Ask anyone why they watch period pieces, and the answers will vary. A displaced nostalgia for days without the internet; steamy forbidden romances captured in love letters and the untying of a corset; the comfort of seeing characters from centuries ago dealing with similar emotions of today; or perhaps, the chance to learn a bit of (dramatised) history. However, one of the most common answers (from my brief survey) is the genre’s fashion.

Ranging from historically accurate replicas of silhouettes, colour palettes, and detailing to gender-bending reinterpretations to bring out the goals, desires, or soul of a character, costume design is the powerful engine behind storytelling, character progression, and capturing the deeper thematics of a film. It is the culmination of museum visits and literary research, garment analysis and script dissection, and fittings and conversations with actors. And when all the pieces align — as they do for Emmy and BAFTA award winning designer Annie Symons — the result feels like an effortless symbiosis.

The mind and magic behind 2011’s Great Expectations, 2013’s Dracula, and 2022’s My Policeman, Symons’ most recent project might be her greatest yet. Starring Julianne Moore as Mary, the Countess of Buckingham, and Nicholas Galitzine as George, Mary’s son, director Oliver Hermanus’ mini-series Mary & George takes place in 17th century England, also known as the Jacobean time period. Highlighting Mary’s quest for power, the high drama interpretation of historical events centres around her plan for George to seduce King James I, in an effort to raise in rank. For a story focused on wealth, class, and status, with both underlying and explicit explorations of gender dynamics and sexual fluidity, its costumes strike a balance between historical accuracy and modern day signalling techniques.

“The job as a designer is to abstract and take from what’s represented the essence of the period,” Symons tells me as she shows me around Angels Costume House, a warehouse and factory housing the looks from the series. Alongside the Mary & George custom pieces are rails and rails (eight miles of rails, to be exact) of period-specific garments, professional uniforms, novelty attire, and even the one-of-a-kind replica of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation gown – created at Angels for the 2012 Diamond Jubilee and worn in The Crown. With design studios, offices, and archives, it consists of over one million items, and walking through the halls, you’re faced with movie poster after movie poster of films whose costumes were designed in the very space. I am starting to understand the wealth of research materials and specificity that goes into Symons’ work – though of course, it wasn’t all done in the studio.

“In London, we’re obviously surrounded by history and portraits, of which were all about a line of beauty and an epitome of style. When you look at the Jacobean portraits, they’re bonkers. They’re physically and anatomically impossible. But from that, you get a great abstraction, which you take and fit into your narrative — the arc of your story, the arc of your character.”

To discuss the looks for Mary with Moore, Symons flew to Atlanta — where the actor was filming May December. “Keeping a performer comfortable is critical because they mustn’t have their performance interfered with by whatever structure or thing that’s going on around them,” she tells me. “It’s an interesting dialogue between the body, the narrative, and the period — and it evolves through fittings and what you learn on the way.”

“I quickly discovered with Julianne what suited her and what worked within the period, and it was beginning to look more and more like a Dior New Look,” Symons explains, pointing out one of her personal favourite looks that epitomises this perfectly. Finding a symbiosis between 17th-century court dressing and post-WWII fashions, the result mirrors Mary’s inner drive, resilience, and proactive spirit — portraying her as a modern woman navigating a male-dominated world.

“There’s a masculinity and a businesslike nature to it which I think suited Mary very much,” she continues. “She wasn’t a scheming witch, bitch, or however you want to write about women in history. She was a genius. She was a social engineer and highly successful at it. And I wanted to show her as a kind of businesswoman, camouflaged in this world.”

She walks me through some of Mary’s other looks, which range in silhouette, colour, and detailing depending on her motives and objectives in a given scene. From trying to assert herself in court to actually rising in rank, the dress skilfully signals varying levels of power and control. “In those days, what you wore is who you were,” Symons tells me. “People actually went bankrupt trying to impress the court. She wears a different colour at every transition in her journey, which kind of gives an end and starting point to each phase of her journey — as she weaves her way up into the court.”

As we pass by elaborate collars, bow appliques, and feathered hats, Symons pauses at an Elizabethan-style look worn by Mary during her arrival to court. Much to the horror of the royalty, the ensemble mimics the queen’s own. “Who is this upstart woman walking in with a prostitute’s wig and wearing purple?,” the designer questions, imitating the internal questions of the nobility. “It was utter taboo in the court at that point, because only the clergy and the royalty wore purple.”

And, when she finally accedes to power and money, she’s portrayed in the height of a later Jacobean style with slashed sleeves, bright white lace, and pearls. The upkeep of the garment would have been remarkably expensive and required servants, and to Symons, she used this look to assert her newly earned dominance. Wearing this in the Villiers family portrait, she was saying, in the words of Symons: “’I’ve arrived, baby. I’ve arrived.’”

While Mary padded her hips and acquired pearls and lace, George’s wardrobe told its own story through billowing, almost undone, slightly feminine silhouettes — one of sexual freedom, exploration, sensuality, and openness. “Those times were way more fluid than the way that we understand them, because they were hijacked by very “moral” historians, mainly Victorians, who thought sex for anything other than procreation was sinful.” Symons laughs. “People would have sex with anybody or anything they felt like behind closed doors — that’s always been the case. But I think what’s joyful and brilliant about this series is it celebrates that in a way and shows the love and the empathy between the King and George.”

“Oliver [Hermanus] wanted a lot of sensuality, so there’s a lot of open, loose, quite transparent shirts so that we see the male form, the physical form. If you look at Jacobean men’s style, there is a slight feminisation of the hard structure that’s interesting — and I think there’s nothing sexier than that. There’s nothing sexier than seeing a strong physique with a delicate, gentle, soft, sensual thing on top.”

For Galitzine, the closer to everyday attire the more comfortable he felt. “Nicholas liked nothing better than to just be in a shirt, and I think that tells a story in itself. I didn’t want it to be a costume piece where you are prescribed by a historical sucker punch. Of course, they’re there to impress and in the court, there are reasons for that, but I wanted them to be like clothes as well. And then the actors felt comfortable and could emote and express and be the characters they needed to without feeling hemmed in.”

As we wrap up our discussion, Symons tells me a bit about working on what she calls “deep period” pieces versus projects like My Policeman, which took place in the 1950s. Compared to a more modern period piece, Mary & George showcases a time when fashion trickled down from royalty — and the design decisions, from jewellery to appliqués to silhouettes to colours, needed to be as intentional as they would have been in the day, but for a modern audience. “It’s all about signalling status as much as anything else,” Symons explains. “When you’re in a deep period like this, you’re in a very structured formal representation of power and wealth. I think the more contemporary it is, the more literal it becomes. You’re looking at common knowledge, photographs, and personal history for research — whereas this is more abstract.”

Perhaps that is why people find themselves captivated by the costume design of centuries long gone – for no matter how closely a Jacobean gown looks to an original, it will always remain slightly out of our grasp of reality; out of our frame of reference. It is a fantasy, breaking out of framed portraiture and onto our screens. It is mystical and magical storytelling. And Symons’ tale keeps us yearning for more.

Mary & George is available to stream on Sky Atlantic and NOW.