Gentle Meg, headstrong Jo, delicate Beth, pretty Amy- the March sisters of Little Women are as clearly drawn and ripe for ‘Which one are you?’ quizzes as the characters of Sex and the City. Which must make adapting Louisa May Alcott’s classic coming-of-age story for a new audience somewhat intimidating.
“It has a resurgence every 10 or 20 years. Something like that can make it a bit nerve-wracking -- you think everybody’s going to compare it to what came before,” says Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh, the costume designer behind the new miniseries based on the book.
Having read the book to her daughter when she designed the costumes for a stage production at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 2011, Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh came to the BBC project “very familiar” with the story. “These four girls and their mother loved each other so much and yet were real individuals,” she says. “It’s really just a matter of trying to bring the character out in the costumes.”
She did that by using the costumes to amplify each girl’s character traits. Meg, the eldest, is the most proper of the sisters. “She’s very doll-like in her silhouette- she would have lots of petticoats under her skirts.” Scarlet fever-stricken Beth “is somebody who doesn’t go in for any kind of ostentation,” and Amy, the spoiled baby of the family, “is the girl who is so feminine and so pretty all the time, and happy to get to wear the really fancy silk dresses after she gets married.”
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