Downton Abbey: 10 Hidden Details About Mary Crawley’s Costume You Didn’t Notice

Love her or hate her, Lady Mary Talbot (née Crawley) is one of the central characters of Downton Abbey, and the actress who portrays her, Michelle Dockery, was born to wear the straight silhouette that characterized the fashions of the later seasons on the show.

Thanks to a team of dedicated costume professionals, led by Susanah Buxton, Caroline McCall, and Anna Robbins, audiences on both sides of the pond and around the world got to know the headstrong eldest daughter of the Crawley family and future of Downton Abbey. Below are 10 hidden details you probably didn’t notice about Lady Mary’s costumes that helped define her character.

10 She had a signature palette

The costume designers developed a signature color palette for Mary, consisting of deep burgundies and navy blues. Some of Mary’s greatest sartorial hits featured these colors; who could forget the cranberry engagement dress from the Season 2 Christmas Special or the blue coat with fur trim that was a wardrobe staple in Season 5?

Designer Anna Robbins noted that the colors she used on Mary flattered Michelle Dockery’s complexion and conveyed a dominant personality that would not have worked on any of the other characters. She described Mary’s style as the opposite of Lady Rose, who preferred lighter blues and peaches to her cousin’s bolder palette.

9 Coco Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet were style inspirations

Several real-life designers served as inspiration for Mary’s costumes. Coco Chanel was an emerging designer in the 1920s whose work was quintessentially Lady Mary. She specialized in simplistic color-blocking paired with classic, unfussy accessories like a string of pearls.

Madeleine Vionnet was known for cutting fabric on the bias, which created flowing movement and intricate draping in her work. Both designers embraced the corset-free movement and popularized fashion that conformed to a woman’s shape instead of changing it. As Mary was always on the cutting edge of fashion, she no doubts would’ve patronized both of these designers.

8 Her hairstyle was the centerpiece

In Season 5, Mary cuts her hair in a bob and later updates it with fringe bangs for the movie. Cutting her hair turned out to be a watershed moment for Mary, as her wardrobe began to play off the sharper edges. For the big reveal to her family, she wore jewelry that complemented the angles of her hair and a red art deco dress with triangles and other geometry forming along the front and back.

According to Anna Robbins, Mary’s fashion moved forward at a faster pace after her haircut and that the dresses she wore in Seasons 1-4 “carried a different air” with the cropped hairdo.

7 Her style and color choices purposely played off Edith’s

The two eldest Crawley sisters kept up a fierce rivalry throughout all six seasons, with Mary, in particular, keeping score and retaliating whenever the opportunity struck. Because they appeared together so often on screen, the designers intentionally played their costumes off of each other. While Mary wore an angular bob, Edith put curls in her hair.

When Mary appeared in a monochromatic evening dress, Edith would often be in the same scene wearing gold. While Mary favored color-blocking and geometric motifs, Edith incorporated more organic shapes and patterns into her clothing. The designs highlighted the sisters’ differences while also complementing one another.

6 Her work uniform was menswear-inspired

At the beginning of Season 6, Mary took on more responsibilities on the estate, acting as an agent alongside Branson. To convey her role and authority (even when she wasn’t working), she wore tailored three-piece suits and adopted a linear, androgynous look.

Her style is classical and traditional, never veering too far from what you would expect to see from a man in the role. She does incorporate a few delicate touches to her costume, like a voluminous sleeve ending in a cuff that she wears under a grey waistcoat or a burgundy necktie that offsets the pinstripes of her shirt.

5 Her first wedding dress was made of lace

Mary walked down the aisle for wedding #1 in a long-sleeved ivory dress featuring soft lace and Swarovski crystals. Designer Caroline McCall wanted her to look “really romantic, really elegant” and made sure that the dress had some softness to it to reflect the qualities Matthew brought out in Mary.

She completed the look with a bouquet of calla lilies and a 45-carat floral diamond tiara borrowed from U.K. jeweler Bentley & Skinner to anchor the veil. The tiara alone was worth $200,000, making this costume the most expensive on the show when the wedding aired in 2013.

4 She was a fan of Fortuny

In the Downton Abbey movie, Mary wore a bespoke Fortuny Delphos gown in one of her signature colors, a striking Prussian blue. Although Fortuny initially introduced the Delphos in 1907 as a tea dress worn in the privacy of one’s home, by the 1920s it had become accepted as evening wear. The silk dress features hundreds of tiny pleats created in a top-secret process that Anna Robbins was fortunate enough to learn while working with Fortuny on costumes for Downton Abbey.

While the blue gown in the movie was designed especially for her, Michelle Dockery wore an original Delphos gown in Season 6 of the show. This dress had a higher neckline that was more in keeping with the Delphos’s original design than the plunging neckline of the custom-made dress in the movie.

3 Most of her gowns had to be custom-made

Anna Robbins had a very specific vision for Mary, which meant that most of her costumes had to be made from scratch. (In comparison, most of Lady Rose’s costumes were original pieces tailored to fit her.) Part of the challenge may have been the color palette for each character: in muted greens and delicate pinks, Edith and Rose wore the colors of the 1920s, which made it easier to find original pieces.

Many of Mary’s dresses were hybrid creations, featuring a piece of original beading or fabric supplemented with newer construction. The drop-waist navy dress she wears to tea with Princess Mary is one such piece, as is the beaded monochromatic dress she wears in the final dance scene.

2 …But a few were recycled

Some of Mary’s costumes had a past life. Michelle Dockery shares two outfits with Catherine Zeta-Jones, who played Mary McGarvie in the 2007 film Death Defying Acts. Specifically, the red dress with beaded floral trim that Dockery wears in the Season 2 Christmas Special and the floral blouse she wears while performing as The Crawley Sisters were both seen on Zeta-Jones playing a different Mary!

Other costume duplicates include a black choker in the pilot that Monica Belluci wore in Brotherhood of Wolves and a green dress in Season 1 that had a past life on Radha Mitchell in Finding Neverland.

1 She was ahead of the fashion times

Did you know sunglasses first became popular in the 1920s? Glasses, as we know them today, originated in England and had been available for centuries, but it wasn’t until the Jazz Age that they became known as a fashion accessory among a certain set.

When Mary wore sunglasses to Henry’s race in Season 6, it was the first time any character on the show had seen in such a fashion-forward ensemble (save for maybe Sybil in trousers in Season 1). The sunglasses were the statement accessory to one of the most striking costumes on the show: a bright red dress worn with a pale grey coat and matching hat with trim. Only the best for Lady Mary.

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