From Corset to Coat: Cosprop's Costume Secrets Revealed
Behind the studio doors of Cosprop sit rails of corsetry, crinolines and hand-dyed silk that have dressed Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and Nicole Kidman for the screen. For sixty years, this North London costume house has built garments from the ground up, researching every seam and stitch until a bodice from 1890 looks as though it walked straight out of history rather than off a cutting table. This September, as part of London Textile Month, Cosprop opens its studios to reveal exactly how that alchemy happens.
The programme moves through cloth, construction and character. A behind-the-scenes tour on 15 September takes visitors past working cutters, dyers and tailors, showing the distressing and textile sourcing that gives period costume its lived-in truth. Costumier Clara Drumez turns to the architecture beneath the skirt on 17 September, in a talk about women's underpinnings in the 19th century, unpicking the corsets and bustles that shaped Victorian silhouettes from the inside out. Life models in archive costume provide the subject for a period costume figure drawing workshop on 19 September, open to all levels and stocked with materials. Finally, on 24 September, costumier Amy Eloise Trend charts fifty years of menswear, from embroidered eighteenth-century silks to the sharp restraint of Regency tailoring.
Across four events, Cosprop offers something rare: proof that the most convincing costumes are built on genuine craft, not illusion.
To mark the occasion, we're revisiting our archive for a closer look at the house that has long shaped the way we see the past on screen. We hope you enjoy the following article, as written by Nicola Donovan for Selvedge Issue 73, Decorative:
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Further Information:
London Textile Month, 1 - 30 September.
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Image Credits:
Lead: A bonnet on the makers table at Cosprop.
All images courtesy of Cosprop.
Images in 'The Graft Behind the Glamour' as credited within the article pages.