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Color and Costume Analysis Post 1
Miss Scarlet and the Duke - Eliza in Blue: Family and her Orbit
Originally posted in the "Scarleteers: Miss Scarlet and the Duke" Fan group on Facebook on March 3, 2021
I checked in with one of our wonderful mods to get permission to post a series of interpretations on the use of color in story-telling. Art directors and costumers often use colors thematically in a scene to convey ideas about a character, their feelings, and relationships to those within their orbit.
The color story can also be used to show how relationships evolve using different colors, patterns and fabrics that either complement or clash, depending upon the narrative and where each character is vis-à-vis their relation to others. They also help us pick up on sub-textual clues as that can help determine the story trajectory.
For transparency, I learned to pick up on these subtleties by following a duo of fashion bloggers who have also published extensive costume analyses for other series, most notably Mad Men.
I plan multiple posts – 1. Miss Scarlet and her relation to “Home” 2. Miss Scarlet and Rupert, and finally, 3. Miss Scarlet and Duke (I know, I know, I’m saving them for last).
First. BLUE AS HOME.
We know blue is Eliza’s uniform color. It’s the color she wears when she is “on the job” in the suit with stripes, and is the color she wears with the softer, more feminine details, when we find her at home after her father’s funeral and on a few other occasions. But look at the color inside Eliza’s home. Her parlor is resplendent with different shades of blue, in the wallpaper and the paint, and even in the light blue-green of the kitchen. Blue represents home, both in the space she dwells in, as well as the vocation she has chosen for herself. It is where she is her most comforable, professionally, and personally.
This is presented in not only scenes with Eliza as an adult, but most cleverly conveyed when we see her as a young girl. In the flashback scenes, we see her in a sepia-toned past, but through the use of selective desaturation (or saturation, in this case), she is in a dark, denim-blue dress. So “blue” and the idea of blue => detective work => home was with her from the beginning.
Now, let’s look at Henry. When we see Henry after his death, where he comes to Eliza through her memory, he is wearing deep navy blue, almost black. He still represents “home” to her, and her feelings about home, and as a detective. Contrast this with the flashback scenes, and he is in a tweedy brown. This is a memory, and a specific memory tied to her early inklings as a young detective. And since memories are faded, then the coloring of the Henry of her childhood is faded, as well.
We also see Ivy as home, but beyond that, as the mother or Madonna figure. And while this was pretty obvious given the length and depth of their relationship, it’s reinforced by the color and sartorial choices the costumers and directors made using subtext.
Like Henry, Ivy wears a darker shade of blue than Eliza. And the floral motif in her blouse reflects the pattern in the parlor wallpaper (home), but is also a more traditional feminine shape and style for the time, which contrasts with Eliza’s more modern stripes that also represent the masculine.
As such, the traditional feminine conveys the idea of mother, and that is further reinforced looking at centuries’ worth of paintings depicting the original "mother" in literature, the Madonna figure, where the Madonna is cloaked in robes of a brilliant, rich blue.
That the cut of Ivy’s blouses are also more embellished and traditionally female speaks to her role as a homemaker and mother.
That’s it for today. We’ll get to Rupert and William (Oof! There’s a LOT!) later, but these are just a few nibbles of things you might want to keep your eyes open for during your next viewing(s)!