A dressing-up box beyond compare

"We entered Cosprop as ourselves and walked out as the person we were playing." – Helena Bonham Carter

The genre known as "costume drama" has been an absolute mainstay of the entertainment world, in the theatre, in film and on television, since time immemorial. In latter years, we've lapped up the likes of Great Expectations, The Duchess of Duke Street, A Passage to India, A Room With a View, Out of Africa, Poirot, The House of Elliott, Howard's End, Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth, Downton Abbey, Peaky Blinders and Gentleman Jack - and original costumes [many of them never exhibited in public before] from all of these (and much, much more) were on show at the ever-fascinating Fashion and Textile Museum, in the exhibition Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop that we went to see en famille on Saturday.

Cosprop was founded by Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer John Bright in 1965, and ever since then his company's peerless work has appeared in thousands of film, television and stage productions.

We should let the clothes speak for themselves, really...

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville in Downton Abbey; Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth; David Suchet in Poirot; Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in Pride and Prejudice.

"Actors walk in with just a script and the name of their character. They walk out with that character fully formed in their mind, having brought him or her to life through the angle of a hat, the fabric of a coat or the feel of a pair of shoes." – John Bright

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Helena Bonham Carter and Dame Maggie Smith in A Room with a View; Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean; Ralph Fiennes and Liv Tyler in Onegin; Leslie Manville in Mrs Harris Goes to Paris.

"It’s a beautiful exhibition where you will want to take in every perfect little detail, and has been arranged so you can see the costumes from several angles." - Lucy Sutton-Long

Costumes worn by [l-r]: Meryl Streep in Out of Africa; Vanessa Redgrave and Emma Thompson in Howards End; Kiera Knightley in The Duchess; Suranne Jones in Gentleman Jack.

By the end, we were utterly boggled by the sheer array of items associated with films and TV series we loved! The most gorgeous ones of the lot were, however, from some less familiar productions.

[l-r] A pair of embroidered jackets worn by Basil Hension in War and Peace (BBC, 1972); evening gown worn by Natascha Richardson in The White Countess; Fancy-dress costume worn by Uma Thurston in The Golden Bowl.

Simply wonderful. So pleased we caught this on its last weekend before the exhibition closed.

Fashion and Textile Museum - Costume Couture trailer

The Queen of Luxury

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun - “Portrait de Marie-Antoinette a` la rose”, on its first ever loan from its usual home at the Petit Trianon, Versailles.

"The V&A’s latest blockbuster fashion exhibition, the hotly-anticipated 'Marie Antoinette Style', feels almost like a seance. It’s got everything you’d expect from a no-holds-barred, couture-filled reassessment of the extravagant French queen – the pomp and circumstance, stunning gowns, shimmering jewels, impossibly elegant furnishings, luminous portraiture, items which have never before left Versailles – but even more remarkably, it manages to conjure her spirit, in all its complexity." - Radhika Seth, Vogue magazine.

And so it was that Madam Arcati and I ventured out on Sunday to see what all the fuss was all about - and I am very glad we did!

True to the preeminent reputation of the V&A, they had truly pulled out all the stops to stage the most comprehensive exhibition on the most divisive of all characters in French history. As the report from Vogue attests, its curator Dr. Sarah Grant has gathered together the most amazing array of sumptuous 18th-century fashions - silks woven to look like deliberate blurs or two-tone sunsets, dresses garlanded with three-dimensional flowers, travelling capes where the hood or sleeves could be removed, one of Marie's teeny-tiny silk shoes (and her equally miniscule choker), robes with enormous pannier-suspended skirts and the most impossibly tiny-waisted bodices - and at its centre, the Queen of Sweden's glittering silver robe de cour/wedding gown, with its eight-foot train, apparently based upon the one worn by Marie Antoinette herself.

[l-r] The robe de cour/wedding gown of Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, Queen of Sweden (1774); Marie Antoinette in a court dress by François Hubert Drouais (1773); Marie Antoinette's shoe; Robe à la française silk dress dating from around 1775.

From the grandest of grand ballgowns, where next but the accessories - the jewellery [and her magnificent jewellery cabinet to store them in was also here], the fans...

[l-r] A meticulous 1960s replica of "the grandest diamond necklace ever commissioned", at the centre of the "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" that led to the scandalisation of the Queen's reputation; the Sutherland diamonds (reputed to contain stones from that necklace); the Anglesey Diamond Negligee Necklace (also reputed to be made from its stones); a whole case of fans from her court.

...and what about the wigs?

[left] A genuine wig design worn by Marie Antoinette ("Trumph of Liberty", to celebrate a French naval victory over the British in the American revolutionary wars); [right] a satirical piss-take of the preposterous and towering wig styles of the day.

Inevitably, of course, all this excess, combined with the poverty of the masses and the rise of both revolutionary dogma and vicious satire [examples of the latter, in all their pornographic "glory", are on display], led to the collapse of this entire deck of glittering cards - despite Marie Antoinette's tentative steps towards embracing the ideas of the Enlightenment (she breastfed her children [and there's an immaculate Sevres cup in the shape of what might well have been her own breast on display!] and promoted that practice; she was also an advocate of smallpox innoculation) and the way she began to "tone-down" her image (albeit in the much-reviled "rural fantasies" she staged at her Petit Trianon retreat [her highly impractical "tools", plus fabrics, furniture and porcelain from that era are also on display]) - and even though the Royals agreed to discard their assumed "divine right of kings" and become a constitutional monarchy, there was little that could abate the bloodlust of the mob...

...and yes, there is indeed an actual guillotine blade, together with Marie Antoinette's prison smock, her last written words in her prayer-book and even death masks all on display in their own room.

The rest of the exhibition focuses on Marie Antoinette's enduring legacy (in fashion, specifically) - a "cult" that was promoted by Empress Eugenie in particular in the mid-1800s, and traversed the turn of the century well into the 1920s [with a whole display of illustrations by Erte, Dulac and Barbier alongside the gowns]...

[click any photo to enlarge]

...and beyond! Of course. Among the extravaganza of "modern frocks that pay tribute to Marie Antoinette Style" in the final, massive room of the exhibition are Jeanne Lanvin’s Marie Antoinette dress, catwalk designs by Vivienne Westwood, Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano, original costumes worn by Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s biographical fantasy film alongside Norma Shearer's frock from the 1938 version, several Moschino creations [she seems to be an obsession of his] including the outrageous "Let Them Eat Cake" numbers made of latex:

...and a cabinet of Manolo Blahnik shoes! [Unsurprisingly, as he's the main sponsor]:

This was an absolutely fabulous experience! We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A closes on Sunday 22nd March 2026 - and tickets are sold out, so you need to join as a member (as we are) in order to see it!

Stop Messin' About!

“Oh, he loved showing his bum. Loved it. He joked about his bottom hanging in pleats.” - Carry on Emmannuelle co-star Suzanne Danielle

It is the centenary today of a uniquely talented man - the nation's favourite archly camp comedian, frustrated thespian, raconteur and wit, any chat-show host's favourite guest, perfect reader of children's books on Jackanory, a man of contradictions in temperament and mood between his public and private life, subversive yet troubled and full of self-loathing. Many have tried to pin down what exactly it was that made him so great, and an article by Ryan Gilbey in Friday's Guardian certainly gives us some great insights from people who knew him, or were inspired by him.

"As a child, I connected with his outsiderness. Rather than trying to fit in, he went in the opposite direction. Not only did he not apologise for being different, but he was queer in every sense, truly at odds with the world in which he found himself.

He regretted not being taken seriously. The great tragedy is he did something enormously serious through his comedy, which he could never realise or acknowledge. He wasn’t seen as an activist, and would probably hate to have been. What we sometimes forget, though, is that radical action comes in many forms.” - comedian Tom Allen

On Round the Horne, Williams and Hugh Paddick played the camp duo "Julian and Sandy", whose banter... consisted entirely of double entendres and the gay slang Polari. A prohibition on explicit language facilitated some of the filthiest innuendoes ever heard on British radio... First broadcast in 1965, two years before the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality between males over 21 in England and Wales, the sketches were subversive as well as funny.

“The whole thing was outrageously rude and queer. In a subtle, mainstream way, he changed attitudes hugely in this country." - Tom Allen

“He would be chatting about something intellectual and high-class, then suddenly be talking about his bumhole. “That lent him a sort of danger and spontaneity. He’s like a commedia dell’arte character, or the fool or trickster in mythology – he delights in pricking pomposity and turning expectations upside down.

It’s about saying: ‘This is what is respectable. But here is the murky stuff underneath.’ There was nobody better at doing that than him. What David Lynch did for America, Kenneth Williams did for Britain, but in the form of light entertainment.” - actor Michael Sheen

The biographer Roger Lewis credits him as one of the sources of Maggie Smith’s performance in Downton Abbey. The desiccated, withering Dowager Countess of Grantham, Lewis wrote, amounts to “Lady Bracknell as played in drag by Williams”.

In short, Kenneth williams was a genius. There will never, ever, be anyone else quite like him.

Kenneth Williams and Maggie Smith - Death in Leamington

Kenneth Williams - Parkinson, 1980

Kenneth Williams - Ma Crepe Suzette

Kenneth Williams - Stop Messin' About

Kenneth Charles Williams (22th February 1926 – 15th April 1988)

On the Jukebox at Dolores Delargo Towers this weekend

How romantic.

The Master of Couture

One of the last of the 20th century's great couturiers, Valentino has despatched his last runway collection and departed to add his signature elegance and panache to the halls of Fabulon.

Probably most remembered for his "Valentino Red" dresses, he nonethless designed frocks in myriad shades and styles - but always, always the height of sophistication. Needless to say, many of the world's most stylish women were his clients, including Princess Grace (Kelly), Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes [who only recently departed at the very end of 2025 - read my tribute to her from 2011 here], Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Margaret, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, the Begum Aga Khan, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Anjelica Huston, Sharon Stone, Joan Collins and Princess Diana.

Indeed, he designed "that frock" worn by Antia Ekberg in La Dolce Vita, the wedding dress Jackie Kennedy wore to marry Aristotle Onassis in 1968, as well as Julia Roberts' 2001 Oscars frock.

Another great loss. There are fewer and fewer designers with a true sense of style around these days...

RIP, Valentino Garavani (11th May 1932 – 19th January 2026)