Stitch to screen
Costume designer Consolata Boyle on creating the wardrobe of Millie Bobby Brown’s gun-toting detective Enola Holmes
Netflix
- Jessica Phillips
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With a degree in archaeology and over 20 credits as a costume designer for period dramas to her name, you might think that Consolata Boyle has a penchant for the past. But you’d be wrong: “It’s never about the period or the costumes,” she tells RT. “The bedrock for me has to be the script.”
For Boyle, every project begins the same way – script, discussion, research – and only then does she put pencil to paper. It’s a method that has served the Dublin-born designer well, earning her three Academy Award nominations for costume design and a long-running creative partnership with screenwriter Jack Thorne (Netflix’s Adolescence).
Their latest collaboration, Enola Holmes 3 on Netflix, is a movie sequel which sees Enola (Millie Bobby Brown) ditching her nuptials for detective work when her brother, Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) mysteriously disappears in Malta.
A corset and a veil don’t get in the way of finding – or fighting – the bad guys though, in the same way the action sequences don’t impact the integrity of the clothing.
“We don’t make any allowances for making the costumes easy to handle,” Boyle explains. “During fight scenes, it’s all flying skirts, bustles, and crinoline all over the place.”
Subtle storytelling through fabric is a staple of Boyle’s. Enola’s wedding dress, which is inspired by Victorian tea gowns, is deliberately rigid. “It represents conventional restriction and Enola’s doubts about spoiling her relationship with Louis by getting married,” Boyle says.
Costume designer Consolata neqwBoyle. Eilish McCormick
As for Enola’s holiday wardrobe, the designer nods towards the runaway bride’s progressive views via pleated skirts and minimalistic silhouettes – styles that weren’t commonplace until the turn of the next century.
This sense of playfulness is something Boyle tries to bring to every project, even on her more factually grounded films like Victoria & Abdul, set in the same era.
Sketches of Enola’s main wedding dress. Courtesy of Consolata Boyle
“You can often be intimidated into replicating,” she says, “but that formality often associated with Victorian dress isn’t necessarily the truth. People are people whatever century they’re in.
“So that’s what I try to do – reflect their vitality through their clothes.”
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Enola Holmes 3 is available on Netflix from Wednesday 1 July
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Jessica Phillips
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