Downton Abbey Edwardian Inspiration

Downton Abbey: Edwardian Inspiration




With their milky complexions and enviably natural beauty, the sisters of Downton Abbey are TV’s most elegant new sensations. From the minute the credits rolled over images of the manicured lawns and imposing facades of Highclere Castle, the maids in white caps and butlers polishing silver, I was addicted to Downton Abbey. The English costume drama, a compelling upstairs-downstairs soap opera with a Mad Men–like flair for period fashion and etiquette, follows the fortunes of a wildly dysfunctional aristocratic English family at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its first season, which aired on Masterpiece on PBS last year, won six Emmys. Its second season, which comes to U.S. television screens this Sunday, shattered ratings records when it premiered in the U.K. this past fall, rivaling the Murdoch scandal in terms of newspaper-column inches. So it is little surprise that the three beautiful Crawley daughters, whose romantic entanglements are the racing pulse of the show, have ignited an obsession with the luminous, peaches-and-cream complexion of the Edwardian age. “I always feel the women of that era personify a kind of oxymoron,” says show creator Julian Fellowes. “They presented themselves as physically helpless and delicate, while they were in fact brought up to be very tough with themselves as much as anyone else. So they would cultivate that creamy skin and those doe eyes, but if the moment called for it, they could take a five-bar gate without flinching.”
In real life, Downton’s leading ladies—Michelle Dockery, Laura Carmichael, and Jessica Brown-Findlay—have the look of the classic English rose but the savvy you’d expect of young women on their way to stardom. I caught up with them at a crumbling Georgian mansion in London’s West End while they were being photographed for Vogue. Since meeting on season one, they have become one another’s closest friends. They interact like sisters and spend most evenings on location together in their pajamas, watching reruns of Sex and the City. When we meet, Michelle Dockery, who plays the complicated and fascinating oldest sister, Lady Mary, is dressed in faded jeans and a white lacy tee. She is model-thin and noticeably tall. With her striking dark eyebrows and hair, I can see why the 29-year-old had made an extraordinary Eliza Doolittle in Sir Peter Hall’s production of Pygmalion at the Old Vic in 2008. “My face suits period dramas,” the actress, who will appear in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina next year, says with an everyday Londoner’s accent rather than the clipped tones she has skillfully cultivated for Downton. She tells me that the natural beauty the girls exude on-screen is indeed achieved using very little makeup: “No mascara is allowed at all on set. Historically, women wouldn’t have been introduced to those kind of products then, so we can’t use them.” For beauty inspiration, Anne “Nosh” Oldham, Downton’s makeup-and-hair designer, looked to John Singer Sargent “and the softness of his portraits.” Achieving that subtle, lit-from-within glow translated to illuminating foundations from Chanel and Armani, which she chose for their “phenomenal lightness. You can change tiny things on the face without its being noticed on film,” she says. The key to looking convincingly natural yet camera-ready, she continues, is “to use as little as possible under the eyes. For the Downton girls, I leave the eyelids free of makeup. That allows you to see a slightly pinker area of skin, which gives the impression of no makeup on the rest of the face.” The most important trick for maintaining an even-toned Edwardian complexion, though, has nothing to do with makeup: “For period drama it comes down to sunscreen,” says Dockery. “Every day, sunny or not, I wear Dermalogica SPF 30.” (But whether it’s 1916 or 2011, all three girls are gloriously beautiful in person, with skin like fresh dough—a persuasive argument against Hollywood perma-tans.) Laura Carmichael, the auburn-haired 25-year-old who trained at the Bristol Old Vic, is a charming girl whose gentle personality bears no resemblance to her wicked on-screen persona. While Lady Edith distinguished herself as the disgruntled plain-Jane middle sister in season one, in season two she falls in love and blossoms as a result. Her look becomes freer and prettier. “I get a tiny bit of rouge [Stila or Chantecaille] now for the evening scenes, and a little Armani lip color. It’s still that natural look, but it’s always polished,” she says.
Hair was a woman’s crowning glory during the Edwardian era and was never cut. It was worn down until a young woman was presented at court, and then up after that to signify that she was ready for marriage. Then, as now, creating the illusion of lush, waist-length hair took some doing: To add length to their own hair on the show, the actresses each wear custom-made “pieces”—the Edwardian equivalent of hair extensions—and use rollers to create the soft, period-style curls. “Did you know,” intones Carmichael, “grand ladies would collect hair off their hairbrushes, roll it into ‘hair sausages,’ and stuff it under their hair to puff out their own locks, which would be brushed over it?” Of the three Crawley girls, the most avant-garde and rebellious is youngest sister Lady Sybil, played by Jessica Brown-Findlay, 22. With her dramatic eyebrows and voluptuous, cherry-red lips, she has the kind of face that requires barely any makeup, on-screen or off-. A former ballerina and a typically low-maintenance English girl, she cuts her own curly chestnut hair over the sink and wears little more than a swipe of mascara when she goes out. Until Downton Abbey, she had never even met an eyelash curler, though since the show, she’s been inspired to buy one. The things she loves most about period beauty are “the jewels, ribbons, and bows they put in our hair. For one scene they bought a vintage ribbon and tied it into a triple bow at the back of my head. You see it for about three seconds!” Her least favorite thing is the ban on eye makeup. “That’s confirmed, even more, my love of mascara.”