Considering Michele Clapton’s Costume Designs For ‘The Crown’

Costume designer Michele Clapton talks to Awards Daily’s Jazz Tangcay about creating the sumptuous costumes for Netflix’s The Crown.

Stephen Daldry’s The Crown takes us inside British Royalty with his critically acclaimed Netflix drama. The series tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne. From her coronation to the wedding to private moments, Michele Clapton, the award-winning costume designer (Game of Thrones) to come on board and bring the 1950s royal looks to life.

Michele Clapton and I sit upstairs at the Netflix FYSEE Emmy space where hats and costumes from The Crown display alongside other shows from the streaming service. The visual experience thrills and overwhelms with the sheer talent on display. Clapton’s designs are some of the best in television history.

I was in awe of the detail on the outfits on display downstairs, the beading, the stitching, you name it.

With this high-definition, some people’s screens are the size of this wall. That’s what makes me think I have to do the detail because people see it.

When you take on a project of this immense scale where does it begin for you?

What I’ve learned to do is to not think about the show. We have a ton of meetings and talk about the scope of it, but when we start, you come into it a bit at a time and you break it down. I have a good, trusted crew who help me. There’s no way I can do everything. I can delegate. I can give a task to someone and make them do research and do the boards. We come together and talk about what we found.

One of my historians is obsessed with getting it right, so with the look of the uniforms, I gave that to him. When it comes to choosing my assistants, I choose people who don’t like the same areas as I do. I like plotting the characters and the story, and I’ll read about it and look up what people said about them or what colors did I think it would be. It allows me the freedom to think about the character and the story, so that’s where I start.

Then it’s about fabric. I get my dyer to dye a range of colors so I can group colors. I can think, “That’s very sophisticated. That’s very Margaret. This shade would be great for that. This would be very much something the Queen would wear.” I’ll go and talk to Martin [Childs, Production Designer] about the colors of the flowers, and plot where all these different things come in.

If I think about the enormity of it, I get overwhelmed so I try to think in blocks.

How long did you have to prepare?

I think we had 12 weeks, but I was finishing off another job so I had 10 weeks. My assistant started before me. Prior to that, Martin, [director] Philip Martin, and Stephen [Daldry] had conversations. I had never had those conversations before, and it was great because we had those a few times. We had images and Martin brought this most beautiful book that he had put together. I had my boards, and we talked about scale and scope and what we wanted to say about the story and how we wanted to tell it.

Although I went away and was doing something else, I still had it in my mind and in my spare time. I was reading little bits about her. When I finally went in, I saw this room and thought, “In 10 weeks time this room is meant to be filled with costumes.” It’s daunting, but it happens and you have rails of outfits. I love that time. It gives me an intimate time with the actors before I lose them to the set. It’s the time we explore the character.

Every actor is different obviously, and some look more like their characters and some don’t so you try to fid a way to help them with their performance. You have to help give them confidence, especially if they’re feeling concerned about how they’re going to play the character and whether they look like a character. I’m really enjoying that moment because even though I’ll do fittings with them, you never have that time again. If you can’t create that bond and that relationship with the actor, you’re never going to create it because there will never be time later on. It’s so important.

I love the process of making and cutting costumes. It was really important to make as many as we could because then I think you have control. I can dye any fabric. I can change the style, and it usually makes the actor feel more involved and includes their process.

As opposed to the off the rack vintage?

I tried that. It’s nice to have some vintage pieces just to give them the impression of what it might look like. It’s always interesting to look at the boards and swatches and wonder what it would look like against their skin. Some people love costume and don’t love it so much. They know they have to have it, but they don’t enjoy it. Others love it and it helps them.

It’s always difficult in the first season because you start with nothing. It’s very satisfying that you’ve created everything, but I don’t think you have the handle at how big, difficult or how easy it will be.

Queen Elizabeth goes on this journey in the first season, but we also see that reflected in the color palette. She starts off in this pretty dress.

It was quite obviously influenced by her mother’s style. I noticed that looking at photographs and footage. The girls dressed very similarly to their mother. You can see she had an influence on their early style. I loved that. That’s why I wanted to start her with just before the wedding. When we see her in Malta, I had this fabric that I had bought with these lovely flowers. I thought it was so perfect for her, but I only had a meter and a half of it. So, I gave it to my cutter and told her we needed to get a dress out of it. It worked out so beautifully and it was just the perfect length. There was a freshness and lack of formality.

I loved that she picked up the children, and in that scene, all the dresses were cotton. When we’re designing a scene like that, I tend to go to the extras fittings and pull together a rail and say, “These are the dresses I want on and that I’d like to use.” I think it’s really important how she sits in a room with people. I wanted this slightly unconventional sense to it.

Later, when she becomes Queen, that’s all gone. To me, that represented her time with Phillip, and she’s lost that relationship. Her relationship with Margaret and her mother changed. She’s quite isolated and so you have the costumes that are like armor. She’s trying to find a way where she can exist again.

I like that about costume. It’s not obvious, but it gives a sense of what’s going on,

It speaks volumes.

Sometimes, you can look at someone and know where they are and what’s in their mind. You see her relax into it, and she has embroidered flowers. That sweetness comes back. I always have this impression that she likes sweet things. I don’t know why.

Is that where you had fun? There are the historic moments which you have to do, and then there are the off-camera moments that you fill in.

That’s the bit I really enjoyed, and that’s when it’s great to have two very good assistant designers and say, “Look, we have to replicate the wedding dress. It’s not a design. It’s a replication, and so I want to make sure all the beads are right.” I’m not particularly interested in it as a piece. I’m more interested in having her wear Phillip’s shirt in treetops or that belt doesn’t match that.

I had great fun doing Margaret’s costumes because they had more sass. I loved doing the Queen in her jodhpurs. We found this beautiful little orange and green scarf which at that moment took the colors of the hills. I love those charming moments when it comes right, and she looked so content and happy in those costumes.

You have The Queen, Phillip, but what about those other characters?

For Clemmie Churchill, we found some lovely old pieces for her, but we also made pieces for her.
Wallis Simpson was someone for who we made all her pieces. I knew what she wore, but I like being able to make those pieces.

We made a lot of the uniforms and the livery. That’s stuff that we can use for years from now. A lot of the items we get from costume houses look too worn or too used, so it’s better for us to remake. Ultimately, it’s also cost effective because we own it. Even those big scenes like the wedding. There were so many fantastic hats in that scene. We had a brilliant millinery supplier who made all these hats that you see.

It was such good fun, and we made so many. To me, that’s a dream because I love hats. On Game of Thrones, we don’t have hats, so it was lovely to legitimately have hats. We also made so many shoes because vintage shoes are so small.

Did you make a lot of the jewelry?

We made certain pieces for Wallis. We found a great guy who had crowns, and he made some pieces for us. Some pieces we rented. We bought a lot of vintage pieces. They wore fur coats in the summer. We had to buy vintage pieces for that. I don’t advocate it, and would never use it on a contemporary piece. I would never commission a new piece.

What was the toughest piece to put together?

The wedding was difficult because it took so much time and budget. It was almost like a film in itself. We shot it five weeks in, and there was an area of time team dedicated just to that. We shot the wedding and the coronation close together. There were so many dresses and gowns and religious garb. The day we finished those two was a relief. They took time but not necessarily design-wise the most challenging.

It was more the time scale which was relentless. We would sometimes put extra pieces through because we knew there might be an extra scene. Those were pieces we could turn around, and we had four directors, so it was useful when we’d have scenes that came and went. I think the logistics were difficult, and it was hugely ambitious to shoot.

It’s always difficult in the first season because you start with nothing. It’s very satisfying that you’ve created everything, but I don’t think you have the handle at how big, difficult or how easy it will be.

Game of Thrones was horrific the first season because no one knew the scale, but by the second and third, we knew and the right people were in place.

London is really busy right now with filming and so finding the crew is tough because everyone is working. It’s a really busy time.

There are so many films coming out of there.

I know. I’m just starting a new film. It’s so difficult. Some people are waiting for me, so I’ve been really lucky. As soon as you’ve lost your crew it becomes very hard.

You start from nothing, and by the end, you’ve got this entire room. What was that like for you?

It’s so satisfying. I loved it. I remember getting there and asking myself how we’d do it. Buyers would come in, but it wasn’t enough. I’d love to do something to show how it evolves. This place was heaving by the end. Half way through, I decided to buy a puppy. Why did I decide to buy a puppy half way through a show?

That needs to be trained.

That needs that. I must be mental. You get through it, and sometimes things seem so stressful and you look back and realize it wasn’t. The secret is looking at it bit by bit. Just keep going, and by the end, it’s done.

Let’s talk about the men a bit more, their color palette, and how you dressed Phillip and Churchill?

I thought Philip was less formal, and so I put him in lighter grays. I deliberately didn’t put him in braces so much because I wanted a belt. Churchill harked back to an earlier period. I loved that things didn’t fit him very well. I loved that about him. If you look in photos you’ll see things didn’t always match although he had an incredible style. He had this lovely straw hat that he liked to wear when painting. He had this siren suit which was just brilliant. We had this immense style in this rather eclectic way with him, and that was fun to explore.

With the men, the hardest thing was finding the weighted fabric. It would have been 18 ounces which nowadays is a really heavy weight for suits, and it was just hard to find. Our tailor found a good supply of it in Portugal and bought the stock. We had what we had. There were some lovely grays and chalk stripes. We were really lucky to find those. Unfortunately, with some of those lovely old suits, they tend to have moth holes around the crotch area. I don’t know why moths always eat there.

There’s a lovely coat I used on someone which had a huge hole in the shoulder, so I put a scarf around it hoping it wouldn’t move. It was this lovely herringbone coat.

With Edward, we made some lovely suits for him. It was really interesting working with Matt Smith because he is really aware of fabrics and how things fit on him. He would love the shirt in Africa, and he’d say how perfect it was but how it wasn’t right for anywhere else. Of course, he was right. He just has this innate sense that he wears incredibly well. He knows exactly what he wants it to be like. I’d tell Matt how I felt about a suit and shirt, but I’d also ask him how he felt? He would look and give me an opinion.

I love working with actors who have a good opinion, the actors who say they love colors and outfits. There’s this great rapport.

With Claire, hers were set. Men were freer with what we put together.

Do you have favorites?

I love everything Wallis Simpson wore. There was an evening dress that was hand painted and beaded. We had big pockets put in. I loved that she could swagger along. There was a mink with this pale mauve. It was such an unusual combination. I always try to put a belt on. The Queen would never have done it. The pocket and belt are some things Margaret could pull off, Elizabeth couldn’t. Elizabeth would have wanted to. Margaret could go tighter and she was dramatic, but she had nothing else to do. She was stripped of any life. We try to show that.

Talk about the children’s outfits.

Moths ate so many. So we’d find pieces we liked, and we copied them. They have funny cardigans. I liked how ordinary they looked in those outfits. The little girls were like grown ups.

What’s next for you as you’re not doing Season 2?

I’m not doing Season 2 because I’m just starting the last Game of Thrones. Plus, I’m on the sequel for Mamma Mia. 1979. Ole Parker is working on it.

How exciting.

I’m not sure where it’s going yet, but I love the contrast between that and Game of Thrones. At least I can’t get the costumes muddled up. I’m just starting that now so that should be fun.