NO FUCKING YANKS ON THE THREAD

Day 3 - Favourite Costumes - Crimson Peak

Period Drama Appreciation Week 2024 Day 4 ❥ Favorite Relationship

"The house really dictated how to approach the costumes, from a sculptural point of view, to give them extra depth, to give them a painterly quality. I didn’t want to get myself caught up in detail that didn’t feel like it meant anything, like generic lace or decoration. So all the details we made and they all came from the symbolism of the characters or the house itself. The leaves on Lucille’s dress were constructed by hand, with a single piece of cording. And for Edith, the motifs of the flowers, she blooms. It was about trying to create an atmosphere. [...] [Edith's] like a chrysalis at that point. She’s very fragile, so the butterfly is dying and becoming this little husk. [...] When Guillermo said to me, “It’s about a house that breathes,” that’s why we chose the lightest fabric, just a little thing to try and help the storytelling with the idea of the house." "[As Edith falls in love with Thomas Sharpe,] the silhouette of the sleeves becomes fuller, and the flowers start growing on her dress. You have the world of the moon, and black, and Lucille being the moth, and Edith being the butterfly.” - Kate Hawley

"I wanted texture to be everywhere in the costumes… for everything to feel like it was living and breathing – from an animal or a sea creature from a shell. It all has a kind of organic quality to it. There are curvy, linear shapes, and no sharp lines. Bella’s costumes are very airy. Those sleeves are like huge lungs full of air, and she’s just been reanimated so that felt like a good thing to include. The huge sleeves also affect her body shape, which felt like a good idea, because she is more creature-like when she wears these.” - Holly Waddington

CRIMSON PEAK 2015 | dir. Guillermo del Toro

Crimson Peak (2015) | dir. Guillermo del Toro

During an interview about her incredible costumes for the film Crimson Peak (2015), Kate Hawley mentioned two paintings that particularly inspired her design of the leading female cast’s iconic attire. Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1874, top left) was taken into consideration for the character Lucille Sharpe, otherwise known as The Moth (top right). For Edith Cushing (bottom right), thought of as The Butterfly in contrast, The Bridesmaid by John Everett Millais (1851, bottom left) was said to have greatly influenced the character’s hauntingly beautiful look of cascading hair and the bridal-esque nightgown attire.