A Wetpaint Site

COSTUMES of the Tudors |

Version Compare

Version	User	Scope of changes
Nov 21 2009, 8:04 AM EST	MsSquirrly	10 words added, 3 photos added
Oct 18 2009, 1:02 PM EDT	AuraTopp	1 word added

Changes

Key: Additions Deletions

SEE ALSO: The Tudors Depictions Throughout History | The Tudors Historical Inaccuracies and Mysteries | The Tudors Photos | The Tudors 100 Reasons to Watch | The Tudors Links & Resources

◄ Back home: The Tudors Fan Wiki

MEET THE COSTUME DESIGNER

JOAN BERGIN, Costume Designer

One of Ireland's best known film costume designers has worked on:
My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, David Copperfield,
Riverdance, Reign of Fire, and The Prestige.

Recently the team of Joan Bergin, Designer, Ger Scully & Jessica O'Leary, both Costume Supervisors won the

Emmy award for Outstanding costumes for a series (2007 & 2008)

At the Emmy Awards Show, Ryan Seacrest decided to
honor the show by appearing in one of Henry's costumes. He said: "You know this looked a
lot less gay on the rack"

MEET MICHAEL HIRST, Series Creator and Writer
The Tudors Costumes - The Tudors Wiki

" In my research, I was always looking for historical scenes which would seem quite contemporary even though people were in costume. We didn't want another Royal Shakespeare company or 'Masterpiece Theatre' kind of thing -- all these English actors in period costumes with elaborate and totally contrived mannerisms. We wanted them to be and sound real and think real."

Please add your comments on the series costumes or Tudor costumes in genera by clicking here.

The Tudors Costumes

as translated for the series

Want to add your knowledge to The Tudors Costume's page?

Click EasyEdit to update this page! (Don't see the EasyEdit button above? Sign in or Sign up.)

Tudor Tidbits on King Henry VIII's Costumes

To make this series more relatable to a modern audience, none of the male actors wore wigs or codpieces, despite that fact that men of this era wore longer hair and the ridiculous clothing appendage. The producers unanimously ruled them out.

Bergin says : "Henry was a Rock Star of his time. so we use a lot of leather and a lot of fabrics which are almost modern. The cut of the collar is high and flattering, with garments cut close to the body to accentuate his physique. He was the Mick Jagger of his day"

"They didn't want a rigid BBC costume drama," Ms. Bergin said, "not least because our Henry is a young man. I showed that in private moments - we could have him in a collarless shirt. I have used black leather and wool, with touches of gold and white to evoke the rat pack of young aristocrats trying to gain a place in court".

Its good

to be the

King

The 5th Irish Film & Television awards - 2008 Winners

Joan Bergin accepting her award for Best Costume Design	Dee Corcoran & Jennifer Hegarty for Best hair and Makeup
Joan Bergin and Jonathan Rhys Meyers at the Season 3 launch party	Costumes from Season 3 being shown on models at the launch party
Annabelle Wallis next to her trademark Teal dress	Joan Bergin with a Season 4 costume

For more on Tudor Costumes , click here:

TUDOR STYLE - deconstructed

The 'V' Waist on this dress was probably not used in the early Tudor period, but more towards the late 1550's and more so with the reign of Elizabeth I in her initial years. The square neckline however; is almost accurate to the necklines most gowns would have by 1520's-1530's, but the sleeves are not.

It is very unlikely for a royal or noble lady to wear these thin sleeves, almost attached to her arms with no second fur or detachable sleeves at all. This is known by the painting where fur and trumpet-like sleeves would be used through out the courts of England, France and sometimes Spain, sometimes the fur sleeves would be very round and expanded, such like the sleeves Mary Tudor wore on her wedding gown when she married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.The gown in it's whole totality is more similar to the initial Elizabethan courtier costume than to the early Tudor Period of the 1520's or 1530's.

For Joan Bergin designing the costumes of THE TUDORS was more than a matter of researching the costumes of the 16th Century. They needed to be reinterpreted. " The thinking behind the costumes was to present a deconstructed Tudor that the clothes wouldn't be purist and odd for a contemporary audience" She says "I wanted the clothes to say to a modern audience: 'how sexy' or 'how magnificent or whatever - not to be strange. So that meant taking the Tudor garments and adding touches that allow you to relate to them in a modern way'.

Bergin Takes most pride from the central role the costumes play in THE TUDORS. "What I've enjoyed most is that the series is very character driven which means I can develop each character through the clothes they wear. So if you're watching it week after week, you should be able to tell how the character has developed from the way they look - have they gone up or down in the social pecking order. Anne Boleyn is the most dramatic example. By the end of the series she's pretty stunning!".

The Tudors costumes inspirations:
The Tudors Costumes - The Tudors Wiki

Joan Bergin explains the inspiration for the masque scene were the ballet costumes of Degas & Balenciaga's corsets which were in turn inspired by the Elizabethan era.
The Tudors Costumes - The Tudors Wiki

Some of the clothing came from costumes Bergin found left over from a 1930's swashbuckler film starring Errol Flynn.

"I thought the old costumes would look shabby and worn
(in high definition)," Bergin says. " But high definition loves the old dyes and (non-synthetic) fibers".

LINK:

Costumers guide website - showing recycled costumes from other movies that are used in the Tudors production.

Interview with Joan Bergin in the Post.IE
May 20, 2007

This year alone, Bergin has been working on the biographical film of Brendan Behan, The Bells of Hell, and revamping the Riverdance costumes for the show’s return to Ireland this month. She has also worked on 1,400 costumes for the US television series The Tudors, and the ‘‘one-and-a-half “ costumes required for Sam Shepard’s Kicking A Dead Horse at the Abbey....

‘‘I did a ton of research and then deconstructed what I saw. I’m always looking for the road back: what was original about the period I am to represent, and what’s the road back to where we are now?”

It was an approach she also used on the costumes for The Prestige last year. ‘‘In the Prestige, I wanted to find what about Victoriana would make us really identify with the people, and this was true with Riverdance and the Celts. What would make you go ‘wow, that’s what we were’? Well, on good days, that’s what we tried to do.”

A good costume designer, Bergin says, is an anthropologist, constantly storing up images from the world around, even if it means the occasional bout of visual indigestion. Her method of expressing the kernel of a character through their clothes is one she says she shared with one of her team, Carol Graham, who died tragically a few weeks ago, while still in her 30s.

‘‘I loved that she gathered visual information in the same way I do; working with Carol was affirmation that I wasn’t mad.”

ROYAL DESIGN

'TUDORS' DUDS FIT FOR A KING

By ROBERT RORKE - New York Post

April 13, 2008

The real stars of "The Tudors" are the costumes. It was no surprise that the show's costume designer. Joan Bergin (right), walked off with the Emmy Award last year. Her brocades, silks and plush furs give the stately Showtime series a rich, romantic look that adds an elegant veneer to the sometimes diabolical plot. If a king is going to cast the Catholic church out of England and condemn his wife to death, shouldn't he look fabulous while doing it?

Bergin clearly thinks so. She dresses star Jonathan Rhys Meyers in brocade jerkins, fancy black velvet hats, sleeveless leather vests and extravagant fur capes that would send PETA members into fits. The designer says Rhys Meyers loves fashion. "One of the really great aspects about 'The Tudors' is that Jonathan really understands and appreciates clothes. I'm so lucky," she says. "Henry VIII had such charisma that when he entered a room people would stop talking."

Working with a staff of 17 to turn out costumes for 110 cast members in 10 weeks, the Dublin-born Bergin relied upon journals written by members of King Henry's court and her own knowledge of English history for background. "It's an old Irish proverb that you serve your enemy well, so every Irish child would know a lot of English history," she says.

Her vast network of contacts in the costume community came in especially handy. These included John and Vanessa Hopkins, a couple that collects vintage fabrics. They contributed a 150-year-old panel of molten silver silk that forms the bodice of a staggering silver-and-blue shot silk dress worn by Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer). For jewels, Bergin struck gold with a company called Sorelle, run by two sisters, which is what the name means in Italian. "They sent me six pieces. Then they sent me another 200 pieces," Bergin says. Another Italian vendor, Autore, sent an "amazing pearl necklace and earrings" worth about $40,000. "I was a bit daunted because I saw it was Art Deco. So I designed the dress to go with the pearls." Anne Boleyn will have her head chopped off wearing those pearls, in episode 10.

Bergin was working on the 2006 magician drama "The Prestige" when she was offered the "Tudors" job. "The complexity and the scale of [the show] and how to deliver it so that it's not another bloody costume drama - that's why I took the job." A veteran of the Irish film industry, Bergin has never studied costume design. The former architecture student, who lives in Dublin with freelance journalist Kevin O'Connor, showed a flair for wardrobe early in her career when she was an actor. "I was working in a small theater and the costumes were so dreadful that I said, 'Oh, look, for God's sake,'" before taking over. She has designed the wardrobes on three Daniel Day-Lewis films - the Oscar-winning "My Left Foot," "In The Name of The Father," and "The Boxer" - and also dressed the casts of "Riverdance" and the 2000 TNT miniseries "David Copperfield."

While many viewers might think more actresses than actors would be interested in costume design, she believes "men are intrinsically more vain than women. In the beginning [of 'The Tudors' production], the men were so coy and shy about these clothes. Six weeks in, they were strutting around the set." As Bergin prepares for a possible third season, she is surprised that she's made it this far. "If you had told me two years ago that 'The Tudors' would be such a drawstring at the heart..." she says. "It's [my] vanity."

Behind the scenes : Tudors costume designer dishes on the look of Season 2

by jill on April 7th, 2008 - ShowtimeFan.com

One of the best parts of the Tudors, hands down, is the costumes. Thanks to Emmy-winning costumer Joan Bergin, the show transports us to a lush foreign world where the lives of the rich and powerful are anything but pedestrian.
As part of the press materials for Season 2, Bergin sat for a Q&A session. Among the highlights, we learn that:

Henry VII was a towering 6″3′ at a time when most men were a foot shorter. Bergin imagined that he secretly wanted to go to war so she added military details to his clothing — worked leather, heavy moleskin and chain-mail like flourishes “harden his overall look,” she said.
The fabric used to create Anne’s coronation dress is 150 years old and made of hand-spun silver. Her pearls for the coronation cost $65,000 and were loaned to the production. Anne’s costumes become ever more elaborate as the season goes on, to match her character’s development, Bergin said.
For the season, Bergin created nearly 1,500 costumes — some of which were “museum pieces in their detail and execution.”

Are you a costume junkie? Read the full Q&A:

How did you begin to design the costumes for Season Two?
This time round, I’ve done a lot of research into Spanish and Italian fashion from the period. I’ve amalgamated Tudor style with more European influences, so overall the look is softer.
As a costume designer, I can really guide and channel the story in a way that simply isn’t possible in feature films. That’s an enormous amount of responsibility and freedom which both Tom Conroy (production designer) and I have really responded to.

How has the writing inspired the costumes?
Well, Michael Hirst has been absolutely central to the work. We’d talk constantly about how a character is feeling or thinking at a particular moment and then try to reflect that in the costumes. It’s a great privilege for a costume designer to be able to do that. Michael was especially helpful to us in thinking about some of the lesser characters. He knows a great deal about them that might not have made it into the script. For instance, we learned that Thomas Cromwell was a mercenary soldier in Germany so I’ve tried to include little military touches that hint at that.

Henry's costume

Tell us about the scale of your task in making the costumes for Season Two.
This season, we’ve created in the region of 1,500 costume pieces. We really raised the bar in terms of our ambitions and standards. In a feature film, you might have three ‘set-piece’ gowns for Anne Boleyn. Here we have at least one or two every week! Anne had about 17 major costumes, including jewels, head pieces, shoes - all made from scratch. Shooting The Tudors is relentless: it’s one historical scene after another. There’s no let-up! We’re constantly creating - from a full state ball to a battle to a hanging to a prison - and each time we’re creating a full tableau. What we’ve produced this year is quite beautiful: a lot of Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ clothes for Henry are just museum pieces in their detail and execution.

How does designing for The Tudors differ from other projects you’ve worked on?
The big danger as a designer is falling into a very stylized and purely visual set of ideas about the costumes. It’s crucial to remember that these were real people, not portraits or models. I think that the success of The Tudors has been that audiences are looking at these historical characters in costumes and settings that they can understand rather than just odd and remote contexts. The costumes go on the journey with the characters; they’re not just some random adornment. I’m quite fascinated by social history as it relates to costume and I try to incorporate that - the kind of cloth different classes wear, or who would wear fur, and so on.

How did you go about designing the look of Henry’s costumes this season?
We’ve been thinking about Henry as someone whose feeling for fashion influenced a whole generation - like Bowie or Madonna. He was 6′3″ when most men were almost a foot shorter. Henry had enormous charisma and was physically striking. I’m trying to communicate all that. I’ve also imagined that in the back of his mind, Henry wants to go to war. There are little military touches which harden his overall look: small elements of worked leather, heavy moleskin, garments which are reminiscent of chain mail. No matter how well the characters around him look, when the King walks in, I want everyone to go ‘Wow!’
Anne's costume

What guided your designs for Anne Boleyn?
One of the things we want to reflect in the costumes is the changing fortunes of the characters.
Anne’s costumes evolve more than anyone else in the show. Her clothes get more elaborate and elegant, to the point that she matches her King by the end of the season. She evolves from being despised as a young opportunist to someone who, by the time of her execution, people knelt down and took their hats off to.
We went to a great deal of trouble to achieve that transformation. The material we used in creating her Coronation dress is 150 years old - hand-spun silver which we found in a shop in London. It’s absolutely exquisite.
Costume plays a crucial role in visualizing the development of this character from young and gauche Daddy’s girl to this quite magnificent Queen. As an actress, Natalie has matched everything we put around her; it’s a terrific performance.

Did you enjoy costuming Peter O’Toole?
Of course! It was a real thrill to be dressing an acting legend. The Papal costumes are all specially made. The tailors were delighted to be making Peter’s garments - and he is wonderful to dress; tall and slim. I copied his outfits directly from papal paintings from the period. I really so enjoyed working with him. There was one moment when I turned to him and I saw Lawrence of Arabia!

Where did you get the fabulous jewelry?
With the success of Season One, we’ve had a lot of interest from jewelry suppliers. Anne Boleyn’s pearls for her coronation cost $65,000 and were loaned to us. A costume jewelry company called Sorelli, whose style is inspired by Elizabethan and antique fashion, has been wonderfully generous in allowing me to adapt some of their pieces. We’ve also used an Irish company, Tipperary Crystal, for Jane Seymour. Their pieces have worked really well with our design goals.

Does shooting on DV affect the way you make the costumes?
It’s very unforgiving: you can’t fudge anything. There’s an incredible level of detail in all the clothes: the stitching, the lining, the buttons, the button holes and the fabric all belong to wearable clothes made with extraordinary precision. Some of these pieces have already been requested by museums.

Season 2, Anne Boleyn Gown	Season 3, Jane & Henry Wedding Attire
Season 3	Season 3
Season 4	Season 4
Season 4

LINKS:

MORE COSTUME FUN...

INTERESTING COSTUME FACTS

16th century women didn't wear knickers.However men sometimes wore linen shorts

buttons were usually for decoration and clothes were held together with laces or pins

everyone wore hats. Poor women wore a linen cap called a coif. Men wore woollen caps

linen was used to make shirts and underwear but only the rich could afford cotton and silk

women wore a kind of petticoat called a smock or shift or chemise made oflinen or wool with a wool dress over it. All classes wore wool but it varied in quality. The rich of course wore fine quality & the poor wore coarse wool.

the tudors used mostly vegetable dyes such as madder for red, woad for blue or walnut for brown. A chemical called a mordant was used to 'fix' the dye.The most expensive dyes were bright red and black.

it's a myth that they were dirty and rarely washed. There is evidence that theywashed themselves fairly often but rarely took baths since it was difficult to
heat large amounts of water in one go.

there were sumptuary laws which governed what each class could or could not wear and only persons of a certain rank could wear velvet or silk.*click here to see basic chart of Tudor sumptuary laws for dress*

the fur used on clothing could be : cat, rabbit, beaver, bear, badger & polecat.

People may have washed, but most clothing was not washable. One book I read said that even most fine ladies and gentlemen had lice. Foul odors were rife. To avoid them as much as possible, many fashionable people carried or wore a pomander, usually a metal ball filled with perfume tied to the end of a girdle or hanging from a belt.
Due to the lack of breath freshing tactics, not only did they chew on mint sprigs they would also carry little pouches filled with herbs that were pleasent smelling to hold over their mouth when they spoke.

COSTUME TERMS

Breeches: trouser-like garment

Buff-Jerkin: a leather jerkin worn by working men

Coif: linen cap worn by women

Doublet: a tight-fitting jacket

Jerkin: a jacket worn over the doublet

Kirtle : consisted of a bodice and skirt sewn together and fell in ample folds which trailed on the ground.

Farthingale : a hoop worn beneath the skirt. Also referred to as Verdingales.

Hose : woollen socks or stockings

Codpiece : an inverted triangular piece of material sewn into the hose around a man's groin and held closed by string ties. Later it would become padded and boned and over sized and used to carry a small weapon or jewels. (hence the term "family jewels".

Partlet : a high necked chemise

Forepart: that piece of the underskirt that is revealed through the inverted V opening in the front of the Kirtle.

Bodice : a tightly laced sleeveless vest

Cornet : long piece of black material which hung down the back from a headdress/hood.

French Hood: a half-moon shaped headdress such as that worn and popularized by Anne Boleyn. Queen Katherine Howard also favored it. It was worn over a coif and had a black veil attached to the back

Gable Hood:Originally a simple pointed hood with decorated side panels called lappets and a veil at the back.Katharine of Aragon as well as Jane Seymour wore the Gable hood

LITERATURE: All The Rage. ed. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1992. Barton, Lucy. Historic Costume for the Stage. Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1961. Boucher, François.20,000 Years of Fashion. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc. 1987. Cunnington, C. Willet & Phillis Cunnington. Handbook of English Mediæval Costume. London: Faber and Faber, Limited, 1952. Grass, Milton N. History of Hosiery. New York: Fairchild Publications, Inc., 1956. Laver, James. The Concise History of Costume and Fashion. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., n.d. Nunn, Joan. Fashion in Costume: 1200-1980. London: The Herbert Press, 1984. Schnurnberger, Lynn. 40,000 Years of Fashion: Let There Be Clothes. New York: Workman Publishing, 1991. Sichel, Marion. History of Men's Costume. London: Batsford Academic and Educational, Ltd., 1984. Tannehill, Reay. Sex in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1980. Truman, Nevil. Historic Costuming. London: Sir Issac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1952. Vecellio, Cesare. Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1977. Williams, Penry. Life in Tudor England. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1964.

LITERATURE:

All The Rage. ed. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1992.
Barton, Lucy. Historic Costume for the Stage. Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1961.
Boucher, François.20,000 Years of Fashion. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc. 1987.
Cunnington, C. Willet & Phillis Cunnington. Handbook of English Mediæval Costume. London: Faber and Faber, Limited, 1952.
Grass, Milton N. History of Hosiery. New York: Fairchild Publications, Inc., 1956.
Laver, James. The Concise History of Costume and Fashion. New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., n.d.
Nunn, Joan. Fashion in Costume: 1200-1980. London: The Herbert Press, 1984.
Schnurnberger, Lynn. 40,000 Years of Fashion: Let There Be Clothes. New York: Workman Publishing, 1991.
Sichel, Marion. History of Men's Costume. London: Batsford Academic and Educational, Ltd., 1984.
Tannehill, Reay. Sex in History. New York: Stein and Day, 1980.
Truman, Nevil. Historic Costuming. London: Sir Issac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., 1952.
Vecellio, Cesare. Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1977.
Williams, Penry. Life in Tudor England. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1964.

SEE ALSO: The Tudors Costumes - historical

◄ Back home: The Tudors Fan Wiki

See also: The Tudors Depictions Throughout History | The Tudors Historical Inaccuracies and Mysteries | The Tudors Photos | The Tudors 100 Reasons to Watch | The Tudors Links & Resources

JavaScript must be enabled in order for you to contribute to this site.
To start contributing, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, then try again.

Home