'The Crown' costume designer talks recreating the 60s in Season 3 and dressing Diana in Season 4

 

After two seasons of dazzling, award-winning costumes, the task to take “The Crown” into the 1960s fell to Amy Roberts. She has plenty of experience designing shimmering gowns and regal suits for period television, but taking on a big-budget behemoth such as “The Crown” for Season 3 meant walking the fine line between recreating the royal family’s iconic outfits, including Prince Charles’ Investiture and the queen’s Silver Jubilee, and bringing her own creative flair to make those vivid ’60s colors pop.

Was there a lot of pressure, stepping into Season 3, given what came before?

Oh absolutely, a huge amount of pressure. I had never worked with such a big costume team before, which was just wonderful, but it took some getting used to the scale of the piece. I don’t just mean story-wise, but the show does this thing called double banking, where most of the time you’ve got two units — two costume teams in different parts of the country — and you can be shooting for three or four different episodes at the same time. You’ve got the art, the creativity of it, the visuals — those are your main concerns, but as important is to be absolutely on top of the organization. You can’t afford to muck up.

Talk about how the change in the British political climate in the 1960s affected the costumes you created.

The whole political climate was so different with Harold Wilson, the Socialist Party getting into power and a growing anti-monarchy feeling coming into England. Seasons 1 and 2 had been much more about post-war colors, fantastic colors, a lovely sense of the period, but very subtle. With Season 3, we could be a bit bolder and I think these crazy times for the royal family were illustrated by what they wore, particularly the queen.

How would you say the queen’s costumes are different this season?

I think she’s more settled in her role as monarch and also in her marriage, like any middle-aged woman, I guess. Her clothes are a little more middle-aged. But the queen still wears very colorful clothes, and the royal family had a very weird taste at times in this period. If you look at Charles’s Investiture, there’s the queen mum all in lime green; pink on Margaret; a kind of turquoise, striking blue on Anne, and then the queen in yellow. It’s kind of a ‘wow-zer’ moment.

And then there’s Charles’s heavy, ermine-lined robes. Did you have to create those from scratch too?

Yes, that robe wasn’t in existence, the whole thing was made. You have to be very careful about fur, and Netflix, quite rightly, has strict rules about not using fresh fur. If it’s old fur from the 1930s or whatever, it’s fine, but you can’t farm fresh fur. We had a big problem sourcing enough ermine that wasn’t freshly farmed. We had to source it from all over and then have it cleaned and taken to a special furrier to be stretched. That was quite a big number getting that done, because if we didn’t get it right. it would just look like a crazy Father Christmas costume.

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