DorothyOz's Crazy Journal

Something that the costume designers in the Musketeers do really well is Lived In costumes: I think part of the reason the main four guys, and Constance in season 1 look so great is because they look like they live and work in those clothes. They look like they chose them for both practicality and aesthetics, they move in them, wash and darn them. They are really successful extensions of the characters. (Can we have a round of applause for whoever did the weathering/aging/cheese grating of the costumes. Look at all that frayed fabric in the picture above!)

Incidentaly the background extras are also really really good for this:

Couldn't find a great photo but pause on any street scene and look how the extras are dressed. If anything they seem more period accurate than the main cast, eg. almost everyone is wearing a coif of a hat. And those hats look like they have been worn (sweated in).

(Now, the nobility - Louis, Anne, various royality, even Constance in further seasons - look like they're wearing costumes, rather than clothes. And to be fair maybe there is a point to that, after all, you don't want to see the King wearing a stained or darned doublet.)

Okay on to Sylvie!

This is my all-time favourite costume of hers. Confession: I have actually written to the costume designer of season 3 asking for info on the fabric of this skirt - specifically this open-thread-work-trim-thing:

If she gets back to me I will edit this post and share.

Interestingly I think the above skirt is actually two sort of half skirts, one with this striped blue/green linen/openwork fabric and the other a heavy wood-block printed linen (You can see this in the first photo of this post where she has the blue one hiked up.)

I may be wrong here but Sylvie's actual origins/hometown have never explicitly been mentioned. She is just a "war refugee". So I sort of understand the idea of giving her a peasant/folk costume. The brightness sets her apart from all the other characters. The collection of fabrics and patterns and prints and textures suggests she has travelled, lived amongst different cultures and people even, picked up what was discarded or gifted to her.

The scraps of fabrics and panels in her costume also suggest someone who has had to make do with piece of fabric rather than large amounts. She is thrifty and practical, along with stylish!

I'm really enjoying the lace on her chemise here. We often think of lace as only being made in white, but there's a long history of black and red lace in particular. In the 16th century Polish Cochineal which provided vibrant dye was a huge export from Eastern Europe, but would likely have been too expensive for someone like Sylvie. However by the 17th century the New World had opened up, and cheaper cochineal red dye was been imported from places like Mexico. So now you know.

It also shows up here on her sleeve. I'm not sure how historically accurate these sorts of bunched sleeves are (not at all, I suspect) but they do look pretty. Incidentally you can get a similar kind of shirt from brands like Voriagh in the good old year of 2026, which is heavily influenced by European folk costumes:

It's hard to see but it looks as though Sylvie's sleeve might also feature some lovely smocking. You can get a brilliant pattern from Folkwear to sew a smock like this. Or, like me, you can buy the pattern and be too intimidated to make it:

Here are some examples of folk costume that have surely influenced Sylvie's costume:

The above bodice from Marken, which is an island near Amsterdam, and due to it being an island it has quite a distinct culture and costume. I can't figure out how old it actually is, but a lot of folk costume is based on clothing from the 16th-19th C so it could be from any period really!

The above photo is from this blog which has lots of amazing photos of costumes from Viana do Castelo in Portugal (photos copyright Daniela Sunde-Brown.) Pleating! embroidery! Lace! GASP!

Another image of a Marken folk costume with this crossed tassle scarf that looks similar to Sylvie's.

This above is a sarafan, a traditional pinafore dress from Russia. Look at that pleating! Isn't it just delicious?! While Sylvie doesn't wear something specifically like this she does wear a pinafore dress. She's wearing one in the below photo, along with this gorgeous jacket:

The paneled skirt here is reminiscent of German trachten/dirndl skirts

You can see more of the jacket here. It appears to have detachable sleeves as she's not wearing them in this photo:

(Again look at those chemise sleeves, it does seem that there is smocking there at the elbows at least).

It appears that the jacket sleeves detach at the shoulder turning it into a vest/waistcoat, and also at the elbow. Apparently this is another super un-historically accurate detail that costume designers love, but I don't care at all because I love it too! Also notice how in the image with Constance and Elodie, Sylvie's lower sleeves are a completely different fabric, which I think is a great detail, as if she took them from another jacket or from a piece of clothing that was otherwise not wearable. A lot of used clothing would have been sold at markets and picked over and repurposed, so this is a great detail.

I adore this chemise. I'm trying to work out if this trim is all one piece or is made of lots of overlapping embroidered flower shapes (most likely). It also looks as if the costume department hand-painted it with this yellow dye which I think is so beautiful.

I can't find much about this image other than it appears to be from Slovakia, and is similar in many ways to Sylvie's cropped bodice (it also looks like an Indian choli)

I had almost entirely convinced myself that Sylvie wears a pocket on the outside of her skirt amongst all those sashes, but alas I appear to have been mistaken. Still it would have been great to see, something like this (from a traditional Italian folk costume, which again is so reminiscent of a lot of Sylvie's outfits):

Usually pockets were worn underneath skirts - which often tied at the sides so provided access - and on top of petticoats or underskirts. You can carry a LOT in these things and I really really love them.

Finally, I want it on record that it is a crying shame that we didn't see more of Sylvie's Going Away outfit:

I feel like Athos must have cashed-in some of his Comte assets once and for all here because Sylvie's cloak looks like it's velvet and possibly even fur-trimmed on the hood, and those sleeves are beautifully embroidered, and that dress/tunic is amazing. Both the chemise and the dress look very Ukrainian to me:

*

When Pauline walked on to the screen in season 3 my eyebrows shot off into space because, really, did they hate this actress? She's beautiful, what have you done to her? And I really think it did a disservice to her character.

I think the reason I find her costuming so baffling is because it looks as if they've made a really half-hearted attempt to aim for something historical instead of just going "you know what? Suspend your disbelief" as they have done with fun but weird costumes like this:

or this:

Just to be super clear, I'm not one of those people who needs costumes to be 100% historically accurate in a tv show or movie. I think it should all be in service of the characters and the overall atmosphere or world-building of the show. Which is why I love the guys' costumes so much, because while not hugely true to someone of their social status in the era, it shows who they are: essentially some mix between detectives and undercover agents in 17th century Paris.

Saying that, I do love this era's crazy outfits so much I do find it a bit of a missed opportunity to not lean in a little harder in places. Which brings me to Pauline...

Firstly. *deep breath*. What, may I ask, is this hat?

Let's start with the way she is wearing it. Is it supposed to be a bonnet? Why is it sat so far at the back of her head and tilted up? I understand maybe they wanted to not overshadow Laura Haddock's beautiful face but...really?

For context, this is the kind of hats we're talking about for women in this era (from The Mode In Hats And Headdress - by R. Turner Wilcox)

The black beaver hat here looks like what they were maybe aiming for, but it ends up looking baggy and dowdy, too big and somehow alos not big enough (I think the crown is too big and the brim is too short) and it would really need to be curled up to show her face.

(Incidentally as per the black hat lady above, a "heartbreaker" is apparently a hairstyle of this era, here used to mean the single ringlet over her lace collar.)

See Pauline’s hat in the below gif? It looks like a normal fedora hat they've tried to pass off as something from the era and it's just sad (her fiance's is too short-brimmed too but looks a bit better, especially given the rest of his costume is much more historically accurate. Also maybe this is why hers looks so bad, in comparison to his)

This brings me to the second point: her dress. The strange thing is that it actually looks like it could be a fair shot at a dress of the time: it has the high waist, the armscye (armhole) set back far near the shoulder blades - and yet it still doesn't work.

Why does it look like she has no petticoats or bumroll underneath? Constance occasionally appears similarly unclad beneath her skirts but it works more for her character than Pauline, who is about to be married to a wealthy man and who is supposed to be showing off her newfound finery.

This plate is from Historic Costume In Pictures - by Braun & Schneider. You can see the high waist with the peplums on the bodices, and a stomacher that goes into a point and goes quite low. You can also see that the skirts are quite full.

Another key fashion from this era is the very wide neckline, almost off the shoulders. It looks like Pauline's dress was aiming for that and then they sort of faltered? Because it bags out really weirdly around her neckline:

Quite like the gloves though.

Then with her wedding gown it looks like we've jumped about a hundred years into the future:

The square neckline, the narrow sleeves, the split skirt and the shape of the stomacher. I don't understand it at all (though it's a very pretty dress! It's just something very clearly from the 18th century. Imagine Elizabeth Bennet turning up to her wedding to Mr Darcy wearing an 1920s flapper dress. Bit odd, right?)

As I said earlier, I don't need the costumes to be 100% accurate, but they have to be in service of the character and Pauline's doesn't make sense here.

This woman who grew up in a brothel - and, we are told, actually worked as a prostitute - turning up engaged to a nobleman firstly is a turnaround and meant to surprise Aramis. If she was wearing extravagant early-mid 17th C French noblewoman's gowns that fit well the contrast would really have hit home, especially as she shows off her riches to Aramis and seems to care deeply about owning them. I think we’re meant to assume that Saint Pierre has decked her out in the latest finery, right?

So even if the costumes weren’t historically accurate but just fit a bit better and made a bit more sense it could have really underlined the plot and her character.

Essentially they've ended up dressing her like an eccentric-wannabe (time traveller) and I'm not convinced that was an actual choice. If it was, more should have been made in the script about how she was trying to socially climb and was failing. The point is though that she is prepared to kill to keep her past hidden from Saint Pierre, who has to believe that she isn’t of such an extreme difference in social standing or the whole marriage - and plot - falls down. She has to look the part or it doesn't make sense that Saint Pierre would have been taken in by her story. (I think he believed she was of a lower social class to him but clearly wouldn’t have accepted the truth about her).

Or is the message meant to be that you will always be what you were born, and Pauline doesn’t have the taste or the sense to look the part even when she has unlimited resources? Because that is a sucky message.