The costume department is the biggest department
in The Crown.
My favourite department is the costume department.
Amy and Sid buttons.
They're so collaborative.
Mother and daughter dream team.
They've been my complete lifeline on the series.
Amy is extraordinary.
Her daughter, Sid,
who I didn't actually realize until
partway through filming...
They're so fantastic to work with.
I've never spent more time on a job in costume.
It was very much a collaboration,
although Amy, a lot of the time, would say,
"Just shut up and get on with it. You look marvelous."
She is a real force to be reckoned with.
She really brought her own artistic stamp
to The Crown in season three, and in season four,
she's really let go, and I think it's brilliant.
I knew what to expect the second time around.
My work is better
and bolder, perhaps,
because I came to it with knowledge.
You'd gone from season one and two,
those lovely muted palettes of war... postwar colors.
So we had to really pull everybody into the '60s.
So we went for big,
sherbet-y colours.
Moving into the '80s now, and we're holding on to that colour,
but you imagine it mixed a little bit muddier now.
You still got the tones of Elizabeth, quite clear and true,
but just toned down.
Amy has a filmmaker's brain.
She talks a lot about the emotional trajectory of the characters.
In our studio, we have a visual journey
of each of our main characters
with textiles of that period.
You know, it's very stimulating.
You're just in that world straight away.
You walk into Amy's office at Elstree,
and it's just photograph after photograph of Margaret Thatcher,
who, you start realizing how well dressed she was, in fact.
She was obsessed with clothes.
There's a lot of letters that were sent back and forth
between herself and her sister Muriel,
when she was in college, and it's all about clothes.
She was always incredibly well put together
and huge attention to detail,
and that detail was absolutely carried out to a T by the team.
Whether you like her politics or...
No.
Put all that to one side, she was quite phenomenal.
Extraordinary outfits.
Hugely feminine.
I started filming with the famous Balmoral episodes,
and this fantastic, bright purple dress
that Thatcher shows up for dinner at 6:00 p.m.,
when everybody is still in their shooting gear...
Your Majesty.
...down to this incredible blue suit
that she shows up in at 7:00 in the morning to go stalking.
Say nothing.
Prime Minister.
What a lovely morning.
Shall we?
Which then you see on this Scottish hillside, you know,
traipsing through, and it's blue, and her hair...
There is a definite trajectory that happens in her clothes.
Again, classic Thatcher.
Previously, we've seen her with the Queen,
quite exposed.
So now it's a different story.
She wants to declare war.
And I say we will not survive not going to war.
So all weakness is gone. Shoulders are still quite narrow.
That wide look will come in in later episodes.
Both she and the Queen have Launer bags.
Hers is slightly bigger, more like a briefcase.
We've gone for this very patriotic red, white, and blue.
This was a militaristic moment.
That's quite a costume.
Fashion is such an integral part of Diana's journey.
She goes from being a very normal girl...
with, you know, very average, I think, taste in clothes.
This is the slightly more innocent Diana...
Your Royal Highness.
...who would wear bright, woolen, almost home-knitted jumpers.
And then you've got her journey.
She's pulled into the royal world
and an increasingly toxic marriage.
Then, by the end, you leave her,
and she's found her voice in her clothing.
This is the Diana that's becoming the Versace Diana.
The fashion icon, the fashion goddess.
That comes across in such a big way
because I think she changed, kind of, the face of fashion.
What's interesting about her, I think, is your first image of her,
and your final image.
Emma, do you want a banana or something?
No, not in the dress.
Your heart rate must have gone through the roof.
Love some Marmite toast, though.
-Yeah. Chocolate spread. -The perfect thing.
The wedding dress, that took 14 weeks.
The fittings took a long time.
At the first one, I thought,
"Should my mum be here? This is such a..."
It is, like, a wedding dress fitting. It's mad.
It might be the only one I do in my life.
Amazing.
I remember watching the wedding and thinking,
"That's a very big dress."
Oh, my golly.
What do I remember? What do you think about?
The sleeves, the bigness of that,
and that huge, long, great train.
That's what I have to achieve.
The original lace that was made,
which edged the dress and the train,
was made in Nottingham,
and we used the same company.
And of course, it was the workroom that did all the work,
with Sue and her team.
-Happy? -Yeah.
It was weirdly exciting.
Okay, Em, happy?
I thought, I'm not going to cry.
I'm not that sort of person.
And I didn't, but I felt a bit weird.
Every director that comes in, they're all so different,
their take on things.
And you know what they'll really feel strongly about.
With Jess, she had a very strong relationship
with that journey with Princess Margaret.
We just talked about this late-life bruising,
what was happening to her.
I don't want more time.
Don't you see?
It's just so beautiful when you go through the episode,
and you realize what Amy's done.
Margaret ages. She's having to battle with that,
and feeling unattractive,
and not successful in love, which doesn't help.
Amy is very clever at working with color and patterns.
Suddenly all these colours appear, which are very like
a bruise deepening over time.
She's the wild card, isn't she?
There's a terrific irritation about her,
mixed with sadness.
We highlight that with the tones of her being
much darker than series three.
Lovely, plain, dark skirt, and then that
splash,
splash of anger.
I don't know why, I just feel that sums her up.
Amy has a wonderful ability to look at characters' stories,
where they are and where they're going to,
and how can that costume represent that journey?
From season three to season four,
you've kind of seen what Anne had to be as a princess
to her just taking her own life by the horns.
You really see that in what she wears
and how she chooses to present herself, I suppose.
The amount of audience scenes...
How do you begin to choose the fabric
and to juxtapose these women against each other?
We were trying to do how many costumes...
I mean, thousands.
You're covering all genres of life,
big party events, New York, which is a different look.
Employment exchanges...
I've discovered recently
how fashion can be such a mode of expression and such a voice,
in some senses, such an armor.
It is quite overwhelming at times,
as these stories come nearer and nearer to us now
and people's memory.
Nothing prepared me for this world.
It's phenomenal.