The Fabric of Sisterhood: Grace Snell’s “Sense and Sensibility” Costumes Tell the Story
The tone set by director Georgia Oakley in her fresh take on Jane Austen’s 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility (in theaters October 16) is tactile and earthy, a romance that feels authentically at home in the countryside where the disinherited Dashwood sisters land after their half-brother John (Tom Brooke) and his scheming wife Fanny (Stacy Martin) take over the girls’ ancestral home. The film opens on Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) in elegant mourning at the Norland estate, but with John and Fanny’s arrival, the sisters and their mother (Caitríona Balfe) find themselves swiftly downgraded to the remote Barton Cottage, the only home they can afford in their newly straitened circumstances.
The only way out of this economic predicament for the two older sisters, of course, is marriage. Elinor falls for Edward (George MacKay), Fanny’s brother, but he repairs to London and an unclear situation in which he may or may not ever be seen again. Sensual and romantic, Marianne is taken with rakish Willoughby (Frank Dillane) while a more sensible choice, the reserved Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum), fails to attract her ardor. Romantic suspense unfolds against the backdrop of the daily necessities of cottage life.
“It was clear from our director, Georgia, that this should represent a fresh take on Austen,” explained the costume designer Grace Snell, who had nine weeks to prepare her first period film. Snell looked to a range of sources of inspiration, both historic and contemporary, avoided capped sleeves, which Oakley wasn’t a fan of, and designed a wardrobe that conveys not just the Dashwoods’ fall in socioeconomic circumstances but the bonds of sisterhood shared by Elinor and Marianne.
Snell spoke with us about how she approached the Georgian-Regency crossover period in which the film is set, designing for both great wealth and rural simplicity, and conveying the romantic couples’ connections through their clothing.
How did you research this particular era?
I did a lot of historical research. I went to the Rotherhithe Research Gallery, looked through their archives, went to galleries, and viewed quite a lot of the period resources online. We’d loosely said we wanted to set our film in the late 1790s, when Jane Austen wrote her first draft. It’s a transition period from late Georgian to Regency. I also got on board a dress historian, Eleanor Houghton. Then I brought in my contemporary research. I looked at portraiture of big families in their homes, and I got really inspired by the idea of sharing clothing, not always dressing your best when you haven’t got guests, and what happens behind closed doors.
Once you had the design down, how did you approach styling the costumes?
I could do the historical garments, but I could look into perhaps a more modern view of styling. For this, I looked to fashion catwalk shows from the 80s and 90s and how the styling elements make the clothes feel more alive. There’s a Comme des Garçons catwalk show, the 1994 Metamorphosis collection. That was a big inspiration. I just love the styling of Romeo Gigli’s catwalks in the 80s. He did a show for Callaghan that I particularly loved.
For Elinor and Marianne, how did you think about using their clothing to separate their personalities while still presenting them as close-knit sisters?
I wanted them to be very similar, but different. They weren’t to look like twins; they were to look like sisters with their own personalities and their own sense of style. A good example of that is their mourning period, which is at Norland, when they’re grieving the loss of their father, and they have to wear dark clothing. We made two jackets which are based on the same pattern, but Elinor’s is longer and made of a different material. I wanted them to have variations because they would be working from the same source material, but I also wanted it to look like they were picking their own clothes, whether for practical or sensibility purposes. Marianne is a bit of a magpie, and she likes to wear clothes from different periods and collect beautiful things. Elinor’s a lot more practical, refined, and has a bit more structure in her wardrobe.
Did color help convey each sister’s personality?
I wanted to balance the two, with Marianne often the light and optimism in life, and Elinor slightly more skeptical and reserved. That was shown in London. They have two woolen dresses, two lovely jackets. Elinor has a waistcoat, and Marianne has a little jacket with a big ribbon at the front. They’ve both got lovely duck tails, these frills at the back. But Marianne is in cream and Elinor is in dark blue. At the beginning, we have Elinor in her light purple dress and Marianne in her light yellow, which are opposite sides of the color wheel, but they do go very well together.
How did you show their downward socioeconomic trajectory through their clothes?
They share clothes more and recycle. Elinor recycles her lavender dress from the beginning. She’s remade a slimmer silhouette in the same fabric, with shorter, three-quarter length sleeves. She’s being more economical. All the skirts she had previously were not practical when she was planting the vegetables, washing the clothing, and being the head of the household. We just repeated quite a lot of the clothing, and then the idea, when they go to London—and this is what I hope the audience assumes—is that Mrs. Jennings has stepped in to help them.
Did the cottage itself influence how you designed for the girls?
Once I’d seen Barton, I realized that I needed to design clothing that we would believe would live there. I didn’t want everything to look too refined and too clean; I wanted it to feel like we didn’t question this world. I worked with the production designer [Francesca di Mottola] to see all the sets and make sure everything was aligned.
When considering the couples in the film, did you want to see their costumes reflected in one another?
There are little nods. I considered Elinor’s palette and Edward’s when I thought of them together, and their silhouettes are less frivolous and adorned. Willoughby’s character arc is really interesting to design. When he brings the flowers for Marianne, he’s dressed up. He’s got a fun hat on; he’s got a little neckerchief. Marianne, being the magpie that she is, is very drawn to this artistic nature. At the ball, Willoughby is peacocky; he’s in fine silks, and he’s so unattainable that it’s intimidating and isolating for Marianne. I wanted to push and pull with those two. You needed to see what they were attracted to in each other, and so they have this kind of roguishness in how they dress. With Brandon, I wanted him to stay consistent and solid, stoic and unchanging. I wanted him to be very reliable and a strong presence.
Designing for Fanny, did you see her as something of an aesthetic foil to her poorer relations?
She’s an indicator of where Regency clothing is going, which is this slimmer silhouette. The Empire line is going up a lot higher. The infills are getting quite elaborate, and she’s got jewelry on. I didn’t have too much pattern for the sisters, but for Fanny I made sure that she had beautiful textiles. I wanted to really show the societal differences in the women’s wear. Sometimes with period dramas, because everybody looks so fantastic, it’s really hard, as an audience member who is not familiar with this clothing, to be able to say, ‘I can see that they’ve fallen on harder times, or I can see that she’s got a lot more money.’ Fanny Dashwood’s ball gown would have been the most expensive thing in that room.
Featured image: Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Elinor Dashwood, Esmé Creed-Miles as Marianne Dashwood, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Margaret Dashwood and Caitríona as Mrs. Dashwood in SENSE and SENSIBILITY, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2026 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
