A Year in the Life of Downton Abbey: Seasonal Celebrations, Traditions, and Recipes (21 page)

Meringues and cream are the perfect foil to all the delicious English berries that are in abundance at this time of year. If you are lucky enough to have wild strawberries growing in your garden, they will help to make this pudding look extra dainty.

SERVES 6

Preheat the oven to 275°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place the egg whites in a large bowl and have the sugar measured and ready. Whisk the egg whites using an electric mixer until they form soft peaks (at which stage you should be able to upturn the bowl without them sliding out). Add the sugar little by little, whisking after each addition. When all the sugar is added, the meringue should have a thick, glossy texture.

Place tablespoons of the mixture on to the prepared baking sheets, spacing them evenly apart. Bake in the oven for 1 hour, then turn off the oven and leave the meringues to cool completely with the door ajar.

When you are ready to serve, arrange the berries in a bowl with the meringues and a jug of cream alongside.

SPOTLIGHT ON

Anna Mary Scott Robbins is
Downton Abbey’
s costume designer, joining the show for the fifth series. It’s lucky she has a calm and authoritative manner because anyone else might have been daunted by the task before them. ‘I did know it was going to be a show like no other because not only is it established and popular, but there’s massive hype surrounding the costumes particularly. I knew it would be a tough job to step into,’ she laughs.

Costume designers are famously one of the hardest workers on set, the first to arrive and the last to leave: ‘I wouldn’t even tell you the hours I do because I don’t like to say them out loud.’ Thankfully, Anna doesn’t have to do it all alone – she has a team of ten, including the costume supervisor, wardrobe manager, a cutter and two seamstresses in the workroom.

The wardrobe department at Ealing Studios.

Many of the costumes are made by Anna and her department, which, she explains, she likes: ‘Personally, I think it gives you more control over the design and it also means that Carnival, the production company, then owns the asset. It’s also a much more effective way of working, as it means that whether we’re filming at Ealing Studios [where the workroom is based] or on location, we can constantly add to the wardrobe.’ One of the difficulties she faces is that there is a finite number of authentic period costumes in the hire houses and at vintage fairs and many are falling apart, as they are now almost a hundred years old. There simply isn’t the choice that there used to be.

Anna began working on the show in December 2013, when she received the first scripts. At that point, she started shopping and doing recces for costume ideas, but she didn’t have access to the cast until after Christmas. ‘You can’t fully design something until you can see how it sits on an actor and I’ll often have to call for extra time during the schedule. We’ll have twenty minutes to dress an actor if they’re wearing something established [worn before], but something new will need half an hour, so we can talk it through and tweak anything.’

Anna will speak to the actor about the look they want for their character: ‘Overall, it is a balancing act between the aesthetic design of the whole piece and the characterisation of the individual. I always have to have an eye on the bigger picture. I do like to work collaboratively with actors if they are keen to be involved. Some like to be more involved than others in the part that costume plays in their characterisation.’

Each character requires thinking about in terms of what their clothes say about them and, of course, the range of costumes needed per person can be quite wide – the women above stairs need several evening dresses, day dresses, specific occasion outfits (such as for walking or riding) and all the accessories. The shorter hems in the 1920s meant women started to take more notice of their shoes and stockings for the first time and Anna has been finding printed stockings or those with woven detail on the ankle: ‘Some of them are really quite risqué. The new focus on the feet definitely reflected a different framework for their morality.’

Clothing, of course, starts next to the skin with underwear. By 1924, most women – excepting the more old-fashioned, such as the Dowager Countess and Mrs Hughes – have dropped their corsets. The fashionable figure is now boyish, straight up and down, and usually achieved with a girdle (a tight but flexible piece of underwear, reaching from just below the bosom to mid-thigh, like extra-extra-strength Spanx). For filming, the women may not wear period underwear unless it is seen on screen – ‘Then you’ve got the opportunity to show as much detail as you like’ – as the principal concern is ensuring that the actresses have the right lines, with no bumps or seams beneath their dresses.

For the fifth season, Anna was surprised to discover that most of the wardrobe would have to be designed from scratch. ‘In series four, there was a lot of purple, the colour of half-mourning, and it affects the actors psychologically, it’s too associated with death. So I’ve had to remove it, which meant I couldn’t use much from the series, and anything from series three is really too old-fashioned. We did want as seamless a transition as possible, so some dresses have been reused, but far fewer than I thought we’d be able to.’

In many ways, moving from series four to five is like ‘passing the baton in a relay race’ says Anna. ‘There can’t be any jolts, but at the same time, we have to show that we’re moving it forward.’ Anna trawls vintage fairs at the weekends, carrying the actresses and their characters in her mind. ‘I’m plotting eighteen storylines at any one time, with a dozen dresses perhaps. Any costume has to be believable for the [aristocratic] family that they are and the wealth that they have – they would have had large wardrobes. Sometimes, if I’m out shopping, I’ll spot things across the room – Edith and Rose speak to me very clearly. Edith is wearing fewer avant-garde outfits than she might have done because she’s less in London, but I’ve still found her some amazing shoes. Mary is a dream to costume, but I want to make it all for her – I can never find anything ready-made that is beautiful enough, so her wardrobe is pretty much bespoke.’

Of course, just as they did back then, Anna tries to repeat outfits. ‘You have to be clever where you repeat,’ she explains. ‘It happens now and again because we can’t be like
Sex and the City,
where you never saw the same garment twice. On the other hand, the audiences want to see more and more ravishing costumes, so for our big set pieces, we dress everyone in new outfits.’ The odd judicious piece of recycling happens too – a dressing gown that Carson is spotted wearing in an early episode of series five is an old one of Robert’s.

Jewellery is provided by a single source – a hire house with huge stock: ‘I can put an order in for what I need and either they’ve got it or it can be made. I’m also always finding things at the weekend vintage fairs. There’s a lot more cut-steel and jet in the jewellery, and also hair accessories, as we move into 1924.’

Costume details from the set
.