The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (8 page)

Carson
It’s not her fault if something
has gone wrong.

Mrs Hughes
We all know who you
think is in the wrong when Lady Mary is
involved. The other person.

As a child, Mary would have gone below stairs frequently to enjoy the less formal atmosphere of the servants’ hall and kitchens. Carson has been the butler at Downton all her life and she is very fond of him, as he is of her. ‘He is another father figure to her,’ says Dockery. ‘When it comes to emotional matters, she goes to Carson rather than to anyone else. She can be honest and vulnerable in front of him.’ This was not unusual even then; upper-class children were often almost entirely brought up by the servants and their nanny, seeing their parents for just a brief moment when they came downstairs from the nursery to be presented at six o’clock in the evening. Cora was probably rather more hands-on as a mother than most of her British peers, but there still would have been plenty of time for Mary to form friendships among the household. Anna is the only other person in front of whom Mary will let down her guard. ‘Behind closed doors they can be honest with each other. They can shed a tear together, or share good news,’ says Dockery. ‘They know each other so well, they can sense if anything is amiss. In the modern world, they would be friends, going to have coffee together and talking about their husbands.’

But while Mary’s relationships occupy a great deal of her time, her appearance is also a subject that draws her attention. Her interest in clothes is more than just about following fashion, although that too has its place. One peeress wrote at the time: ‘There was nothing for the women to do all day except change their clothes, which they did as if they were odalisques trying to fascinate a pasha, instead of respectable matrons tied to British gentlemen whose minds were entirely fixed on guns, dogs and birds.’ After the war, dressing did get simpler – outfits were not changed so frequently, and clothes and underwear became less fussy and easier to get in and out of. But there was still much to think about, for the costume department and also for Liz Trubridge, producer: ‘In this series things are changing, which is reflected in the new costumes and hairstyles – and new inventions. Probably the most striking change is the way the upstairs ladies look – the Marcel waves, the looser costumes.’

Hems were rising, going from an inch or two above the floor to above the knee in just a few years (they are calf-length in 1920) – ‘There were endless jokes about the shortness of skirts,’ said the Duchess of Westminster. There was a move towards a more boyish look, too, with dresses cut to abolish the waistline and bosoms bound as flat as possible by bandeau corsets. Coco Chanel was just beginning her brilliant career, with her ‘chemise dress’ causing a sensation at the end of 1919.
Vogue
described it as ‘a gown that swathes the figure in straight soft folds, falling at the sides in little cascades’; it was considered remarkable for its daring simplicity and its redefinition of femininity, a world away from the pre-war taste for exaggerated and artificial curves.

Robert
What’s this for?

Mary
Going-away. How does it look?

Robert
Expensive.

Mary
Twice the National Debt, I’m
afraid, but I know you don’t mind.

Doubtless drawing inspiration from the new weekly fashion magazine
Eve
, Mary shows her sense of style by patronising Madame Vionnet, a Parisian house set at 222 rue de Rivoli, which reopened after the war. It was a Mecca for lovers of beautiful dresses and was the only serious contemporary rival to Chanel. With their halter-necks, flowing lines, wrapped waists, decorated necklines and precise detailing, Vionnet’s dresses struck a note of timeless yet utterly modern elegance. If she did not invent the bias cut, she certainly revolutionised its use and its possibilities, creating gowns that hugged the figure and followed its curves, even in movement. Her clothes gave the wearers a delicious new sense of freedom and a chic touch. A beautiful red, sleeveless evening dress seen on Mary in Series 3 is a copy of a Vionnet piece.

This background gave Caroline McCall an exciting starting point to create Mary’s wardrobe. ‘I’ve tried to make her more mature and stylish in her wardrobe,’ says McCall. ‘She’s grown up now, she’s getting married and she’s going to be a countess.’ With her alabaster complexion, Dockery suits strong colours – blues and burgundies – which also work well for her character, ‘but we also tried to soften her look a bit, as she is softening’. Each of the daughters has been given their own palette (Edith’s is ambers, ochres, greens and pale pinks; Sybil’s is mauves and blues), so that they are not only distinct but complementary when together. They also follow distinct fashions: Mary favours designers who dress Society women, Sybil’s look is more bohemian and political, while Edith’s reflects her practical nature. In so many ways, they are what they wear.

Dulcie Scott, costume supervisor, explains that they looked beyond the fashion books for ideas: ‘For all the girls we looked a lot at paintings from the period. Philip de Lázsló portraits have been a big influence.’ ‘Fashion was becoming more of a thing; there were more magazines, it had a wider appeal and a wider following,’ says McCall. ‘And as styles became simpler, the quality – of materials, of detail, of making – became more important.’

As much as possible, the costume department tries to use stock pieces, whether in their original state or altered. ‘But this is a period where there isn’t a great deal around,’ explains McCall. ‘Either it hasn’t lasted – chiffon with beading tends to fall to pieces under its own weight over time – or the dresses were re-structured at a later date because the materials were so fine and expensive. Also, there is the problem that the clothes have to look new to the people who are wearing them. They’ve got to look fabulous.’

The dress that everyone will be waiting with bated breath to see is the wedding dress. McCall explains the complex issues behind it: ‘From our research, I knew that satin and lace were the key things in wedding dresses at the time. We settled on an evening dress shape that I liked, a tabard, one that could be dressed up with a train. I always had this idea of a metallic lace effect – I wanted her to shimmer, unlike anything we had seen before.’ Swarovski supplied the stones and they were all hand-stitched onto the dress. The wedding tiara came from Bentley & Skinner, the jewellers on Piccadilly, lending the production a piece that came from 1830. Arriving on its original frame, it would have been worn high up on top of the head, but McCall was able to alter the frame so that it could be worn lower down on the head, as was the fashion in 1920. Valued at £
125,000
, a designated person had to be hired to look after it at all times on set.

Hairstyles, too, reflected this novel sensation of liberty in dress. Hair had been getting shorter, a trend that partly began when women working in factories and farms had had to cut their long hair for practicality. But again, Chanel led the way. She cut off her own hair because, she said, ‘it annoyed me’. Her stylish ‘bob’ became a fashion template, but other popular styles were the ‘shingle’ (when the hair is gradually cut shorter to a ‘v’ in the nape of the neck) and the ‘Eton crop’ (a very slicked-down short haircut, much like a schoolboy’s).

Make-up began to make more of an appearance in this bold new decade, although as one grande dame recalled, ‘It was considered frightfully
mal vu
.’ When the American Lady Bingham appeared at a lunch wearing a hat full of artificial cherries and lipstick to match, there was much tutting of disapproval; ‘Why didn’t she have a discreet colour, instead of cherry red?’ Nevertheless, skilfully applied pale powder and lipstick was acceptable on women other than actresses or prostitutes, which was quite a development in itself.

Permanent waving was ‘a fairly new process and was as painful as going to the dentist’. The pain that must be endured to create temporary hairstyles was almost as bad – the Marcel-wave curling tongs would become almost unbearably hot, often burning the hair, but the temperature could not be successfully regulated because if they were used when too cool the curls would not ‘set’.

Mary travels down to London rather more than her sisters and stays with her aunt, Lady Rosamund Painswick, if not in her father’s house in St James’s Square. These trips are in part what makes her more comfortable in the world of fashion, and certainly London is where she likes to shop. But there were other entertainments there, too. The Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1920 had four portraits of fashionable young women as a highlight, reported the
Illustrated London News
. Mary might have gone to see if any of her friends were featured. Going to art exhibitions was seen as a suitable activity for debutantes, particularly when they could see charming fantasies such as the one by the fashionable portraitist Charles Sims:
The Fairies Ran Away With Their Clothes
. But the picture of the year was Sargent’s ‘haunting and horrible
Gassed
, files of blinded soldiers groping their way across a battlefield’. The war and all its horror was never far away in the minds of those living then, having a sobering effect on any thoughts of gaiety.