Friday, November 20, 2020
Bridgertons on Netflix: Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick on the Featheringtons’ dresses and historical accuracy.
slate.com/culture: Netflix’s upcoming Regency drama Bridgerton (from executive producer Shonda Rhimes!) promises plenty of sumptuous, tastefully designed gowns—and a few not-so-tastefully-designed ones. The series, which premieres Dec. 25, is based on Julia Quinn’s megapopular historical romance novels about the Bridgerton family as its eight siblings find love in 19th century England.
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This made me want to watch the show, I thought her designs were just the right balance of striking and gauge, I think they expressed the characters personality well and I don’t even know the show. I loved what she said about not being a historian. When you read a romance novel you are going to get swept up in your imagination not fret over the historical inaccuracies. She said that the silhouettes of the dresses were accurate but the patterns and colors were inspired by more recent time periods and even the 2017 fashion show. She did this because “There [needs to be] an element that people that are watching it today can really dive into and not be taken back to a time in history that they can’t relate to—that there’s something about this that gets them swept up immediately in the story.” And I completely agree. When the design of a show is so captivating and beautiful—it just pulls me into the story. She also mentions that it needs to be visually interesting to the eye but not so much that you don’t know where to look—the focus should always be the actors face.
What first interested me about this article is that the costume designer did not read the source material, instead relying on the showrunner to tell her what the text says. It just did not occur to me that people that are that integral to the process of adapting a book to a show would just not have personally read the source material. I wonder how common this is, and I wonder if it is uncommon for designers to study the source material, as I had a preconceived notion that they would. The other part of the article that interested me was when the designer discussed their balance between historical accuracy and imagination. In this case, she took a lot of liberties, drawing most inspiration from a completely different time period. This is justified in her opinion because the story is only “a romantic love story” and it made me think about when and where historical accuracy is important.
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