Hello friends! I’m SnappyDragon, you can call me V, and welcome to something
a little different! I am a sucker for historical TV dramas, so it was
probably inevitable that I’d one day do a costume review of one. But there are so many things about
A Discovery of Witches that make it particularly interesting, starting with the fact that it’s not
even fully a historical drama. This TV series is based on a trilogy of fiction books written by an
actual historian, which creates a wonderful grounding in historical context, and some
characterization that is extremely relatable for us re-enactors and other costumed history nerds.
For those who haven’t yet seen the show, here’s your spoiler warning! This video
contains major spoilers for both the TV series and the All Souls books by Deborah Harkness,
especially the second book and season. I can’t even talk about why the second season is a
historical drama without spoiling the ending of the first season and book, so if you would like
to avoid any such spoilers, this video will still be here once you’ve watched the show.
The story so far : A Discovery of Witches is set in a world where witches, vampires, and
savant-like people known as daemons, exist. The main character, Dr. Diana Bishop, is a witch with
powerful magical heritage, but has chosen instead to be a historian doing research at Oxford.
She stumbles on a Very Enchanted Old Book that might explain the unknown origins of magical
creatures, but has enough trauma around magic that she returns it to the library,
where it promptly disappears. However, just about every magical creature wants this book,
including a vampire geneticist called Matthew Clairmont who Diana meets and
develops a relationship with. Cue star-crossed romance, because the laws governing magical
creatures forbid relationships between different “species”. Diana finds out she can time-travel,
so until they find the Very Enchanted Book, and their friends and allies can take down
the entire segregationist magical legal system, they hide out in the year 1590. The first book and
TV season end with the time-travel spell, and the second picks up immediately as they land.
While the books and show do fall into some of my least favorite vampire romance tropes (Can
we please have vampires that aren’t animalistic patriarchal messes? Seriously?), the writing is
excellent developing the characters and historical connections. Since the author is a historian,
she takes every opportunity to use that knowledge in building her world and her story. The first
season brought that all to screen beautifully, so let’s get into the second season’s costumes!
My standard is not absolute accuracy here. What I want to see from a historical drama
is that the costume designers, writers, et c, are aware of what accurate clothes would look like,
and are making their decisions from a place of knowledge and grounding in those styles.
Rather than going by modern tropes and misconceptions and what a modern
audience thinks is “old-timey”, I want to see that they knew what people were
really wearing even if they then decide to do something totally different with it.
Starting with the womens’ costumes, and Diana in particular : The first outfit she wears in 1590,
we are told, is 20 years out of date. And wow, was I immediately impressed with the little details
that confirm that yes, this dress is from 1570 and the costume department knew the difference! The
upward curve of the front neckline can be seen in this portrait, which is a holdover from Henrician
Tudor styles earlier in the century. This dress is on screen for barely ten? five? minutes, and yet
the production saw and used an opportunity to tell the story by showing how much time had passed.
We then have every costumer’s most loved and hated part of historical dramas : the getting-dressed
montage. It’s either a chance for the costume department to show off their knowledge and skill,
or an utterly infuriating hodgepodge of myths, ignorance, and marketing tropes.
I am ecstatic to say that this one starts off with something I wasn’t sure I’d see in the age of
this : There is no tightlacing torture porn, not now or at any other point in the show. Not once.
No struggles to breathe in a corset, no tiny waist goals, not one complaint. Nor does
the actress talk about being “cut in half” by badly-fitted corsetry! She says in an interview
that the biggest challenge was breastfeeding her seven-month-old daughter while on set,
and while the corset design actually made that easier, her daughter did have a habit of grabbing
at her dresses. We see Diana being dressed in a pair of bodies, definitely based on the Dorothea
Sabina ones, but they don’t go “ehhrmagherdh COERSETREHHH”, they just put them on and continue
dressing her. Next is a padded bumroll or “French Farthingale”, then what looks like a petticoat
with cording placed where boning would be in a Spanish hoopskirt farthingale. This montage
an absolute triumph for the costume department, and a beautiful dive into a character’s mindset
as she gets dressed in period clothes. Diana is a historian who gets to experience the very history
she’s studied, and we can feel her fascination because we would be too! It’s so relatable to
those of us who love historical costume and would jump at this chance. I’ve read this scene in the
books and almost couldn’t believe how well the author connected with her audience through it,
and now I get to be equally impressed with how the TV writers brought it to the screen.
The dress she wears over all that has a large lace-trimmed collar attached to a partelet (so
no heaving bosoms here!), padded and decorated shoulder rolls, a bodice that closes with clasps
over a kirtle or stomacher, an open skirt front over a dark silk petticoat, and a cap decorated
to match.The material choices are modern, they’re certainly not using period bobbin lace or trims,
but the silhouette is right and all the pieces are there. Likewise, Diana’s nightgown, many of
her dresses and doublets, and even Louisa’s first gown in the same fabric, are using modern fabrics,
perhaps embroidered upholstery silks. Sourcing an interesting variety of Elizabethan-reproduction
silks during a global pandemic is probably not easy, as we historical sewists should know.
Also, can anyone here say they’ve really never repurposed a household textile for a costume
piece? Because I sure can’t. So I think they did an excellent job using what they could
get. There’s a lot of tree-related imagery linked to Diana in the books, especially in the third,
so I do like that they’re already building that by choosing these
vine- or branch-like patterns for her fabrics.
Diana’s wardrobe continues in the same vein, with similarly cut doublets and doublet-style
gowns that close under the bust over a stomacher. There’s another little getting-dressed scene that
confirms the costumers knew how the gowns went together, because we see Françoise, the maid,
pinning and tying a stomacher and separate forepart onto Diana. It’s a style that we
see in a few portraits, but these are Italian portraits and Diana is posing as an Englishwoman.
Based on the interview the actress gave about breastfeeding while on set, I’m guessing that
high-necked doublets like these English fashions would have made that too difficult.
A lot of the interviews about actresses in pain from corsets are because the production doesn’t
care enough about their comfort, so I’m really pleased to see the costume department found a
style with some solid historical precedent that worked for the actress and her needs.
Unfortunately, she does have a habit of wearing this jacket completely open-fronted over her smock
while traveling, which would be scandalous to any onlookers (especially the Holy Roman
Emperor’s Court!) and leave her with zero bust support. Not good, especially not when riding.
On that note . . . the Riding Breeches. I was almost prepared to give this scene a “not as awful
as it could be” pass, until I took a closer look at the setup. Diana is traveling a long distance
by horse with vampires who don’t get tired, at an urgent pace even by vampire standards.
She collapses from exhaustion, and the next morning Matthew gives her some leather breeches
so she can keep riding astride instead of in a sidesaddle . . . or so I thought, until I looked
back and realized she appears to have been riding astride the whole time! If Diana had
been riding sidesaddle, yes, she should need the breeches to ride astride, because 1590s womens’
clothing didn’t include drawers or underpants or anything to go between one’s body and the saddle.
I also chatted with Katie of Latina Living History, who does historical equestrian sports.
She explained that while riding sidesaddle could be harder for a skilled modern rider like Diana,
because it uses different muscles, nothing will make enough difference to put someone
who fell out of the saddle back on their horse the next day. If the writers were
trying to make this any better than your average “skirts inherently make women helpless!” scene,
they failed. Even the breeches are wrong! These are skintight, whereas 1590s “hose” (pants) were
loose and puffy, and I’ll talk more about that with the mens’ clothes. However, if this is my
biggest complaint about the entire season, we’re still doing well better than average.
On to some of the other womens’ clothes : I actually don’t have a huge amount to say
about Queen Elizabeth’s gowns. She’s wearing black and white (her colors), and the dresses
are clearly inspired by a number of portraits of her. They’re again using modern materials,
but they’re using them to represent period details. Susanna Norman, a middle-class witch,
usually wears a gray front-lacing wool jacket and a lighter gray petticoat or kirtle,
and sleeves in a third fabric! It’s great to see detachable sleeves being used to change up outfits
the way Elizabethan people actually did. The other witches of the local coven wear a variety of
gowns, showing different social statuses, but all have high-necked bodices, smocks, or partelets,
and wear their hair up. It’s hard to see details on the four witches Diana trains with because they
keep their cloaks on, but what we do see is all absolutely appropriate : Dark blue and russet
red wool gowns, an embroidered silk doublet on the earthwitch who has a fancier headdress,
and Goody Allsop wears the same lace collar and cuffs every time.
They’d be such an expensive item she would probably only have one set.
Something I want to dedicate a lot of time and excitement to,
because we rarely see any of it in period dramas, is the headwear.
Let’s start with the fact that it exists, which is so much more than can be said for a lot of shows!
Most of the items are quite small or minimal. I’ve heard larger period hats and headwear are
a challenge for the lighting and camera crews trying to get good shots of the actors’ faces,
but this show made it workable instead of scrapping headwear altogether.
Not everyone wears headwear all the time, but the context is thought-through. When we see Diana in
London at the beginning of the season, she wears her hair down and uncovered in private, in the
house, in her nightgown-- but every time she goes out, her hair is pinned up and has some kind of
headdress. These range from embroidered caps and snoods, to hats and hoods. The writers and costume
designers clearly knew that women wore their hair up and with headwear in public, so we only see
her hair down in private settings! Her hairstyles are a little more modern for her wedding, but I’m
less bothered by a 21st-century woman insisting on a more familiar hairstyle on her wedding day,
around people who know she’s a time-traveler. Moving on to the other women,
we see a wonderful embroidered cap on Mistress Norman, and it’s so great to see that kind of
detailed hand-work put into the costume of a middle-class character who doesn’t have tons
of screentime. In this entire coven, not one head is bare! The witches Diana trains with are also
all wearing headwear too : two have what look like wool coifs, one has a more structured velvet hood,
and Goody Alsop is wearing a capotain hat, which, according to Abby Cox, might be the source of the
legendary pointy witch hats! Very clever. No one’s hair is down, even during Witchcraft Practice.
Normally it’s the womens’ hair and headwear that disregards historical protocol—
I guess it’s easier to get the mens’ headwear right because you just toss a hat on them?
But in this series it’s the mens’ headwear that runs into more problems! Namely, there’s
just less of it. We do see some really excellent capotain hats on Matthew and other men at court,
but the leading men tend to have bare heads when out and about. Dr. John Dee has a very
good felt four-cornered cap, William Cecil has a more rounded wool cap here, and there
are plenty of flat caps on extras and minor characters like Diana’s father. Unfortunately,
while they could just put a fairly small snood or cap on Diana and not make the lighting and camera
crew’s lives harder, mens’ headwear styles don’t offer that option, so it was either deal with a
full hat, or skip it altogether. The presence of those hats does mean that the costume folks
knew the historical fashion and wanted to show it, so it still gets points in my book.
And now, the mens’ costumes. I wish I could say they were as stellar as the womens’ outfits,
but sadly they run into a couple unfortunate modern tropes. We spend the most screentime
with Matthew’s outfits, so let’s start there : The shape of the doublets is pretty good.
There’s a nice slight point at the front, short skirting, and the decoration at the shoulders is
something we see in portraits, although they are missing the curved “peascod” belly that
was in fashion at the time. He wears a lot of black, which makes sense for a character
trying to look wealthy enough to belong at court, but not flashy enough to be noticed.
However, the fact that most of his less-formal clothes are leather doesn’t make much sense.
Wool would be the most appropriate material, but it’s not as “sexy” to modern viewers, and
clearly that’s what our male leads are for . . . Likewise, the silhouette of the hose is
100% modern— it’s not really great on any of the leads, but these look like modern slim-fit jeans.
Mens’ lower-body garments, called “hose” “slops” “galligaskins” or “cannions” depending on the
style, were almost universally voluminous and ended below the knee at the longest,
with stockings and shoes. The least-voluminous example I can see is this, which is actually a
pair of extremely short puffy trunkhose over longer, less voluminous cannions.
For Matthew to always wear skinny jeans and riding boots even when not riding,
is a choice made either in ignorance, or, considering that most of the extras are
dressed correctly, a change towards what they think modern viewers will find attractive.
On the topic of excessive leather, we can move on to Gallowglass, Matthew’s vampire nephew, who
wears hardly anything else in the entire season. The cut of his clothes is similar to Matthew’s,
with perfectly-okay doublets and very 21st-century pants. Men with physical jobs certainly could
and did wear sleeveless leather jerkins over their doublets, like this extra by the docks,
but Gallowglass’s doublets, sleeves, and hose are entirely leather. Heck, even his
cloak is made of leather! Gallowglass’s role in the story is to be the sassy,
lighthearted BAMF of a best friend to our brooding, serious male lead, so his
clothes should be hardier and more outdoorsy than what Matthew wears for court intrigue.
He’s a combination man-at-arms and adventurer, and even his name is the title given to a particularly
fearsome set of Norse-Gaelic mercenary warriors. I’m not sure that was why he’s dressed this way,
instead of “because all leather is code for BAMF” . . . but the writers know their audience and
I am only prepared to complain so much about a good-looking Scotsman in leather.
Ironically, the best silhouettes on any of the men are the ones with the least screentime! Lord Henry
Percy and Sir Walter Raleigh have excellent doublets, and while we never get a close look
at the rest of their outfits, Raleigh definitely has correctly voluminous hose. All these English
townspeople have the right silhouettes too! This French servant is onscreen for approximately 3
seconds, and yet he is wearing full hose and a flat cap. Little Jack Blackfriars is in proper
stockings and shoes, which almost none of the other men are! Lord Cecil’s men-at-arms have
pansied trunkhose with lots of fabric in them, and while Matthew and Gallowglass are standing
around by the docks in their skinny jeans, these extras are wearing perfectly appropriate
floofy 1590s slops. So the costume department clearly knows what the correct silhouette is,
they just decided we somehow wouldn’t think our male leads were attractive in it. [big sigh]
Some other amazing details on the menswear : Phillipe, Matthew’s stepfather, wears the same
doublet first with no sleeves, then plain sleeves, then paned sleeves for his stepson’s wedding.
More great paned sleeves on Christopher Marlowe and this Bohemian courtier. There’s plenty of
blackwork on the linens, like Matthew’s shirts, William Cecil’s ruff, or the Holy Roman Emperor’s
gorgeously detailed cuffs. Rabbi Judah Loew, as Diana remarks on, wears the “rota”, a ring-shaped
brooch that was required as identifying dress for Jews in German-speaking countries. The womenswear
gets plenty of good details too, like the blackwork on Diana’s cuffs or Françoise’s collar.
It’s little details like this that make a show feel like a truly historical piece
instead of historically-inspired fantasy. Even if you’re not specifically looking for them,
they build a subconscious familiarity with the aesthetics of the time by copying the aesthetics
of the portraits and garments someone might have seen in passing. And if you are looking for them,
like costumers often do, it makes a show enjoyable to watch on several levels beyond simply enjoying
the plot. Film and TV are a complicated art form involving so many different crafts,
many of which go unnoticed, and I am so excited to be able to celebrate the truly
well-done research and construction and embellishment that went into these pieces.
So, I think I’d give the costuming a solid 4/5 on the whole. It’s not the
stunning original-practice reproduction work we’ve seen in Wolf Hall or The Miniaturist,
but the costuming team clearly knew their fashion history and used it.
There were a few concessions made to the needs of a TV production, and a few more to
the sensibilities of a modern audience, but not enough to destroy the high standard inherent in
a series where both the original writer and the main character are historians. It’s so refreshing
to be able to watch a historical drama, as a costumer, even knowing this author’s background,
and have the costumes be good enough that I can just enjoy a show I already like without
wanting to throw something at the screen every five minutes . . . an experience I, of course,
replace with screenshotting every five minutes because I can’t make anything easy for myself.
Anywhoo, I hope you enjoyed this little review! Let me know in the comments if you’ve watched
the show and what you thought of it, leave a like, and click the subscribe button to stay
up to date on my costuming endeavors! I’ll see you all soon with another sewing video. Bye~