Whew, the last post was a slog, huh? It took me almost a full day to write and probably about that long for everyone to read. But I think we got a lot of ground covered, like the servants' uniforms, that doesn't need to be revisited, so hopefully this one will go a little faster. Let's get right to it.
Isobel and Matthew arrive in the village to start their new lives. They're stuffed into the back of what I now realize is the Crawley family station wagon, and they look about as pleased to be in it as I was to be in the Miles family station wagon after the third hour on the interstate. Their traveling clothes are sturdy and well-made. I like that Matthew's scarf matches Isobel's suit. I like that Isobel's suit matches her personality: plain, but of a good sort, and hard to ignore. The maroon looks good on her.
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And here comes Molesley, the butt monkey of Downton. He's the Crawley House butler and Matthew's valet, so he's in butler drag: striped trousers, morning coat, watch chain, necktie. Ok, then. He doesn't do anything stupid. Not this time.
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Source. God knows what would happen to Young Molesley in today's school system.
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Cora and Robert descend their staircase. No one's happy about Matthew inheriting the estate. Cora's wearing the same brown dress she wore when Lady Violet first appeared. I might start thinking of it as her Entail Dress, if we see it once more while she's chewing over that thorny little problem. The detail on it--the oversized buttons and buttonholes, the trim down the front, the white blouse that goes under it--all make it look a little like menswear, which makes sense considering she's tackling what was generally thought of as an issue to be resolved by men. It also makes her blend into the walls and woodwork of the house, along with Robert and his country suit. These people are totally embedded in their lives and surroundings, and vice versa.
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Source. This is actually from the next episode, but I might as well put it here.
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Matthew and Isobel wander around their new house. Matthew has to be himself, man. Isobel tells him to get over himself. And then they in sweeps Lady Mary. Cousin Mary, please! She's in her riding habit of wide dun-colored skirt, matching fitted jacket with velvet collar, and shirt, stock (necktie), and top hat with a veil. Talk about flaunting her rank. She couldn't be more aristocratic if she tried. Even in a Worth gown and jewels, she wouldn't seem as totally foreign and inaccessible to Matthew as she does here. If this episode had been directed by David Lynch or the people who did Lost, I might even suspect that Lady Mary had arrived in a conventional afternoon walking dress and Matthew just imagined her in such iconic aristo garb. But showing up on her hunter is just the sort of stunt that Mary, who really is a terrible snob, would pull. Interestingly, though, her stock is the same color as Isobel's suit and Matthew's scarf. Isobel is ready to immerse herself, literally, in this new world, while Matthew is only ready to deal with it in small amounts, like around his neck (there's a "millstone around the neck" quip in here, but I want to push in. I mean on. On).
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Servant Scene. O'Brien leads a meeting of the Snobby Servants' Association of Downton. Gwen gets a much-anticipated package in a plain brown wrapper. Mrs. Patmore practices a little tough love on Daisy.
Cora and Mary are getting ready for dinner with the Horrible New Heir. Cora's in the same dress she wore for dinner with the Duke, which is a nice gesture on her part, dressing up and taking as much care for people she isn't thrilled about entertaining as for those she welcomes with open arms. Mary's dress is very similar in design to her mother's (presenting a united front to the newcomers), but it's green, which is a very unusual color for her. There are some weird gold embroidered...flowers? Sunbursts? Mold spots? sprinkled here and there on it. I love the design of this dress, and it's nice that it looks like Cora's (possibly a hand-me-down?) but it's just not Mary. It show us how uncomfortable she is with the whole affair.
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Edith and Sybil look much nicer, in colors that suit them. I may as well tell you all now that I am so much of a Downton devotee that I received a copy of the third-season companion from both my parents at Christmas, and exchanged one of them for the first-and-second season volume. They're very well-written (by Julian Fellowes' niece) and informative, with lots of behind-the-scenes information. The costuming notes are my favorite, of course, and the costume designer mentions in the second book that color schemes were established for all of the female characters. I don't know how early on they were implemented, although it probably wasn't the first season. But for our purposes, we might as well go over them now:
Lady Violet: Extremely ornate jewel tones and black (money, money, money--also age, and tradition. Tradition!)
Cora: Pastels, pale colors, floral detail and trim, lots of ornament (matriarchal and luxurious)
Mary: Black, white, grey, blue, occasionally red (she's the most elegant, the fieriest--and the iciest!)
Edith: Green, pink, shades of brown, floral patterns (as befits the most down-to-earth of the sisters)
Sybil: Purple and shades of blue (because...Jessica Brown Findlay looks good in these colors? I haven't found a deeper reason yet)
Isobel: Pale blue, white, gray, dark neutrals, maroon (utilitarian and practical, with occasional bursts of force, just like herself)
You'll see these themes strengthen over the course of the series, so much so that by the end of the second season you could probably pick out which costumes belong to which character without actually seeing the actors wearing them.
So, Edith is in a nice spring-green frock with some floral embroidery around the bodice and string of pearls: very nice, a little insipid. Sybil's dress is powder blue and lacy, with a wide belt. Also very nice, and also a little insipid. They're younger sisters, after all. They might not even be allowed to get married until after Mary does. Edith and Sybil look more like each other than Mary, again, although Edith and Mary are both in green, and Edith doesn't cast aspersions on Mary at dinner this time. But I still think Mary looks more like Cora in this scene than like her sisters.
Isobel's dress is nice enough, but a little overdone, with net and beading and lace and appliqués. She probably doesn't have the money for serious couture, so she settled for something she thinks is up to snuff, but doesn't quite hit the mark. Lady Violet snubs her (and probably her dress, by extension), and they all go into the dining room for the meal and some strained conversation about ugh, jobs.
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Source. Not a great view, but at least you can see everyone.
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Matthew's waistcoat looked rumpled and discolored to me for a moment, until I realized that it was probably satin rather than pure white starched cotton like Carson's and Robert's. Also a little overdone and middle-class. He probably needed it for lawyer things, but lawyer things are different from peer things. There's no such thing as a "week-end" around here. Get with the program, Matt!
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Source. Much better! Now you can see the detail, including the Thing on Mary's bodice.
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Isobel starts making a nuisance of herself on the way to the drawing room.
Servant Scene. Gossip below decks. The next day, Carson gets a letter and he's shocked, shocked at the contents. Bates sees him going into a pub. Bates sees everything. Is Bates a ninja? I bet he is, and that limp is totally fake.
Isobel goes to the village hospital to watch a man suffer from dropsy, one of the ickier conditions of the common man, because television hasn't been invented yet. Isobel's outfit is pretty unremarkable here. Her coat is dark and kind of dull, and her purple hat matches her brooch and blouse but not her coat. She isn't as put-together as the countesses, but she wouldn't get too dressed up to go walking to the village anyway. Dr. Clarkson is pretty dapper in his gray wool suit and bow tie, but that's because he's got a bevy of nurses to deal with all the fluids that come out of sick people.
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Source. This can't be right. Isobel never sits quietly when there's rabble to be roused!
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Servant Scene. NinjaBates visits Crawley House. Molesley has an existential crisis because he isn't allowed to help a grown man put on his pants in the morning.
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Violet's got it in her head that Matthew should marry Mary (say that three times fast). She's steaming down the garden path in a dark mauve walking outfit she's probably had for ages, it's so comfortable and well-fitting. The lapels on the jacket, the waistcoat-y blouse, and the bow at her (high) neck make her look brisk and businesslike. She wants to taken seriously in this matter, but she doesn't need a blue pinstriped ensemble to make her point, like Cora or Mrs. Hughes might. She gets it done without looking like she's getting it done, something she's been practicing for her whole life.
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Source. A different scene and a different hat, but you get the idea.
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Servant Scene. Maids In Nightgowns (coming direct-to-DVD this spring, in a plain brown wrapper).
Matthew arrives home from his, ugh, job, and his mother appears in the hallway looking a little frantic, because Violet and Cora have come to call. She's dressed in a bright magenta printed blouse and khaki skirt, and she couldn't look more out of place in the cool, light-drenched room. Guess who does look right at home? That's right, Violet, in a pale blue jacket and cream-colored blouse. Even the dead fox around her shoulders matches some of the furniture behind her. The colors of Cora's outfit, interestingly enough, match the colors of Isobel's, even though Cora's getup is clearly more expensive. I bet Cora sat right next to Isobel and played good cop for whatever they were trying to persuade her to do. No prizes for guessing who payed bad cop.
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Servant Scene. Carson's stealing apples. Anna sees him. She's a ninja too! NinjAnna!
Isobel's a candy striper! She's in the same outfit as the last scene, but it looks much more coordinated with the hospital's color scheme. She may be all ready to be the mother of an heir presumptive to a Great House, but she's still more comfortable getting her hands dirty and arguing with people.
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Source. Dr. Clarkson, looking put-upon.
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Servant Scene. Miss O'Brien has standards. Cora interrupts her description of them and delivers some smackdown wearing the same dress in which she smacked down the Duke! So that's her Smackdown Dress. Got it. Mrs. Hughes appears as backup, and she's got her Stripes of Authority on. They make a formidable pair. They run a very tight ship, those two.
Molesley tries to help Matthew dress for dinner. Matthew is a jerk about it.
The Sisters Three are dressing for dinner and arguing about whether having an ugh, job is suitable for a gentleman. Sybil's in another powder-blue dress with a wide waistband, which is fine because she leaves right after mentioning that some of their peers (heh, see what I did there?) are doing things like studying for the bar. So we're done with her for now. Edith is in a very ornate red-and-gold affair. No insipid green for her this time! As she gets up to leave we can see that the top half is a sort of brocade blouse with long pointy drapey things (can someone can give me the technical name for them?) hanging down over her solid-colored, two-tiered skirt. As she walks, you can hear beads clicking. Very elaborate, indeed. This color and complexity of this dress tell us to pay attention to Edith--she does something important! The important thing that she does is snoop in her older sister's correspondence and find a letter from someone named Evelyn Napier*. There's no dialogue about her little find, but the dress tells you it's important, and you should remember it.
Edith and Sybil, incidentally, are the only women wearing colors at this dinner (at least, colors that aren't covered with black chiffon). They may have been released from mourning because of their age. Or maybe black chiffon was getting fashionable, but they've been deemed too young to wear it. I'm just spitballing here. What do you all think?
But this scene is about Mary and her mother. Cora comes in, "drives the others away", and goes to work getting her daughter to warm to the idea of marrying Matthew. Her dress tonight is very sparkly. Who does that remind you of? Yep, she's selling her mother-in-law's idea, so she's dressing like her. She's also wearing some pretty large pearls in her ears and around her neck, and a peacock feather in her hair. Pearls and peacock feathers are classic (and classical) symbols of wealth, but also of vanity, pride, and greed. There's money at stake, lots of money, and Cora's doing her best to hang on to it.
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Mary's dress is similar in design to the one her mother wore at the last dinner, topside-boob and all, but her skirt is dark red and the waistband is sparkly red (it looks hot pink, actually, but we're warming up to red). This is the first time we've seen her in this color. Mary usually sticks with cool colors, but when she's wearing red, you know you're going to have a fight on your hands. As we'll see, she's extra-stubborn at this dinner in specific, and about the whole marriage issue in general.
Dinner. Isobel, wearing the same dress as at the last dinner, starts us down the icky garden path that ends with a very large needle in a man's chest. Robert tries to run interference, but it doesn't work. Even Violet can't stop the force of nature that is Isobel. Mary makes pointed comments about hunting, sea monsters and sons of gods to Matthew. Even Granny thinks Mary's being a bitch. Matthew holds his own. Violet doesn't make much headway tonight, even though she's wearing yet another power dress in rich purple, overlaid with black lace and her signature high collar. In between, Carson freaks out that Mrs. Hughes might be on to him. She's not. Don't worry, Carson. Only the Ninja Twins know your secret.
Servant Scene. Silly Daisy. Thomas isn't a bear. He's not even an otter. Now stop that before you put your joints out and go to bed. We get a quick view of Violet asking Matthew some tough questions, and then it's back to Carson's pantry, where he fusses over minute damage to a candlestick and tips his hand that Lady Mary's his favorite. Next day, we've got O'Brien snobbing about and Thomas fiddling with clocks.
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Source. Grrr!
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Dr. Clarkson calls on Lady Violet. He's wearing his best visit-the-patroness black suit and stiff collar. Her gray dress with its lapels and white blouse is more menswear-ish than any we've seen yet, but she's acting as the hospital president, so she's officially in charge now. She orders Clarkson to get rid of Isobel and reminds him that no one can predict what happens, and that's that. Yes, ma'am.
Robert's out and about on the estate, looking at big plans and keeping Pharaoh on a pretty short leash. Can't have him decimating the Downton squirrel population, I suppose. He's in his lord-of-the-manor tweeds, complete with silly plus-fours. Look how they make him blend into the green and brown of the foliage. Matthew's in a city coat, hat and necktie. He looks like a day-tripper. He is, in a way. He "does not love the place yet". He doesn't consider it his "life's work" yet.
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Source. Not the best shot, but at least you can see the different colors of their clothing.
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The two outfits highlight the distance between the men, and their attitudes toward the estate. We get an awkward teaser about how Cora (i.e., Cora's money) saved the estate (what? Why would Matthew ask something like that, except to give us a little exposition?), and then we cut to...
...Servant Scene! Almost all the staff but the Ninja Twins is out of the house, so they're alone together for the first time that we've seen. Oh no! The doorbell rings, and we can't have a maid answering it! Bates lurches upstairs to admit an archetype of the Cockney Rotter: awful checked suit, bowler, silly brushed mustache, accent as broad as the High Street.
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He brazens his way into the lord's library, despite Bates' attempts to "tuck him away somewhere", but here comes Sybil to save the day! This is another instance of a riding habit (and those nice pearl studs) being used to draw bright lines between the classes. But Sybil is much less pretentious-looking than Mary in this scene--her hair is mussed, and she's futzing with her hat, her gloves, and her crop, plus she instantly teams up with Bates, "in case explanations are needed". Such a clever girl. Anna goes bombing down the main drive for Carson (who arrives with his hair slightly mussed--a clear sign of major upset on Carson's part), but it's Robert who gets there first. He's changed out of his walking tweeds and into another manor-camouflage suit. He's perfectly at home, as he should be.
Having done the costume analysis, we shall not bear witness to Carson's shame. Although I will point out, in the absence of context, that £20 was a great deal of money in those days: over $2,000.
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Source. They do weddings too!
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The Ninja Twins have a little snicker about the whole sordid affair (notice NinjAnna has changed into her afternoon uniform--she's a ninja, I tell you!), Anna assures Bates she wouldn't care if she found out about his past, and NinjaBates (NinJohn? no, NinjaBates) assures her that it would. Foreshadowy!
We open on the Dower House, over which Lady Violet's disembodied voice bleats, "We're running out of options!" She's wearing another taking-care-of-business dress in slate blue with lapels and a lacy blouse. Cora has arrived for tea (oh, look at that glorious tea! DO WANT) in half-mourning purple taffeta and a killer hat. No sooner does she start in on a sandwich than she mentions that she's seen Isobel headed to the hospital with a bee in her bonnet. Not a bee, as it turns out, just a tiny vial of adrenaline (where did she get it? How? How did they even make adrenaline back then?), which eventually, after some persuasion and a few very unpleasant scenes involving giant needles and pumps and a large quantity of what appears to be Listerine (it's not, it's even more revolting) removed from a sick man's chest, gets plunged into said sick man's said chest, thoroughly astonishing the Dowager Countess and shocking her into silence.
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So here's the thing: when Violet gets up from her tea (how could you leave a tea like that?!) to go stop Isobel from, you know, helping people--I mean, making a nuisance of herself, of course--she's dressed to dominate in the aforementioned businesslike dress. When she gets there, she's in her black coat and hat, as she should be, but all that luxury in front of a dying man, his miserable wife (and her miserable hat), and the others, working so hard to save him, just makes her look aloof and out-of-touch. Not to mention the significance of black as the color of death in Western civilization. Her clothes aren't working for her this time; they're working against her.
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Source. We are not amused.
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Isobel's in the same outfit as her first visit to the hospital, which makes sense, because she's behaving in exactly the same way as she did on her first visit to the hospital. She's lucky she was right this time.
Side note: Lady Violet has a gray cat. Because of course she does.
Robert, Matthew, and Dr. Carson, all in three different-looking suits to represent three very different types of people, discuss the event over coffee. Robert makes Isobel chairman of the hospital board to give Lady Violet some "loyal opposition". Before heading home, Matthew tries to get rid of Molesley. I would too, even if I did want a valet. Robert makes him look absurd to shut him up (Matthew, not Molesley. Molesley doesn't need any help in that department). It works, and the last shot of the scene is of Matthew's rather gormless expression.
I wonder how Thomas feels about helping Matthew get on his bike. It looks so silly to have a footman wheel it out for you with all the gravitas of helping you into a royal coach.
The Sisters Three are setting out for the hospital and joking about sea monsters and Perseus. This is where Mary reveals Evelyn Napier's name and pedigree and why she doesn't care if Edith likes Matthew more than she does. This is where we really get to see the costuming scheme take hold. All three are wearing walking suits of basically the same design (probably made by the same person), but they're totally in character: Mary's neutral one is the chicest, with those black details (love the pointy lapels and that black frog closure--you know they're made of velvet) and three-quarter sleeves, and the hat is out of this world. Edith's is that nice warm rose she looks so good in, but the effect of the black hat, collar, and gloves is rather discordant, just like Edith can be. Is that the hat Mary wore to the funeral in the last episode? I think it might be. Looks terrible. Sybil's is powder-blue, and she's got her preferred proto-cloche hat and a flowered blouse with a lacy collar to remind us how sweet and how young she is. Plus, she has lavender gloves, which might mean she isn't allowed to wear black ones yet, or maybe it just a reminder that she's just more sensitive than Edith (like we need a reminder).
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Servant Scene. Apparently it's some sort of ceremony, and even the servants can come, because Mrs. Hughes is wearing a crazy flowered blouse and teasing Carson about his vaudeville days. Sad Carson is sad. Mrs. Hughes bucks him up. The rest of the servants appear in various iterations of working-class garb. William gets shot down by Daisy, who will never understand that she's barking up the wrong tree.
Molesley, looking doleful, stands by while Matthew gets ready. Matthew throws him a bone. Awww. Stop looking so pleased with yourself, Matt. You don't get any points for being a decent human being.
Does Dan Stevens get blonder as the series goes on? His hair seems very dark in this scene. Maybe it's the lighting.
Carson thanks Bates for keeping quiet and not judging him. Bates has no right to judge anyone. Moreshadowy!
Everyone's assembled for the investiture of Isobel as chairman of the board. She looks smug, but she also looks pretty good. She's in her usual coat (which I can now see is a very dark forest green), but she's finally dug out the matching hat (whose shape I do not know the word for...anyone? anyone? Bueller?) and its little plume. She looks good enough to be up there with her rival. Lady Violet is wearing the same coat and hat as the last scene she was in, and she looks just about as pleased (and as stuffy and anachronistic) as she was then.
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Violet's expression ends the episode, but I wanted to give Cora's outfit a quick mention, even though she's not really a key player in this scene (just the usual lady-of-the-manor persona you'd expect to see at an event like this), because of its sheer awesomeness. You can see part of it in the photo above, but it's not the best part. This is:
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Source. Ignore Robert, he's being a sourpuss.
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Wow. All I can say is, wow. The details! The color! The hat! If I had an outfit like this, I'd wear it everywhere. Even to the grocery store. Hell, especially to the grocery store.
That's all, folks! See you for Episode Three and some Turkish delight (I had to. I just had to)!
*That's Evelyn with a long "e", as in "enumerate", indicating that it's a man's name (cf. Evelyn Waugh).
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