“ She gazed at the man approaching her with that doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she heard the unprecedented words, ‘It is for you”; she stared at him; she stared at the doll; then she slowly retreated, and hid herself at the extreme end. ”
ITS BARRICADE DAY. IT IS TIME TO LOVE AND APPRECIATE LES AMIS DE L'ABC. AND IT IS DEFINITELY TIME TO CRY ABOUT “permets-tu?” AND GAVROCHE’S DEATH. THIS IS OUR TIME. LAMARQUE, HIS DEATH IS THE HOUR OF FATE, THE PEOPLE’S MAN, HIS DEATH… IS THE SIGN WE AWAIIIIIIT (TO CELEBRATE BARRICADE DAY)!!!! HAPPY BARRICADE DAY EVERYBODY! VIVE LA FRANCE!
Jehan and parnasse as team rocket (bc montparnasse is a simp for jehan and caved in, Bahorel as ladybug and Feuilly as chat noir, Marius and Cosette as Mario and peach, Musichetta as katara and Bossuet as aang
Eponine as Marceline, R as Finn, Gavroche as jake, courfeyrac as bubble, Enj as blossom, Combeferre as buttercup (yes, Courf was in charge of outfits), and Joly as toph
I’m out of town, but here is my contribution to the @lesmisartcollab ! I got @tamakyuart‘s lines. It was fun to color something so different than I’m used to, and I’m glad there’s finally a Fantine on my blog!
I wasn’t exactly blown away by the costumes in the BBC production of Les Mis, and Cosette’s in particular, cute as Ellie Bamber is, were thoroughly “just okay.” But I didn’t put much more thought into it…
Well, not until Gentleman Jack–set in the exact same time period–blew BBC’s Les Mis out of the water with its costume design. Then more recently, when I started researching the fashion of the early 1830s, all the ways in which poor Cosette’s costumes fell short became glaringly obvious.
Disclaimer: I am not as much of a stickler for historical accuracy in period drama costumes as this little essay is going to make me out as being. I’m not a Frock Flicks kind of gal; I just want to be entertained and look at pretty clothes. So as far as I’m concerned, as long as the basic silhouettes are there and the costumes are nice to look at, I’m there. (I find the wildly inaccurate costumes of The Tudors a lotmore visually appealing than the ones in Wolf Hall. And everyone knows Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was highly stylized, but those costumes are to die for and still embody the rococoaesthetic very well.)
That said, Cosette is a character who’s very invested in fashion, and the general look of the 1830s isn’t unknown to English productions, being the setting of Queen Victoria’s adolescence, Jane Eyre,Wives and Daughters, and many a Dickens adaptation among others.
So where did they go wrong?
Being honest, most of the Les Mis productions from the past two decades or so failed to put Cosette in high-fashion or even noteworthy costumes. Only the 2012 film for all the ways it failed her as a character hit it out of the park. Cosette gowns were damn near perfect–and they were actually pretty to boot! Unfortunately in the actual film you can’t evensee the floral gown and you can barely see the blue one…thanks Tom Hooper.
The belts/buckles, the enormous sleeves, the delicate floral prints and embroidery, the lace collars…pat the costume designer on the back! (Her wedding dress was also on-point, but we’ll get to that.)
Claire Danes and Virginie Ledoyen had passable-and-sometimes-good costumes, too. Though Claire Danes’ were generally not very pretty, their overall silhouette was correct. Virginie Ledoyen gets a couple of knock-out, very period-appropriate gowns; the rest sort of fall into the nebulous “well, I guess you tried” category without being unattractive.
But the BBC production just…dropped the ball for reasons unknown.
Now, in the book Cosette overhears some ladies calling her “pretty but badly dressed.” She’s shocked, because she thinks she’s ugly but well-dressed. She then goes on a charming quest to become the best-dressed woman in Paris, and the BBC adaptation even has a scene where she goes to the seamstress. It’s really cute. Too bad that the dresses are…really not.
Here are some fashion plates from 1830-32. Keep in mind that Cosette lives in Paris, of all places; she would be aware of what was and was not fashionable.
This is the height of Romantic fashion: giant (“gigot”) sleeves and bonnets, full skirts with hems at or just above the ankle, lace accents, silk stockings and slippers, elaborate hairdos. The 2012 costumes, again, capture this quite well.
And even if the BBC designer had taken liberties and had fun while preserving the overall aesthetic–think what Sandy Powell did in Cinderella, set in roughly the same period–I wouldn’t be making this post. But there’s curiously little 1830s to be found in Cosette’s wardrobe at all.
I guess we should start with the BBC’s Good/Accurate Stuff. This coat Cosette wears is, apart from the deep fur-lined V-neck, almost a carbon copy of the extant coat on the right. And she has a bonnet!
Cosette’s best/most accurate dress is, naturally, the most difficult to see and has the least screentime of all her costumes:
From what I can tell, the sleeves, though delicate and sheer, are very full, as is the skirt, and the whole thing seems both pretty and en vogue…despite the questionable neckline. It’s also detailed–embroidery on the sleeves and with pleats (?) to create visual interest at the shoulders and on the bodice!
Here are a selection of other short-sleeved gowns from the period for comparison (both extant garments and costumes/reconstructions).
Tbh Ellie’s costume should be as stunning as the blue gown (far left) that an extrawore in Cinderella, but…maybe someday, in some Les Mis production, that gorgeous Sandy Powell creation will reappear.*sigh* (Virginie Ledoyen’s best Cosette gown is on the far right, btw.)
Anyway, that’s…that’s about it for the “Good” category.
Next up: her teal/turquoise dress(es). (She also wears a red one that looks exactly like this.)
Someone didn’t tell the costume designer that Cosette was supposed to be a fashionista, I guess. During my research, I did find a couple of dresses that resembled these two…but they would both be several years out of date by the time Cosette was going on her fashion crusade:
Even the yellow dotted dress has more style and “oomph” than what poor Cosette got stuck in–her sleeves look comparatively small, deflated, and underwhelming, all the more so when compared to actual1830s gigot sleeves.
In the interest of being fair, some extant gowns from the right dates also look somewhat like these two.
But they all look, well…better. They all make me wish Cosette’s gown had bigger sleeves, a more-defined neckline, less wrinkly fabric…anything that would take it up a notch. (Also of note: as plain as some of these dresses look, they would not have been worn alone–accessories like wide belts, shawls, bonnets, etc., would have been part of the outfit when they were actually worn.)
And when it comes down to it, Cosette–who wants, after all, to be wearing the most fashionable gowns, like those in the fashion plates–should be wearing gowns more like…
The detailing, the fabric choices, the tailoring, and (sorry) the size and position of the sleeves makes all the difference here. A little more effort, even just padding for Cosette’s poor limp sleeves and a belt, would be enough to bump her looks from “kind of sad” to “something I believe this character would really wear.”
My personal favorite gown in the production was very pretty, flowing and delicate–and look: I’m willing to accept that Cosette wouldn’t always be wearing a fashion plate while chasing butterflies (something no film Cosette has, tragically, ever done…) That said, it still wasn’t very 1830s.
This purplish gown is the closest extant I could find to something like what Cosette wears here, but once you look at the details of both–fabric, neckline, whatever is happening around waist–all you get is “???” A lovely dress, but one that doesn’t make much sense.
So finally we come to what ought to be the showiest of all Cosette’s costumes: her wedding gown.
This costume ought to be Stunning for a lot of reasons. The “Fauchelevents” have money! The Pontmercys have money, and they have society friends! Cosette is a fashionista, and she’s head-over-heels in sweet young love! And one an assume that Valjean wants to send off the light of his life, if send her off he must, in style–he’s heartbroken but also knows, from this moment, that he will never have to worry about her safety or well-being again.
With all that in mind, this is what Ellie’s Cosette wears…
Oh. Okay. Is it her freaking wedding day, or is she just going to a church picnic???
At least she IS wearing a bonnet in this scene, but it’s the same color as her hair (?!) and it’s tiny…just like her sad, deflated sleeves. The necklime and waistline both are at least accurate here, but like the sleeves, the skirt isn’t voluminous. Not a single thing about the dress makes a statement…unless it’s a shrug. The impression is, once again, “meh?”
At least a veil (which some women did wear on their wedding bonnets) would emphasize the “wedding day” vibe. How about, if they weren’t going to give it any volume, some detail on the gown…anydetail…floral embroidery…a BELT…a contrasting color or fabric (lace, hello?!)…anything??? It’s just so plain and low-key.Just like everything Cosette wears in this miniseries.
Here are some period wedding gowns, two of which Cosette wears in other adaptations. They all have the wow factor this dress lacks.
Big sleeves! Lace! Belts! Veils! Lush fabric! Frills! Different colors/fabrics to create visual interest! Hairstyles that pop instead of blend together! These are the kind of gowns that say “I’m the bride and this is my day.” Not “I’m going to the church picnic.”
I want to reiterate that, after ALL that rambling…my big issues are that a) these dresses are not–by and large–attractive or interesting and b) that they fail to embody Cosette’s love of fashion. The fact that they’re so inaccurate for the time period is secondary. However, paying more attention to the fashions of 1830-32 would, I think, have helped make the costumes prettier andmore suited to the character. How you dress a character is also a factor in how their character is perceived and can be a subtle means of character development. No chance of that here. (Post-marriage, Cosette wears such a blase dark blue coat that, sans fur trim, looks identical to her previous one. Yawn.)
I’m just a fan, yet it still took me only three days of basic research to put this post together. Expecting a costume designer to put in at least a few days of light research is not a huge leap. I’m going to venture a guess and say that this designer did not bother to do that. And it shows.
It’s a shame, because Cosette gets a lot more screentime here–for the first time since the 2000 production–and she deserves so much more than shapeless gowns and barely-styled hair.
And also more than Andrew Davies…but that’s a rant for another time.
