Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey (26 page)

No one would expect the Dowager Countess to be following the latest trends, but her style does change with the times. ‘Violet, who essentially thinks the world is going from bad to worse, wears clothes that are suggestive of the Edwardian era, although in fact they are in a Twenties cut,’ Julian Fellowes explains. Caroline McCall agrees: ‘Of course, Violet very much stays an Edwardian woman, but her clothes have got softer as the series have gone on and are a little less structured – a hint at the Twenties in terms of the weight of the fabrics.’

While purple is the colour of half-mourning, we see Violet in this shade simply ‘because it’s a colour she likes’, says McCall. ‘Violet wears mostly purples, greens and greys, because they are colours that suit her.’ Crucial to Violet’s silhouette is her silver-handled walking stick. Unlike Mr Bates, whose stick has changed throughout the show, the Dowager is wedded to her more elegant choice. There is no spare, so the props team keep a keen eye on it, assiduously storing it on their ‘stand-by’ truck every night.

The female cast members of
Downton Abbey
have a reliance on cosmetics that would have shocked their real-life counterparts in the early twentieth century. In this era, they would not have been privy to the mysteries of cosmetics because it was not deemed to be a part of the respectable lady’s toilette.

This provides quite a challenge for the make-up team, as the actors need some lift and colour for the cameras, but they can’t appear to be ‘made-up’. ‘If a lady looked like she was wearing make-up, she could be a prostitute,’ explains Magi Vaughan, the show’s hair and make-up designer. ‘So you don’t want to go there!’ Therefore the end result is deliberately a subtle, restrained, ‘muted’ effect, one that Vaughan creates through the use of shades inspired by images of women on posters of the time.

The key to the
Downton
look, as Vaughan sees it, is the make-up base – a flawless finish that appears that way for a reason: all the make-up artists wield actual airbrushes. ‘The whole idea is to keep the skin looking rather perfect but not deliberately made-up,’ she says. ‘The airbrush make-up is very, very fine, and it just evens everything out. It’s like creating a painting.’ Powder is a no-no. ‘It sort of deadens the face,’ says Vaughan. In her quest for a fresher look, particularly on the younger characters, she even draws freckles on Lily James (Rose) to emphasise her youth.

Subtle pink tones help achieve the natural effect, which is executed by Vaughan and a five-strong team. ‘I put a lot of glow in the skin so the light just picks it up, which gives you that porcelain look. It’s a pale pink that has no shimmer in it. It’s as if you were naturally blushing – but in a most beautiful way – and if you look at paintings of that period, you see that gorgeous blush going on. So that’s what I’m trying to re-create.’

The Crawley women also wear false eyelashes, each lash individually applied. While the ladies of a great house in that era would not have worn these, of course, they work to ‘open their eyes’ on screen. It is certainly a more discreet approach than using the soot-based concoctions that were popular at the time as a primitive form of mascara.

As for the maids, the look is even more natural, because at this time the household staff would have been completely bare-faced. For the female servants the team do little more than airbrush them with a base.

A keen eye is also kept on anything in the actors’ appearance that would be out of place and too modern for the period. ‘You’ve got to be very careful with eyebrows,’ says Vaughan. ‘They must not be too plucked, too shaped or anything like that, which they wouldn’t have been at the time. We spend a bit of time getting that right.’

Even as the series swings into the Twenties and leaves the gloomy war and post-war years behind, make-up still remains simple and understated. Natural colours continue to dominate the scheme and the make-up artists will avoid the more dramatic look that many associate with this decade for a while longer.
Downton Abbey
is not yet embroiled in the revelatory era of the flapper – it is a few years away yet.

‘CHECKS please!’ At this cry, Magi Vaughan (opposite) and a small army of make-up artists, with brushes and cosmetics spilling from see-through bags, leap up and rush onto the set. Quickly working around the cast, they remove some shine here, tweak a curl of hair there – all to ensure continuity in scenes that can be shot hours or even weeks apart – before returning to their positions, poised for the next filming break.

On busy filming days the make-up truck can seat six actors for pre-camera prepping, a process that can take an hour or more at the beginning of the day – particularly for the women. But this is just the start of the process, because the actors will also need their ‘checks’ between takes.

At the end of a long day the actors finally return to the chairs in the truck for ‘de-rigging’. This is when the team will carefully unpin any hair pieces, then remove make-up. As a final touch, their faces are cleansed, toned and moisturised before the actors are sent on their way.

To Magi Vaughan’s mind, lady’s maid Anna has set the latest fashion at the Abbey. It is she who has dressed the ladies’ hair with the Marcel wave, having seen it done in Paris when accompanying Mary and Matthew on honeymoon. Named after the man who created the look, this hairstyle – formal, sculptured waves lying close to the head – is synonymous with the glamour and style of the emerging Twenties. ‘I knew that in the storyline they had honeymooned in France,’ Vaughan explains. ‘Although Mr Marcel – a French hairdresser – had created this look almost 50 years earlier, it had only just become
the
style. I decided, “Oh, Mary and Anna would have seen that” and they would have wanted to replicate it. So it was an excuse to bring the Marcel to Downton
,
really.’