The Styles And Period Fashions Of Vanity Fair

We also looked at art books and paintings. Mira is an artist herself. We didn’t limit ourselves. Because I’m Hungarian, there was also a little bit of the Hungarian influence Jenny Shircore is brilliant; she creates incredible sculptures out of hair, higher and higher, wilder and wilder and so then I just said, ‘Why cover it?’ So Becky only wears small hats. Men always wear them in period films, but we put in only a few

Pasztor admits that when actors came for fittings we would put one cravat, one waistcoat, and one coat on them, and they would think that this was the end of the fitting. However, I started layering the costumes for the women it was scarf and dress, plus blouse which I think makes the costumes and the characters richer. Most of the actors enjoyed the process as it helped them to define their characters. They put their own imagination into it.

Purefoy marvels, The costumes were made specifically for us all; my costumes have very high collars which were cut to the line of my sideburns. Now that’s tailoring for you! The way they highlighted various aspects of your body certainly made you behave differently as soon as you put the costumes on.

Rhys Ifans adds, I’d never been so informed by a costume before. It makes you stand differently, it makes you speak differently all very exciting. With people walking about, you’re immediately transported to that time.

Gabriel Byrne states, It’s the only film I’ve ever worked on where the grips have come up and said, ‘Those costumes are nice, aren’t they?’ That’s pretty rare…I’ve seen movies where the costumes swamp the story and it becomes a moving costume spectacle. But what’s really great about what Beatrix does is that she dresses each character as opposed to each actor. Even the material on the extras’ costumes is absolutely fascinating. There was so much ingenuity and originality from her department.

Purefoy adds, Beatrix did something that I’d never seen anybody do with a period film, which is to ramp up the costumes and make them much more theatrical. This is something the theatre has been doing for years, but it’s taken a while I think for the movies, especially English period movies, to latch onto. You can do something which has been accentuated and stylized and yet stay within the period, and I think that coupled with Mira’s passionate take on the material makes this movie different from any other period movie.

View the movie stills for Vanity Fair

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