40 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: 8 Things Costume Movies Screw Up, 18th-Century Edition

  1. One addendum: In the book Perfume, the girl was supposed to have red hair. The Hair/Makeup crew obviously took it a couple steps further and made it unnaturally red and left it down, but she did have red hair.

  2. My eyes!!!!! Noooooo!
    Ugh, of all of these, I’ve always been most offended by Valmont. Everything about it is awful, but especially the costuming choices.
    Regardless of the silly hair-down-ness of Sleepy Hollow, I love that movie. I don’t expect historical accuracy from Tim Burton, I expect fantasy and creepiness and characters whose costumes tell a story about them.

  3. The biggest wrongness I have is seeing ladies in 18th century dress with NO STAYS underneath.

    One of the worst culprits, sadly, is Richard E Grant’s “Scarlet Pimpernel” series. Its a lovely version of the stories, BUT….Marguerite (played by Downton Abbey’s Countess Grantham/Elizabeth McGovern) is frequently seen sans corset. Makes me weep. At least the 1980s one with Jane Seymour as Marguerite and Anthony Andrews did have proper stays underneath (or at least the bodices of the gown looked properly fitted and supported. (I can forgive that series for not 18th century makeup as its trying to do the natural look).

    And worse than back lacing…obvious back zips. Yes, I’ve seen them in Richard E Grant’s SP series.

    1. oh, and can we discuss how all of Marguerite’s friggin’ costumes are from the wrong decade? The novels make a huge deal about how stylish and fashion-forward she is, wearing the new streamlined, high-waisted gowns before they became the norm.

        1. I highly recommend at least skimming the first chapter, when Marguerite makes her appearance at an inn. There’s a lovely description of her clothing, including her fancy tall walking-stick. It’s been a LONG time and I knew little about 18th century at the time, but it was vivid enough for me to picture her very clearly. :)

    2. Elizabeth McGovern had recently had a baby at the time the series was filmed. That may have something to do with it.

  4. COLIN NO. *Sprays that hair with water.* *also cuts it**Also burns all the costumes from that movie and changes them for his Mr Darcy-just-out-of-the-water-combo*
    There, better.

    Also, Jesus Christ the princess seams. I did not realise how “bizarre” (yeah for lack of a better word) the costumes from Amadeus are. Guess I did not know half as much about historical costume when I watched it as I do now

  5. The wearing the hair down thing drives me CRAZY, to a point where it probably bugs me a little too much to be normal. BUT IT’S JUST LIKE UGH, PUT YOUR DAMN HAIR UP.

    Also, I too am a redhead and I LOVE red hair and whenever I do 18th century hairstyles I never powder because I want my hair to shine in all it’s enormous coppery glory. It’s the one thing I don’t care about not being period. BECAUSE RED HAIR IS THE BEST.

  6. I can live with the red hair thing because it looks awesome. And I can forgive the eye makeup because it’s a movie and they have to accentuate the eyes somehow… unfortunately a lot of movie make-up is too conspicuously modern.

    Back-laced dresses…. well, they DID back-lace a lot in the 17th century. So maybe… uh…. they’re older dresses… they… updated? (LOL)

    The wig thing probably bugs me the most. Women, as you said, wore hairpieces with their own hair; they did not wear enormous heavy fake-looking wigs hanging over their own foreheads. (Realistically, I know for a movie wigs are probably easier; but I prefer in movies like The Duchess where they make a token effort to try to disguise the wig-ness.)

    But probably the most risible lady-wig scene I can remember from a movie is the wig and hairpin scene from REVOLUTION. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT? I do. (I wish I didn’t.)

      1. OH MY GOD. You’ve never seen REVOLUTION?! It’s from 1985, and it was one of the weirdest misfires to come out of the ’80s. Here’s the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOJpN9GnGw4

        So it stars Al Pacino has an incredibly miscast revolutionary, and Natassja Kinski as his rich girlfriend. There’s this scene where Natassja’s evil Tory sisters force her to dress up in fancy clothes and a large fake-looking grey wig (it’s just put on her head) and flirt with some redcoat officers at a soiree that night. Anyway, the guy who’s hitting on her is kind of a sleaze, and she grabs a hairpin out of her crappy wig and STABS HIM IN THE CROTCH WITH IT. Then she runs up to her bedroom and throws the wig off. She literally just grabs it and throws it off her head. It’s just… beyond words.

  7. Thank God there are people who are interested in the way things actually were; I’m consistently baffled at most historical drama for even using history as a conceit. It’s like watching the result of of someone having blown their load halfway through the second sentence of a Wikipedia page.

    On the hair-up-hair-down thing: before the eighteenth century it was conventional (though still rare enough) for unmarried women to wear their hair down – viz. ‘her hair was loose down her back, as befitted a maiden’. This was worked extensively into the Elizabethan Virgin Queen iconography. I realise I’ve staggered far away from the eighteenth century, but thought it might be worth a mention. It certainly doesn’t excuse the tumble-down fright wigs cited above.

    Apologies for the spew. I talk too much when I discover very awesome websites early in the morning.

  8. Another gorgeous but inaccurate redhead: Romola Garai in “Amazing Grace”. Overall the costuming is very good (we will ignore the toddler boy in little trousers instead of a frock, one of my pet peeves, but it’s a brief scene) but Romola Garai has very red hair, and I can’t remember whether it might be excused by the powder tax – the movie jumps around a bit on Its own timeline.

    Still. Ioan Gruffudd, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Gambon, Toby Jones – highly recommended.

    1. I give that one a pass, since it’s VERY late in the 18th century and right when the younger generation was transitioning to the no-powder look. Although I wonder if the real historical person had red hair?

      1. Catching up on everything, and…

        No, the real person didn’t have red hair. Romola Garai says something about it in one of the special features, that she just wanted to have red hair again. I want to say Barbara was blonde.

        I too have red hair, though, so I kinda love when women in film do too… :)

  9. Hair worn down would be my biggest peeve from your list. But I would add the lack of head coverings, whether they be hats, veils, or headdresses. There is a reason that we have the term dishevelled, after all, and it’s because going out with your hair/head uncovered was not the done thing.

  10. OMG yes! The dangling hair everywhere! Not only is hair deeply symbolic from the middle ages (if your hair was uncovered, you were a virgin, or at least claiming to be one. If you were married or otherwise obviously sexually active, you wore a coif. I don’t care if modern actresses hate it, COVER YOUR DAMN HAIR) all the way to the early 20th century (putting up one’s hair was a major milestone for a young lady) – but wearing your hair down was an invitation to get it filthy and/or set yourself on fire!!

    I’m currently watching the 2008 Tess of the D’Urbervilles with Gemma Arterton and her hair is down in EVERY SINGLE DAMN SCENE. It is driving me absolutely bugfuck. I have milked cows. YOU CANNOT MILK COWS WITH YOUR WAIST LENGTH HAIR DOWN.

  11. I love FrockFlicks, but there’s one falsehood that you often repeat – that people didn’t have bangs pre-1870’s. It’s simply not true. People did have bangs pre-1870’s, and while it was not THE thing, it certainly was A thing. You would be far more correct if you wrote that bangs weren’t a thing before the early 17th century/late 16th century. There are many more paintings of people with bangs out there (especially paintings of children – boys and girls), however, I’ve tried to include a variety of pre-1870’s examples below.

    http://fashionhistory.zeesonlinespace.net/images/revolution6.gif

    http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/35/38/e9/3538e9a4790ada4902a071ab51487794.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e5/13/32/e51332bd470188cb7e7fd29f0600a65b.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/e9/25/5b/e9255b5e6a5f140548551fe3a92492b2.jpg

    https://merryfarmer.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/regency-woman_francois-gerard_1800ish.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/94/5e/16/945e16a72fd786c3b2793295343f56a8.jpg

    https://lifetakeslemons.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/children.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cc/38/2c/cc382cddcee07e744c0c62ecec5466e7.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/27/6d/0b/276d0b448ce2e648c1df6c343ed41d1e.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1c/92/11/1c921146b94ffec1133670d5de6dd2ac.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/58/fc/7f/58fc7f2a2eedf98faecbf39ba1188b3c.jpg

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_style_1620.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/5b/6c/435b6c61c19652430e8e53528de5be17.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a0/02/3e/a0023e020c954a023a89dcc92d7d289b.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/45/93/c2/4593c2f4cb9233fc006cf384e6b9c5aa.jpg

    http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/portrait-of-a-young-woman-gilbert-stuart.jpg

    http://ipaintingsforsale.com/Uploadpic/Elisabeth%20Louise%20Vigee-Le%20Brun/big/Portrait%20of%20a%20Young%20Woman.jpg

    http://www.batguano.com/vlbsp1800.jpg

    http://www.britsattheirbest.com/cr_gainsborough_cottage_gir.jpg

    https://www.jamesbishopedwardsguitar.com/wp-content/uploads/guitarist.jpg

    http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7tusxftyC1qfijmro1_1280.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3a/a9/75/3aa975b3c7296501279fde575b254dd2.jpg

    http://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw9jglzu6M1qizjaso1_500.jpg

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rGHqnGiwQeE/TaZ14_GpqpI/AAAAAAAABX8/MJ01KzqYzUY/s1600/image015.jpg

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uTxYrKJqxow/VXlHd1LIMeI/AAAAAAAAEBo/fP8smace1cI/s1600/1947-64-1.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d7/86/1f/d7861f80d5a81681e236b660cbc26922.jpg

    https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/c3AgLlZu0eB62rqCHpZm4qFkg__EU4GwEnaattTqb-nct7UVSmVFeYZuUlUrw07FAWhv50qZUrDBnLtmCcbaDVs6dCiuel2UHWWBS9HAZiz4vTi_Xs-MQps7ahdrmTZYsg

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LWSdDYwjiqQ/UlFKpPf2IBI/AAAAAAAAJTw/2vqdW7cbKvg/s640/1aanne_sophia_nee_herbert_cou.jpg

    https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/16/d6/32/16d632caf803b7a2580e7138e3dd458e.jpg

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-french-courts-royal-ban-on-smiles

    1. This post was focused on 18th century costumes. Apologies if I generalized.

      Children are not adults. Children’s hairstyles were not the same as those worn by adults until the 20th (maybe 19th) century.

      Yes, women wore tousled short fringey things in the Regency era. To wit:
      Bangs. Ugh.

      Yes, women wore tousled short fringey things of a different style in the mid-17th century.
      These are also not “BANGS” but a frizz, which I see as a subtle yet important distinction.

      Boys are not adult women. See #2, but also, women did not wear men’s hairstyles until the 1920s at the earliest. (Okay brief exception for the short, cropped hairstyles of the Directoire period.)

      Back to 18th century women’s hairstyles, there is no way the hair in that portrait of Lady Emily Hervey is original to the period. NO way!

  12. Surely the biggest offender would be women not wearing modesty shawls around their cleavage outside? I wonder if we have any proof of this

  13. I know this is a super old post, & I apologise (I’m not exactly getting to these posts in order) but I was wondering if you were thinking of doing similar posts to this for other periods.
    My particular interest is the Ancient World & 17th c, but I imagine a post for the 16th & 19th Centuries would have you guys watching some very eye-twitchy productions!

    I don’t understand why some films/ series think ‘modernising’ costumes to make it ‘relatable’ is anything that audiences want; you want modern-looking costumes- do/ watch something contemporary- if it’s to do with a ‘vision’ (a la’ ‘Richard III’ et al.), that’s fine- though I’d prefer to honestly know that off the bat, otherwise, it ends up screaming DNGAF; & don’t BS after the fact, either.

    I was also wondering if you were going to review ‘To Kill a King’- it does have a few of your MCM/ WCW stars; Tim Roth, Rupert Everett- I don’t know if you have Dougray Scott & Olivia Williams, or not – I can’t seem to find it for love nor money, but people have said it’s good.

  14. Goya’s ghosts hair is not a mistake. Check out the portraits that Goya did to the Duchess of Alba!

  15. Totally understand that red hair was generally covered up in the 18th century, but if anyone wants to see a few ladies who didn’t cover up their fiery hair, Francis Alleyne’s portrait of Anne St. John Trefusis (1763) shows her in a dreamy blue gown and excellent, and very red, hairstyle. I think I have seen another portrait of a similar looking red headed woman in a white gown as well. Portrait of a Young Woman by Philip Reinagle also shows a girl with pretty red curls.
    Not in a ‘gotcha, provenance!’ kind of way, but since I’ve seen a few comments by 18th century enthusiast redheads I think Anne and the sitter could use a little admiration for wearing their red hair in their portraits even when it wasn’t fashion. :)

Comments are closed.