designers have to work from images and and descriptions but not objects themselves he's wearing quite bright plaids the costume designer actually looked at American daguerreotypes from the period where you have people wearing really bold patterns and this was an inspiration for these so it might look really bright but I think it's a nod to these kind of emerging industries that were creating very bright colors his head is entirely removed from his body well sure the brilliant character of Mr Dick here who's who's wearing what might be described as a dressing gown or earlier in this in the 18th century it was called a banyan so it's a signal of being at home it's informal and not wearing a jacket over the top so it's not sort of pajamas or anything like that but it is a kind of informal at home in this very bright pattern so again a slight just an edge of eccentricity now Mr Dick don't be a fool because nobody can be more Discerning than you when you choose David Copperfield my brother you've heard me speak of him yes just then also the quilting so you can see the Quilted collar of this robe very much about being at home uncomfortable and also warm so lots of indoor garments at this time were quilted because of course there's no central heating so the more warmth that you can actually keep next to your body the better but still in bright colors and clashing patterns so he's got a patterned waistcoat and then an entirely different pattern with the dressing gown on the top so this is meant to be I think quite uh chaotic in a way it's meant to reflect the way that he thinks Janet just run the bath there you are I think in this case Janet is probably someone who's worked for the family for a long time and so maybe they're giving it some artistic license in families where they have lots of domestic servants they would more likely be wearing a livery or a uniform and they'd all be wearing the same thing whereas here you've got Janet who's probably a maid of all work she perhaps would have just worn a what was called a washing cotton so it was like a cotton dress that is very serviceable it could quite feasibly be that she's wearing something that is not doesn't look like a servant's uniform but suits what she does in her life this one Mr Duke cracks it every time eaten very long oh what I love in that scene as well is the movement so you see both women there moving really freely in their garments and I think that that's a really important thing about costume designers who's designed so successfully is that women could move in clothes and so you see them running off and moving in what they're wearing and so it's not about these sort of static women that couldn't move and there they are running off this is depicting the change of Fortunes for David wearing again bright absolutely clashing colors and patterns and you'd think well that that must be a fantasy it is in part but also when you look at surviving objects and swatches from that time you do get these bright patterns you do get maybe not necessarily together but certainly men's trousers could be really really bold and that's captured here I love this because although it's a fantasy and and you could argue that that there are inaccuracies but I think they're intentional so it's definitely it's a nine out of ten for me this is Bridgeton and the debutante dearest reader the time has come to place our bets for the upcoming social season consider the household of the baron Hetherington miss it okay corset myth Bonanza here there are many things I love about the Bridgeton costumes because again Bridgeton is a fantasy British one isn't supposed to be accurate the the myth of the corset and this idea of being winched into your corset that it's going to cause injury and it's going to draw blood first of all here she's not wearing anything underneath her corset that's completely inaccurate you wore a shift or chemise underneath your corset which protected your skin from the corset but also your corset from any body odor and so you would never wear a corset without anything underneath I've done a lot of research into women Mountaineers from the 19th century climbing mountains in their corsets and doing everything in their courses because they're used to it so I don't think I could necessarily go to a ball or climb a mountain in a corset but if you've always done it all your life and it's normal it's what you wear I wonder if maybe people look at things like skinny jeans and say why did people wear them Miss Daphne Bridgeton [Music] so here you've got very traditional Court dress and in this sense the white the gold the Prince of Wales feathers and then the long train this is actually really following the kind of prescribed Court wear for the period and captures the this kind of very odd formal occasion where you're presented to the monarch [Music] foreign [Music] you've got the juxtaposition of the queen who is very much living in the 18th century so although we're at the beginning of the 19th century the queen is still wearing the clothes of her youth so she's wearing a dress that would have been more suited to the 1770s and it it shows somebody who is perhaps not ready to let go of her past or or is thinking about her youth the panniers that stick out at the side were very much an 18th century fashion it was to do with showing when cloth was really expensive silk brocades really expensive and so it's almost like showing it on a canvas so it's a way of showing off the cloth that you could afford the size of the panniers really depended on the occasion so the most formal Court dress could be really extensive then the small of panniers were more kind of everyday not not quite so showy it was definitely occasion driven the bigger the pannier the posher the occasion throughout Bridgeton you have elements of it that's really accurate in terms of the Silhouettes it's more the fabrics and the trimmings that are often more contemporary and and they've used all sorts of neons and different colors but the Silhouettes are often really accurate um not just not such bright colors at that time so for Bridgeton despite the kind of wild color and intentional kind of Madness if you're going to talk about accuracy I guess it has to be a five so this clip is from the TV series Gentleman Jack and it is the wedding foreign so of course right from the outset you see what is perhaps from behind a a man and a woman going to church of course what you have is anlister who is uh wearing certainly from the waist up essentially at a man's wardrobe complete with top hat and cravat alongside her partner Anne who is wearing much more what might look like exaggerated Silhouettes but in fact is very accurate for the period the sort of 1820s 1830s enormous sleeves leg of mutton sleeves as they were called very very much all the rage at that time thank you then you see that actually Anne's of course still wearing and Lister is still wearing a full-length skirt there would have been no way that somebody in her position even somebody with lots of money would wouldn't have worn trousers so although she's wearing this very masculine wardrobe in terms of the jackets and the waistcoats and the headwear she's still wearing it could have been a riding habit skirt so a tailored skirt but it is a skirt not any kind of trousers foreign [Music] what's really important at this time is headwear you couldn't leave the house without wearing a hat if you're a woman you wear a different kind of bonnets that would be trimmed with ribbons if you're a man you're wearing a top hat a cap if you're if you're a working man there's no way that to go outside with a bear head is unthinkable [Music] so you can really see the full kind of puffiness of those sleeves women actually wore sleeve Puffs underneath so they're a bit like kind of armbands that you would tie to your arm underneath and then the outer garment would take on the shape of the sleeve so that's why they look as enormous as they do think if you look at Fashion plates at the time you think it can't have been that much of an exaggerated silhouette but it definitely was taking it remembrance of Christ died for me and feed on him in your hearts by faith with Thanksgiving you can see that really lovely waistcoat there and actually surviving men's waistcoats look exactly like that this is a point where menswear is becoming more sober so black dark green brown suits but waistcoats retained some of the color that men used to wear in the 18th century so you have these very elaborate waistcoats so that definitely ties in with kind of popular masculine trends at that time Christ died for them foreign contrast between the two there you've got on the one hand the really sort of hyper feminine silhouette with the huge shoulders the pellerine which is the kind of little cape on the outside and the big sleeves and the pale colors and then on the other side you've got Anne Lister in her very dark sober Wool with her cravat and I suppose the top Hat's almost like the the most overtly masculine symbol that that she could have worn really women often wore colored dresses to get married in it was practical so it meant if you had to manage your budget you could then wear it for other occasions often it would become your kind of Sunday Best dress or something that you would retain for special occasions so yes dresses colored wedding dresses were really popular particularly if your budget meant that you couldn't just splash out on a white dress that you might not wear again so analysta that obviously her Diaries account for a great deal of her life and there's a lot of detail and there are people that have look at the accounts you wrote a lot about what she wore about where she was was buying things from and the suppliers that she that she actually patronized for in terms of her dress how much it would have been as overtly masculine as that is difficult to to tell so for an accuracy rating for Gentleman Jack tompi did an amazing job on these costumes and the distinctiveness of their roles and showing off that really exaggerated period I think it's a it's a nine out of ten for me we're going to look at little women and Beth's last Christmas Mommy okay so I think the first thing that you notice when you look at this clip is that it's Joe March and she has short hair and that's really unusual to see that at this time and it's a it's a sign of a costume designer's ambition to make her appear to be really unconventional and uh unusual for the for the time period Mommy what you also have is uh mommy who is a beloved character in American literature the way that Jacqueline Duran costumed her here was this very unstructured kind of costume so it's something that is meant to show that she herself is also a bit different a bit outside of the the kind of middle class conventional woman that you might expect so she's wearing quite a loose gown and her hair is down she's at home but it's a picture of kind of Domesticity but perhaps a family that are just slightly on the boundaries of convention right this is a scene it's so bound up in Nostalgia there's lots of plaid so Fabrics Czech Fabrics knitted Fabrics it's all kind of warm and nostalgic Queen Victoria was really keen on Tartan and and it became part of a kind of notion of Christmas being this very traditional homely kind of time but in the US it has it does have associations with people who are looking at their Celtic Roots and so you have people that are really interested in their Clan tartans and then the plaids are also made in the in the states and become a big part of that kind of textile traditions of the of the country here's another Christmas gift for the marsh family so obviously here as well you've got the uniforms placing it in the um the period of the Americans of War but it is these really um kind of soft Fabrics Jacqueline Duran was very keen that she wanted the characters to each have their individual palette so you kind of see that playing out here and against the backdrop of this really kind of homely Christmas Merry Christmas my dear Merry Christmas to each of you also this is about a family that don't have necessarily a lot of money so things like the crossover knitwear the idea that perhaps they're making things by hand perhaps hand-me-downs passing on it's not meant to look too polished so it's very talking about kind of economic status as well this is obviously it's the the tragic it's after Beth has died in some ways Joe is the kind of man of the house she's having to take on the role of person in control of her feelings and looking after everybody else in a way so I think the costuming really did that successfully when you look at Joe here so time has passed and her hair has grown longer and that also is kind of a marker of maybe um her growing up a little bit but also you have this hint towards her very more boyish wardrobe so she's wearing almost like a man's denim shirt she's wearing a knitted waistcoat that's meant to kind of talk to those masculinities that she was really depicted in throughout this film and as somebody that really didn't identify herself as being within the boundaries of sort of conventional femininity and this kind of outfit really explores that here so I think Little Women is a is a good eight out of 10 for accuracy there's so much detail there and the character that are developed through the costume so yeah they're great I think for me the biggest mistake is always going to be this idea of the corset as this uh instrument of torture the course it was just an everyday object for women it wasn't as problematic as we think it might be now just because we don't wear it now and it's unfamiliar it has become this object that seems to stand up for all the oppression that women have have undoubtedly been subjected to over the centuries but it's become the point that's become the object that has sort of encapsulates that I think probably misguidedly thank you for watching don't forget you can get my heart back the dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by clicking at the link below and also subscribe to penguin for more videos just like this

Channel: Penguin Books UK

Views: 14,657

Keywords: Penguin, Penguin Books, Penguin Books UK, The Personal History of David Copperfield, David Copperfield, Bridgerton, Daphne and Simon, Gentleman Jack, Little Women, Florence Pugh, Kate Strasdin, Kate Strasdin Break it Down, Kate Strasdin interview, Dress Historian, Kate Strasdin Dress Historian, Falmouth uni, Kate Strasdin reacts

Id: RudfbIAYnLM

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023