British costume designer Grace Snell has explained how 1990s catwalk tailoring and the fashion of 18th-century courtesans shaped the costumes in Georgia Oakley’s new film of Sense & Sensibility. Speaking to HELLO!, Snell said she studied Yohji Yamamoto, Comme des Garçons and Ann Demeulemeester while dressing Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor Dashwood.
The Focus Features release follows the Dashwood sisters after the family loses its estate and moves with their widowed mother into a modest cottage. Edgar-Jones plays the measured Elinor, Esme Creed-Miles plays her more impulsive sister Marianne, and the cast also includes George MacKay as Edward Ferrars, Caitriona Balfe as Mrs Dashwood and Fiona Shaw as Mrs Jennings. For Elinor, the designer leaned on exposed seams, raw hems and oversized shapes, cut in earthy colours and worn-looking fabrics to suggest both her self-control and the household’s money troubles.
Marianne’s wardrobe looks further back, to the late 1700s. Snell studied portraits of Lady Emma Hamilton, the muse of painter George Romney, and the loose chemise à la reine worn by Marie Antoinette, one of the earliest examples of underwear worn as outerwear. The idea, she explained, was that Marianne borrows her romantic streak from women like these. Most of the costumes were made by hand and coloured with natural dyes such as madder, logwood and elderflower, and Snell called colour “a really, really important part” of her process. Warmer reds and pinks arrive when the family settles at Barton, and the London dance scene is brighter still.
Jewellery is used sparingly to mark the family’s fall. At first only Mrs Dashwood wears any, a mourning ring holding a lock of her late husband’s hair. Pearls, diamonds and coral return at the balls in Barton and London, signalling the sisters’ re-entry into a wealthier world. Edward’s tailoring is more structured and practical than Elinor’s, and Snell designed his outfit for the closing moor scene so that Elinor would recognise his outline before seeing his face.
Snell and Edgar-Jones also held fitting sessions to test how corsets, bum rolls and petticoats changed the actress’s posture and movement. The designer passed on a technique for working in a corset, which involved walking while laughing and switching between deep and shallow breaths. Edgar-Jones, who had already been cast when Snell joined the production, has praised the costume choices, and the film’s wardrobe is set to draw comparisons with Joe Wright’s 2005 Pride & Prejudice, which shares its tone and palette.
