How high fashion accidentally inspired Mary Poppins

Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins

Descending from the grey London skies on her umbrella, Mary Poppins makes one of the most iconic arrivals in cinema. As an entrance, you might say it’s practically perfect, and the clean lines of the magical nanny’s Edwardian travelling ensemble – the long black coat juxtaposed with her crochet scarf and that funny little hat – play no small part in making that first impression so memorable.

And so, when three-time Oscar winner Sandy Powell started to work on the costumes for Mary Poppins Returns, the all-singing, all-dancing sequel starring Emily Blunt, one thing was clear: that Mary’s first outfit had to be simple, yet instantly impressive. 

“You know that the entrance is going to be out of the sky, so [the costume] had to have a good sharp, strong silhouette.” To find that silhouette, she looked to another, equally iconic British export. “I look at contemporary references all the time, because there’s always something useful, whether it’s a colour combination or a style,’ the designer explains. “The idea for the cape on Mary’s shoulders came from something that Burberry were doing about the same time – a little jacket which had a cape shape on it, and that gave me the idea. I wanted to change the silhouette [from the original film] and to have a bit of movement, as well.”

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How Sandy Powell Gave the Nanny a Practically Perfect Makeover

Emily Blunt and Julie Andrews

Emily Blunt has said that she found fresh inspiration for her version of Mary Poppins in the P.L. Travers books that originally introduced the character, an eccentric and decidedly vain nanny. Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell (Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, The Young Victoria) also found a way to set Blunt’s Poppins apart from Julie Andrews’s wholesome incarnation—by making the 2018 Poppins a bit more stylish.

“We aimed to make her more elegant and definitely fashionable,” Powell said of her costumes for the Rob Marshall reboot Mary Poppins Returns, in theaters this week. “Mary’s definitely vain, so she would have made sure that she was very well-coordinated.” Powell’s Mary Poppins costumes reflect 1934, the year in which the film is set—polka dots, chevron patterns, chiffon, and stripes were in vogue—but they also have a dash Devil Wears Prada, thanks to a vibrant palette of ruby red, pink, and sapphire. “It was like doing a collection—designing different shirts, different ties, and different skirts that all sort of coordinated with each other,” the designer said.


Powell was also careful to include a few sartorial nods to the Julie Andrews film.

“In the original Mary Poppins, she always has a bow at her neck—on all her blouses,” said Powell, explaining that the bows became a recurring theme for Blunt’s costumes. Each of Blunt’s looks—even the Victorian swimsuit she wears in an underwater sequence—feature a bow. The only difference: Powell adjusted the ties this time around to make them “neater and chic-er.”

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