There is perhaps no purer illustration of the term “costume porn” than a miniseries about Catherine the Great, starring Helen Mirren. On Monday night, HBO premiered a four-part limited series on the glory days of the famous Russian empress—or maybeping, which is fitting, considering that over-the-top luxurious clothing is a time-honored means of all-powerful rulers flexing their might and majesty. For a figure like Catherine the Great, lavish clothing isn’t just a perk; it’s a tool.
We needed to think through the essence of what makes people look Russian. Why do people on Russian portraits look so different from portraits being painted in England by Gainsborough for example? It gives you a lot of control. The color palette was really important. For Helen Mirren, there were lots of beautiful pastoral blue colors, shades of gold, silver. And there’s the army of Catherine the Great—they’re called the Preobrazhensky Guard, they are her imperial guard—and we dyed fabric a very specific red, a very specific green, just to make sure we portray the story as well as we could, to be as authentic as possible.
I had about two months just to do research prior. I started very early. I just did as much research as I could. Then we moved our team, my assistant designers, to Vilnius, in Lithuania, where we set up a workshop of very talented Lithuanian seamstresses and embroiders and ladies and gentlemen who were painting the costumes and breaking them down. And apart from Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, and Gina McGee, most actors were called quite late.
Doing a project like this, can you use shortcuts? Are there zippers and velcro underneath? Or does everything have to be period authentic?