Television period drama now has its own history of more than 60 years of series and serials, with many thousands of costumes recreated to evoke eras from ancient Rome to the day before yesterday. But those designed by Stephanie Collie for the first six episodes of Peaky Blinders, shown on BBC Two in 2013, had all the shock of the new, despite that initial series being set in 1919. Period drama usually privileges the ensembles of fashionable women, but the most exciting of the Blinders costumes were for working-class dandy gangsters from the early 20th century.
Previously, in adaptations of Dickens, Gaskell and Bennett, urban lower orders knew their wardrobe as well as their social place – clad in corduroy over uncollared shirts, perhaps a muffler to fill in the neck against bitter cold and a generic “cloth cap” – none of it incorrect, but without age or degree, and seldom any sexuality. Collie, who has died aged 60, perceived something far sharper during her research into Birmingham’s vintage criminals. She studied old police mugshots, plus the solid woollen cloths and narrow cuts seen at the racecourses, where Savile Row-tailored nobs dealt with horse-breeding and betting mobs who had developed their own sporting style over more than a century around the stables, including nattier caps – six-panelled, generous towards the rim and with a canvas-reinforced brim (easily razor-blade enhanced for plot purposes).
