The Downton Abbey, popular British historical series, shows some great and very accurate examples of Edwardian and post-Edwardian clothing, hairdos, and accessories. The stylists of the series did a good job of creating the characters’ outfits. And one of them is Lady Mary Crawley. Let’s look at a pretty cute reproduction of one of her daytime costumes. Also, we’ll talk a little about the makeup and hairstyles of the Edwardian period.
Today, we are going back in time a little bit. We will be talking about the 1910 and the Edwardian style. One of the earliest ones in 1910 and one of everyone’s favorites, as far as vintage style goes, is a TV show “Downton Abbey”. And Lady Mary is my favorite character. I love her, if there is one fictional character in the whole world that I would love to steal their wardrobe, it would be her. So I wanted to create a look, inspired by her specifically to kind of honor her and honor my love for Downton Abbey.
I was inspired specifically by one photo of Lady Mary, where she's wearing daytime wear. Edwardian daywear is so simple but so elegant, and it is different from the evening wear.
So, let’s talk about the makeup, the hair, and the outfit itself.
Edwardian makeup
I'm going in with a primer, just to prep the skin. Actually, we are not going for a historically accurate recreation right now, just because Edwardians actually didn't really wear any makeup at all. But we want to do a look that is similar, so what we're focusing on, is a very flawless complexion but still very natural. I'm actually using a very, very light coverage foundation. If you have a thicker foundation, you can just add some moisturizer to dilute it.
I have very prominent dark circles and, usually, I put a lot of concealer. Right now, I'm not going to use concealer. I'm still going in with the same foundation and I'm just going to use that to cover my under eye a little bit so they're less pronounced. But it's still kind of coming through because we want that more natural, no-makeup look.
The eyebrows. I'm really just keeping it super, super natural. Mine are already pretty thick. And Edwardian ladies really didn't do anything with their eyebrows. I'm just going to lightly fill with some powder.
The eyelashes. I’m going to curl them and apply some mascara.
So, while Edwardians didn't wear much makeup and it was mostly reserved for actresses and whatnot, Rouge was something that was used. We are using the Besame Delicate Rouge in 1915 rose. This is actually a replica of a shade that existed in 1915. We're applying it extremely lightly, just slightly on the apples of the cheek.
A lot of times, Creme Rouge was applied as well on the cheeks. I use powdered but there was a cream-based product that you could use on your cheeks and it was also applied on the lips. I'm just using a tinted lip balm to kind of mimic that effect on my lips.
Hair (Gibson Tuck)
The first thing is to separate two front sections from your hair. If you have bangs, don't worry about it, we'll do them later. Do a ponytail in the back, loosen it up, and make kind of a loop. What we're going to do is put the ponytail through the loop. Then, we'll take the remainder of our hair and we'll go and pin it above, into the kind of loop that we've created to make a bun. You can use as many pins as you need to make sure that it's completely secure.
The front strands of hair will serve as an embellishment: twist them and then pin them over our bun. Just tuck your hair where you can, it's going to depend on the length of your hair but you can do this both on short hair or on long hair. And then, I'm just pinning my bangs into the side.
The outfit
The outfit in itself is extremely simple but I really wanted to make it special by getting an actual authentic Edwardian-era blouse. I found this blouse on Etsy. It has some embroidery and a collar and it is a long-sleeved blouse.
Pared with that, is the full-length skirt – because the skirts were full-length at that time. And this skirt I actually found at a thrift store. It is gray and it’s just cut simply down. It's so perfect for this look because it's exactly the same cut as the one Lady Mary is wearing. Unfortunately, it's not historically accurate but it's a good reproduction.
The only accessory that Lady Mary is wearing in that photo, are some earrings. So I went with similar ones that I had. They're not actually perfect but I thought they were good enough; they're dangling ones and these are faux pearls.
I'm so happy with how this looks turned out. I think it's a very, very Downton Abbey-esque, which is my goal. I think the hair and makeup can definitely be worn on an everyday basis, it's super simple and can complement a lot of people in a lot of different styles.
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