Great Expectations (BBC)...

Great Expectations- Costumes Designed by Annie Symons. 

No one can make a lavish and engrossing costume drama quite like the BBC, as has been proved time and again with so many critically acclaimed and popular audience hits like 2005's beautifully made Bleak House and its successor Little Dorrit .Now comes a new version of Charles Dickens beloved, emotionally complex Great Expectations, deemed one of the great British novels of all time, and set around the mysterious Satis House and the adventures of the orphan Pip, guided into his destiny as a gentleman by an unknown benefactor. It has an all-star cast portraying the books memorable characters, including Gillian Anderson as the ghostly and manipulative Mrs Havisham, wandering the corridors of her equally decayed estate in her crumpled fading wedding dress, Ray Winstone as the escaped fugitive Abel Magwitch, Poirot's David Suchet as the clever and malevolent lawyer Jaggers, and, playing the all-important lead role of Pip, The Pillars Of The Earth star Douglas Booth.

Great Expectations BBC Trailer

Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham

"There is a sudden hush. At first you scarcely notice Gillian Anderson, a slip of a thing standing barefoot on the staircase. She looks extraordinary. Her pallor is marked by dark smudges under her eyes. Her hair is girlishly arranged in curls at the front, but a dense forest at the back. Her flowing, ivory silk dress is discoloured and tattered, which makes her look ethereal and ghostly."

'We've got about eight versions of her dress as it decays through the film,' Annie Symons, the costume designer, says. (Opening in 1822, the story spans 10 years.) 'Gillian gets in it and rips it, she's brilliant at that.'

Miss Havisham is one of literatures best characters, the woman left at the alter on her wedding day, who spends the rest of her life mourning her lost happiness. She lives in her wedding dress and it is as if time has stood still in Satis House. The decaying of the house and her attire represents the decaying within Miss Havisham's own personality. Annie Symon's costume for Miss Havisham is eerily beautiful- showing a ghost of her former self. The decayed layers of white and the simple cut of the gown marry together to create a hauntingly beautiful costume.

Vanessa Kirby as Estella and Douglas Booth as Pip

Vanessa Kirby as Estella

I love the cut of Pip's costumes, and the use of print for his waistcoats. He really appears as an up and coming gentleman- a man of fortune. The colours of all the costumes reflect the darkness of the Dickens period and the story. 

The costumes for Estella are particularly beautiful, they reflect her cold personality, but still show off the character's beauty.
"You must know that I have no heart... Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt... and, of course if it ceased to beat, I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no sympathy- sentiment- nonsense."- Estella Havisham, Great Expecations by Charles Dickens
I particularly like the white ball gown (above) the starkness of the white contrasts amazingly with the red of her corsage (which unfortunately is not shown in the image). The colours of Estella's costumes are more muted which I believe adds to her character- and reflects the world Dickens has created, but still maintains Estella's beauty.

Overall, I believe costume designer Annie Symons has done an amazing job in bringing the characters to life and re-creating the world of Dickens.

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