In the third episode of the Starz limited series “Mary & George,” Julianne Moore’s Mary, Countess of Buckingham, who is hell-bent on amassing power among the royal ranks, makes her first visit to the court of King James I (Tony Curran). When she arrives in a garish purple silk gown, her face painted a ghastly white and cheeks crudely rouged like a clown, the courtiers point and laugh. Absorbing their scornful looks, she makes her way to Lady Hatton, a formidable adversary played by Nicola Walker, who quips, “Who dressed you? A prostitute?”
Well, yes, in fact.
In an earlier scene, we see Mary’s sex worker confidante Sandie (Niamh Algar) help her get into costume. Mary is no fool. Though it’s never spelled out explicitly, it is strongly suggested that she plotted her fashion faux pas to attract the attention of the king and boost his interest in her son George (Nicholas Galitzine), who she hopes will soon become a regular in the monarch’s bed. Quite a choice for a social climber in 17th-century England.
“Mary chooses purple because it’s a shocking thing to wear at court. Only royalty and high-up church (leaders) were allowed to wear purple,” said costume designer Annie Symons, who earned her second Emmy nomination for this episode (and won her first in 2012 for her work on the BBC limited series “Great Expectations”). “She wears purple as a kind of outrageous statement but also, she dresses like the queen.”
Unlike the longer, leaner silhouettes characteristic of the Jacobean style worn by most of the court, Mary’s gown has exaggerated wide hips (created by a structure called a farthingale) and a high collar that were de rigueur during the preceding Elizabethan age and are still embraced by James’ wife, Queen Anne (Trine Dyrholm). But the queen and courtiers are almost all clad in elegant whites and creams with gold details, their necks decorated with multiple strands of pearls.
“People wore white if they could afford to. That was the point of all the lace,” Symons said. “It was the most expensive thing of the time, so if you wore lace it meant you could afford to have it laundered, which meant you had staff. Rather perversely,” she added, “the king’s clothes are always a bit grubby because he famously didn’t like washing.”
Lady Hatton’s gown is “fine, lacy, delicate, super expensive,” Symons said, as is the more high- waisted dress worn by the pregnant Countess Somerset (Pearl Chanda), who Hatton singles out as the height of fashion. By contrast, the Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson), who is George’s mightiest rival for the king’s affection, wears black, Symons noted, not because “he’s the archvillain, but because it just looks really cool and sexy. He looks great in it, what can I say?”
When creating wardrobes for the male charac- ters (who are often unclothed), Symons empha- sized the lean lines of their torso and legs. “Oliver [Hermanus, one of the executive producers] wanted to show the gay sex as sensual, consen- sual and quite loving. He wanted to see the male form, so I made sure that the shirts, particularly of George, were translucent so you could see his body clearly beneath the rather delicate fabrics,” she said. “It was important to Oliver that these men were seen as men and not as the more camp version, the Molly Boys, and that their love was a pure, in a sense, enjoyment of their bodies.”
At the end of the episode, Mary’s schemes have borne fruit, and she returns to court for a victory lap, this time dressed in a tasteful blue silk gown that echoes the vibrant colors worn by the king, queen, George and others. “I talked to Oliver a lot about the colors that Mary might wear, and I really liked the idea of her in blue. And he said, ‘Well, it’s the color of harmony,’” Symons said. “Of course, he’s right. So when she comes back, she wears blue because she’s in harmony with the court.”
For the time being, anyway. Looking ahead to Mary’s elevation in title and power, won through ever more ruthless gambits, Symons said, “When she becomes countess she wears something completely nuts, a fairy princess Cinderella-type dress with all the frills and bells. Mary changes color every time she moves into another arena of her life: another marriage [or] in London, skulking around in the shadows with prostitutes.”
A version of this story originally appeared in TheWrap’s awards magazine.
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