The 'professional hoarders' that have dressed everyone from Helen Mirren to Hugh Grant, and Madonna to Meryl Streep

On London’s Holloway Road, an unassuming timber-clad building, once a garage, offers little hint of the treasures within. Behind the double doors lies an Aladdin’s cave of period costumes dating back to medieval times, as well as garments that form part of the owner’s private collection: a 400-year-old leather doublet, for example, and a dress worn by Queen Mary, her biscuit crumbs found in a pocket.

Inside, I’m taken past vases of dried flowers, oil paintings, a chaise longue and clothing on rails that actors will slip into behind giant curtains, before we head for the treasure trove: the glittering Accessories Room. I wonder how many actors over the years have perused the glass cabinets of rings and reticules or tried on the Venetian masks. I’m drawn to the racks of walking sticks and umbrellas. Perhaps among them lies the black-and-white striped parasol with which John Malkovich seduces Nicole Kidman in The Portrait of A Lady (1996) or the cane clutched by Downton Abbey’s sharp-tongued Dowager Countess.

Under the leadership of John Bright, award-winning costumiers Cosprop has been the go-to wardrobe for period productions of the stage and screen since 1965. Dressing everyone from Dame Helen Mirren to Hugh Grant, Madonna to Meryl Streep, the company has brought colour and historical authenticity to films, from Sense and Sensibility to The King’s Speech, and television series, from The Crown to Peaky Blinders and Downton Abbey.

More than 80 of Cosprop’s most famous costumes will be displayed at the exhibition ‘Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop’, at the London’s Fashion and Textile Museum. Exhibits range from John’s first television commission: Miss Havisham’s wedding dress, created for the BBC’s 1967 adaptation of Great Expectations; to the Bafta and Oscar-winning outfits, recently donated to the V&A Museum, worn by Helena Bonham Carter and Dame Maggie Smith as they picnicked in the Tuscan countryside in A Room With a View. Cosprop’s 60th anniversary, which coincides with John’s retirement, aged 85, is also being marked by a book, The Costume House: The Inside Story of Cosprop, featuring contributions from a distinguished cast of players who have brought Cosprop’s costumes to life.

On my tour of the premises, with deputy manager Mia Walldén leading me through the labyrinth, we have reached the Millinery Room. Few costumes are complete without a hat and this small space features floor-to-ceiling boxes of embellishments. One, labelled ‘the morgue’, is home to an assortment of small stuffed birds. It was here that Capt Ross Poldark’s tricorn was perfected, as were the lofty feathered hats worn by the stuck-up Bingley sisters in the BBC’s seminal 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, cleverly designed to reflect their elevated status.

In the Dye Room, magical transformations are taking place in huge vats and simmering pans. Here, coats are rewaxed and garments such as Capt Jack Sparrow’s raw-silk jacket distressed to suggest wear. In the main atrium, there are boxes and drawers as far as the eye can see. Some have labels, such as ‘narrow braces’, ‘hessian aprons’ and ‘spats’, evoking the upstairs-downstairs world that Cosprop does so well; others contain precious lace in a rainbow of colours, testifying to a lifetime of hunting and sourcing. There is even an entire room given over to buttons. ‘We are professional hoarders,’ admits Mia.

It’s true that nothing is wasted. The most exhausted clothing is harvested for fabric and fastenings and the most versatile is reincarnated. A dressing gown worn by Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster (1990), for example, was later donned by David Suchet as Hercule Poirot (2003); an empire-line dress — worn by Anya Taylor-Joy for the 2020 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma — features authentic embroidered panels lovingly preserved from the period, integrated with new fabric that has been carefully dyed to match. ‘There was history in every item of clothing, and this design process really helped us as actors,’ reveals Helena Bonham Carter in the book, noting: ‘We entered Cosprop as ourselves and walked out as the person we were playing.’

Of course, you can’t please everyone. Dame Maggie would joke that her wardrobe was made from ‘clothes off dead people,’ recalls John in the book. She also took issue with his choice of colour, he tells me later when we meet in his office. ‘You’re always putting me in green,’ she would grouse, about a colour she had disliked since childhood when her mother dismissed what she felt was a shining stage performance with the disparaging comment: ‘Whatever possessed them to put you in green?’

One of her most strident green ensembles, created for Downton Abbey, will feature in the exhibition. Even on the dummy, it is imposing with its heavily beaded high-necked blouse and gold-embroidered gown. Everything created for her ‘had to have an edge to it because she was quite a strong woman,’ explains John, clarifying, ‘both Maggie and the Countess’.

Asked if the esteemed actors he dresses are always well behaved, he supplies ‘a large No’. Bonham Carter, he confides, is ‘the one we’ve laughed with the most’ and Dame Judi Dench has a ‘general naughtiness’. He recounts a disastrous fitting for Sir John Gielgud’s 1975 production of The Gay Lord Quex, when a distinguished nameless actor, tired of waiting and now the worse for drink, began stumbling all over the stage. ‘This is too much!’ pronounced Gielgud, his nerves frayed by the farcical scene. Yet Dame Judi — whose focus, says John, is ‘extraordinary’ — remained grounded, announcing: ‘We’re getting rid of him. He’s such a pain!’

The linen shirt worn by Colin Firth as Mr Darcy when he strode out of the lake at Pemberley was one of 69 lots auctioned last year for The Bright Foundation, a charity set up by John to support children’s access to the Arts. The shirt alone fetched £25,000 and will be reunited in the exhibition with other Cosprop legends, including Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman’s wedding outfits from Sense and Sensibility and the velvet robes worn by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth. John is unequivocal when asked what he believes was so special about this particular piece. ‘Well, it’s not to do with that shirt, is it?’ he smiles. ‘It’s the surprise and that he looked so good coming out of the water.’ The television history that Cosprop created with it was, he says, ‘a real mix of everyone getting it right’.

John began his theatre career as a professional actor, which has given him a unique sensibility. ‘John is the actor’s costumier,’ states Dame Judi in the book. ‘Through his own training as an actor, he understands how important it is to feel completely comfortable in the clothes you are given to wear in front of the camera or on stage.’ Hugh Bonneville is equally complimentary. ‘Over the dozens of productions I have worked on with Cosprop, [he] has usually been called upon at some stage,’ he writes. ‘As if from nowhere, he suddenly appears in the fitting room, like some twinkly avuncular wizard. He tweaks, he adjusts, he suggests… A magician of his craft.’

The most rewarding aspect of his work, says John, is ‘seeing the clothes used in the best possible way, when an actor or actress has made them their own’. Ralph Fiennes, he recalls, had a particular flat cap in mind for his role as Suffolk archaeologist Basil Brown in 2021’s The Dig and used it to immerse himself in the part. ‘There’s a marvellous moment in fittings when you can see the character,’ he writes in the book. ‘It’s terribly exciting… When I see that, I just pat the actor on the back and say: “That’s it, that’s you.”’

This article first appeared in the September 24 issue of Country Life. For more information about how to subscribe, click here