A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (18 page)

Cora and Lady Rose ascend the stairs to the throne room.

Creating the episode for Rose’s coming out was no mean feat. Lancaster House in London was chosen as the location for Buckingham Palace. It was once London’s most expensive private house, with an interior that set the fashion for the city’s smartest drawing rooms: Queen Victoria was alleged to have said to the Duchess of Sutherland, ‘I have come from my house to your palace.’ It is now a government building, occasionally used for receptions and largely closed to the public.

From the cast, only Elizabeth McGovern (Cora), Lily James (Lady Rose) and Hugh Bonneville (Robert) were present, as they would have been the only family members there in the throne room. There were also the actors Oliver Dimsdale and Guy Williams, as the Prince of Wales and King George respectively, the two other speaking parts for that scene. Queen Mary was played by the third assistant director’s mother, as she happens to bear a strong resemblance! Alastair Bruce was given the part of the Lord Chamberlain; he was the man who not only handled all the debutante applications, but then read out their names to announce them to the King and Queen. ‘I was rather keen on giving myself the Order of the Garter,’ laughs Alastair. ‘It hadn’t actually been given to the Lord Chamberlain until 1924, so I brought that in a little earlier!’

Alastair was involved in the research into exactly what would have happened during the court presentation: ‘Getting uniform insignia and court dress right was the biggest challenge because people may write that they attended an event but not say exactly what they wore. We realised only at the last minute that I was about to be dressed in the wrong trousers and jacket. There is a difference between the court dress – which is worn in the evening – of privy councillors, which is red collar and red cuffs, and the royal household, which is gold collar and gold cuffs. So we had to find more gold collars and cuffs.’ Alastair did much of his research digging deep in the archives of Windsor Castle, examining the court papers and trying to find the documents of the Master of the Household that might tell him the format of the presentation.

As well as the cast, an enormous number of extras were needed for this episode. The call-sheet for the day is illuminating: 6 x presenting ladies; 10 x debutantes; 1 x Yeoman of the Guard; 3 x palace footmen; 3 x gentlemen users; Fierce Aunt; 3 x household officers … and so on. Each one would be in costume early – Caroline McCall, the costume designer for series four, and her team had to be on set by 5 a.m. to prepare. ‘We had at least twelve extra helpers on the day to dress the crowd,’ she says. To gather the costumes, they found as many cream and white dresses as they could, largely from the hire house Cosprop, and then made simple trains. ‘There were so many regulations in terms of how many inches on the floor, and we wanted to get it as correct as we possibly could, so that did take time. My assistant had to make sure everything to do with medals was correct and that was tough! Afterwards we wondered how we did it, but the more you have to do, the more you achieve. We were running on adrenaline.’

Of course, the star of the show was Rose. ‘Her style was very of the moment and when you look at the images you can’t quite believe that that moment is 1923,’ says Caroline. ‘There were so many different designs happening then, dropping in and out. I had two ideas for Rose’s coming out and chose three styles to show Liz Trubridge and Julian. I said we could either go for something very beaded and quite shocking, to show what a rebel she is – I thought she might choose something that would upset her mother with a picture of her wearing it in the paper – or something much more romantic, with roses and embroidery. Julian felt that Rose would conform for the occasion and he liked the idea for the prettier dress.’ For Rose’s own ball in the evening, the director wanted her to wear a strong colour rather than the white she would wear for the presentation. ‘So we chose a pink dress in a similar style,’ says Caroline. ‘When you see her in it – everyone else there is in gold and silver – it means there’s no question: it’s
her
ball.

Lady Rose’s official coming-out ball, where she had the honour of the Prince of Wales asking her for the first dance.

SPOTLIGHT ON

Nic Collins, hair and make-up designer, joined
Downton Abbey
for the fifth series. A fan of the show, she admits she found coming on to the set for the first time very exciting, but also quite frightening.

Nic’s work began in early January: ‘We have four weeks’ prep and at the beginning we had meetings to establish whether we would be maintaining the looks of previous series or if there was movement for change with the characters. I also would say where I felt we could enhance or alter. Hair and make-up helps create a character; I wanted to widen the gap between the looks above and below stairs.’

Nic and I are talking in the hair and make-up truck – it is packed with a sweet shop of delights, from luxurious skincare products to lipstick palettes. One side of the truck is lined with six huge mirrors, framed with bright strip lights (presumably more practical than the pretty dressing-room light-bulb frames of old) and six chairs; along the back is a shelf with several faceless polystyrene busts wearing various wigs. ‘Nearly everybody has some kind of wig, piece or switch [smaller clips of hair to add length or volume],’ says Nic.

Lily James receives a finishing touch.

This is partly down to the time factor – there’s a huge cast to be got ready every morning, so they cannot spend more than an hour and fifteen minutes on each female character, and putting a wig on is a lot quicker than doing their curls. Even the male actors need twenty to thirty minutes each: ‘It depends on the haircuts – the men must have one every week to keep them exactly the same.’ As well as the main cast, there will be ‘crowd’ actors to be prepared daily – from hall boys and maids in the kitchen to fellow guests at a London party. Nic has a permanent team of six and ‘endless amounts of daily help, sometimes as many as twenty freelance make-up artists. We need manpower.’

The year 1924 was a very exciting one for hair and make-up. It was the year of the shingle bob: a short, chin-length bob that goes up at the nape of the neck and drops down at the side. That year, half of all women in Britain had their hair bobbed. Before then, girls wore their hair down as children, and putting it up was a mark of reaching womanhood. Cutting your hair into a bob was still a very daring thing to do in the early post-war years, and many, as with Edith and Mary, chose instead to ape the style by shaping the front sections of their hair into a bob and pinning up the long hair at the back of their necks. In 1924, the bob became an expression of independence and was a fiery topic of debate – sometimes more, with divorce and murder allegedly attributed to the emotions stirred by the simple haircut.

Even if you chose not to bob your hair, there was a definite focus on styling and accessories. From tortoiseshell combs to scarves and turbans, women liked to pay attention to their heads. And, of course, there were the waves. Initially, women used the Marcel tongs. Nic has some in her truck and they resemble scissors with long, thin tongs; these would be heated in a little oven before being wound round the hair. But the curls achieved are rather angular and Nic wanted to move into a softer, more rounded look, which was becoming increasingly fashionable as the 1920s moved on. Now, as then, Nic’s team do finger waves, a styling method which uses just gel and water (the hair is ‘pinched’ into S-curls when wet and dries naturally) – it has the benefit of being far less damaging to the actors’ hair.