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Who is she...?
So, if you're into historical costuming, you have to know that one of the biggest gripes that people have with period dramas is the way that they handle or don't handle the hat situation. Throughout many periods of history, it was part of the respectable person's default wardrobe to have some kind of head covering. And yet you can see so many movies and plays and TV shows supposedly set in historical eras where people don't wear hats at all or they only wear hats sometimes or the hats that they wear are completely ahistorical.
And it's not like it was difficult to find information on the subject. They show up in diaries, in portraits, in photography once that was an option, in catalogues once they were being sold commercially. And yet this is something that historical dramas very frequently get wrong. And I have to admit, our show Mrs. Hawking is no exception.
While this might just seem like an oversight, there's actually a bunch of reasons for it, and it might be a little bit more complicated than you think. The first reason is probably the most obvious one, the fact that sometimes historical accuracy is not the number one priority of the story being told. As we've discussed many times in other videos on this channel, costumes are a tool for telling the audience what to think and feel, and clothes are communication that creates impressions in the audience. While that might be the context within the world of the show, the costume designer may be concerned about other things like whether the actor's hair is visible or the effect on their overall appearance. The designer might be concerned that to our modern sensibilities, hats might seem overly formal or stuffy, and that's not supposed to be the character's vibe. We're always speaking to a modern audience, so we have to use signifiers and language that we're confident that they're going to understand.
Now, a lot of people would prefer the designer not talk down to them and use the visual language of the period to create a sense of a totally different world and just count on the audience to be able to follow along. [music] And I totally sympathize with that. However, there's also a practical dimension of this that is kind of inherent to the mediums of film and theater themselves.
All the design choices about styling the actor needs to be in the service of creating a character. And that needs to facilitate all the tools in the actor's toolbox that they're going to use to make you believe that this person is a fully rounded being. The center of any character is going to be what the actor does with their face, their expressions, what they do with their eyes, the shape of their mouths. And unfortunately, hats can kind of interfere with that. Hats, particularly the big fancy ones common in the 19th century, have a tendency to visually dominate the actor's head. Sometimes during big important emotional moments, an actor doesn't want to have to worry about whether they're getting eaten up by a big distraction around their most important instrument. In the Mrs. Hawking shows, we often find reasons to dispense with the hats during such moments, so the actor finds themself totally unencumbered when they're trying to express themselves.
It can also pose technical problems, too. You'll notice that even now there is a big old shadow on my forehead. Theater and film require a lot of light to be blasted directly onto the actor so that you can see everything that you need to see. Hats have a tendency to cast shadows on your actor's prime asset. And it's very hard to either design the lights not to interfere or for your actor to constantly be worried about whether the audience can see their face.
I remember a lot of folks in the historical costuming community discussing the bonnets that they saw in the new Netflix adaptation of Little House on the Prairie, commenting that they didn't seem particularly useful for anything because they stood so far away from the head. But personally, I thought they were clever because I think they were designed so that the characters could wear bonnets like they were technically supposed to without any shadows being cast on the actor's faces.
Heaven knows we put a lot of work into our Victorian looks, including fabulous hats like this chic little number created by Lisa Volonte and worn by Kim Dauber. So, if you'd like to see how we handle the challenge and all of the fabulous hats that we've used over the years, you can see all of our shows for free here on YouTube, Mrs. Hawking.
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