Penny Dreadful Costume Critique #5

From the haunting pages of old newspaper stories, comes a series that is beautifully haunting. Showtime's new drama series has been using  Gabriella Pescucci as the costume designer and she is no stranger to using vintage clothes to bring up the look that the characters deserve.

Penny Dreadful is set in the Victorian England era, which is the timeline where many famous horror stories and novels are supposed to have existed. From mediums and vampires to Dorian Grey and Dr. Frankenstein , Pescucci has to dress them all. Because of the dark stories that the series is based upon, the costumes have to follow suit in order to really portray the dark tone the time and themes the series touches upon. Because of the time the series is set, Pescucci has been able to use some vintage in the wardrobe. For an interview with Vanity magazine she says,

"where possible I used vintage clothes. In other cases, I used pieces of authentic embroidery, lace, or buttons that I found in the London vintage market, applying them on corsets or dresses made with new fabric. I also used vintage men’s jackets, waistcoats, scarves, and hats when the actors measurements and characters would permit".

In the interview, Pescucci also mentions what are some things that influenced her color choices and design for some of the main characters, she says,

"The elegant physicality and the pale color of Eva’s skin led to me to choose dark colors for her. Josh Hartnett was dressed in bright colors in the Wild West Show [in the pilot], but that was the only situation I choose a bright color for him – that scene was meant to be a little bit vulgar, but funny".

Vanessa Ives, is a woman tormented by her past and the decisions her possessed self made her take. She is mysterious, but maintains the part of a woman in such an era very well. Some of her costumes have ridiculous amount of detail into them like the dress (above). It has so many layers and lace intricacies, which really lets you get a taste of the kind of woman Vanessa is.

Somthing that I particularly love of the costume designing as a whole, is that even though it is sometimes very restricted to dark tones and colors, the clothes still look very different from each other. They look cohesive without making you feel that every piece of it was made out of the same thing.