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