1940's Knickers and Ruby Slippers - Celia Rees

I recently visited the Hollywood Costume Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum*.  It was very popular. I went with my daughter and we were reduced to a shuffle as we wound round the different areas of the exhibition but that didn't matter. The slow progress gave us more time to look. I have to admit to being as star struck as anyone and standing in awe in front of the most iconic outfits: Scarlett  O'Hara's dress made from curtains, Marlene Dietrich's top hat and tails and Audrey Hepburn's Breakfast at Tiffany's Little Black Dress.

'Look!' We whispered to each other. 'That's it. The real one!' 

It put one back in touch with favourite stars, favourite films, favourite film scenes. It was also sobering to think that many of the stars who wore these costumes were dead while the clothes they wore lived on.  

For me (once I'd got past the boggling stage) the most interesting aspect of the whole exhibition was the research process that the designers went through to create these costumes, their painstaking attention to detail. The History Girls routinely post about costume. Marie Louise Jensen did a piece about Men's Clothing in the 1700's just this week. When you are writing historical fiction, it is important to know what your characters would be wearing. Finding out is often uppermost in our minds, that is why we blog about it. We look at different sources, just as the film designers do. Museums, like the V & A, with specialist departments can be very helpful, and then there are books on costume. There is also, of course, the internet. Sometimes helpful. Sometimes not. An internet search for '1940's knickers', for example, can take you to some very strange places. The garments featured under 'retro' bear little resemblance to my granny's pink bloomers or to the rubber roll ons I remember women struggling into in the Fifties. But one has to persist. it is important to know what one's character would be wearing, right down to their underwear.

As I shuffled round the exhibition, I realised that there was another dimension to this. It is not just important to know what a man or woman would be wearing in 1789, for example, but it is important to know what your character would be wearing. We have to know who our character is before we can decide what clothes he or she would put on in the morning. It is important to get the period right but clothes tell us a great deal about personality as well as position and status in life. I'd always instinctively known this, but here it was spelt out for me. One whole area was devoted to just this: Deconstruction.

'On every film, the clothes are half the battle in creating the character. I have a great deal of opinion about how my people are presented. We show a great deal by what we put on our bodies' 

Meryl Streep

One is always attracted to areas of special interest and one of mine just happens to be pirates. When I first saw Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, I immediately thought of Blackbeard. The pigtails and plaited beard, the stance. But the designers also channeled Keith Richards for both his 'look' and his personality. That was interesting. With care, one can improvise. An insight like that can make a character a whole lot more than a historical clothes horse. 

I was also halted at another point on my shuffle round. In front of the costumes for Shakespeare in Love, there was a quotation from Joseph Fiennes who played Shakespeare. When contemplating the part he looked for:

'[The] human element - all things [one] wouldn't associate with being a genius... I put aside all reverence and adopted the attitude that as soon as I put on those tights I was Will Shakespeare.'

Even though I had no idea that was how Joseph Fiennes found his way into the part, I immediately identified. When I was writing The Fool's Girl, I had to discover my own way round Shakespeare the genius. I did so by finding my Will Shakespeare in Mr Fiennes. When you see something like that, it is a good feeling, as though your insight is vindicated.

I found much to think about as I went round this exhibition. Just as it is on the screen, so it should be on the page.  Nothing is accidental. Everything is there by design and clothing should suit the character, not just by being right for the period but right for the person. 

Once in a while, costume and clothing can do something more.  One of the last exhibits is Judy Garland's costume from The Wizard of Oz. It is worth the long, slow shuffle. The power and magic of L. Frank Baum's fantasy is eloquently expressed in the contrast between Dorothy's faded, dusty blue gingham dress and the dazzling brilliance of the ruby slippers. It is all there in the costume. 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

*The Exhibition is on until 27th January, so you still have time to catch it if you are quick.

Writing Shakespeare - Celia Rees

I didn't make a conscious decision to begin writing Historical Fiction, but once I'd written Witch Child and its sequel, Sorceress, then other ideas popped up for further books set in the past. Like all writers, I found my own way of working, ways of researching, my own answers to the problems with voice and language that writing in this particular genre throws up. I also made some rules for myself.

1. Not to write about real people (to easily held to account).
2. To avoid the 16th Century (too well trammelled).

Then I saw a production of Twelfth Night. The viewing was accidental. The kind of serendipity that often accompanies the best ideas. A group of students were handing out fliers in Stratford for an outdoor performance down by the river. It was a lovely summer's day, so we stopped to watch. All through the play, I couldn't stop thinking, one idea sparking another: What if Illyria was a real place? What could happen there? And what happened after the end of the play? It never struck me that they were all going to live happily ever after. Three of the main characters leave, not happy at all, and the couples seem at best uneasy with each other. How did Shakespeare come across the story in the first place? The received wisdom is that he got it from an Italian source Gl' Ingannati, The Deceived One, but what if it didn't happen like that. What if someone told him the story some time after the main events? By the end of the performance, I could see Feste, the Fool, and a girl. Not Viola, but it could be her daughter. Let's call her Violetta. They are in London performing in the street, when Shakespeare stops to watch...

It was such a strong idea, I could see it so vividly, I had to do it even though I would be writing about a) the 16th Century and b) William Shakespeare, one of the most famous people ever. My rules had to go, but it was still a daunting prospect. How would I dare to do it? I had to get past my fear and find a way into him. First of all, I had to re-cast him in my head. I discarded all the portraits (disputed anyway) and decided that he would look like Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love (see above) a little older, maybe thinning a bit on top.

I had to be able to approach him as a person, so I decided to make him plain Will from Warwickshire trying to establish himself in the cut-throat world of the Elizabethan Theatre as part-time playhouse manager, writer and sometime actor, before he was that famous. Once I got started, I found the research rather re-assuring. There are whole libraries full of opinion and speculation but there are very few verifiable, known facts about his life because he wasn't important enough to leave much of an impression on the historical record - apart from his plays, of course, and there are plenty who would deny that he even wrote those. I was free to make him into my Shakespeare.

I followed the line of recent biographers, like James Shapiro in 1599; Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare the Biography; Jonathan Bate, Soul of the Age; Germaine Greer, Shakespeare's Wife, and set him into his time, his context. Above all, I saw him as a writer. There might be a quantum difference in talent, but he was a writer just like me. The Elizabethan theatre was hungry for plays. He must always have been on the look out for a likely tale to turn into drama, so when he sees a Fool and his girl performing in the street, he thinks: Where are they from? What are they doing here? He knows there is a story there. He stops to watch, his curiosity aroused, but there is a trade off. They will tell him their story, part of which will become the play, Twelfth Night, but it is not a free exchange. They will want something in return...