It Took a Whole Week to Make Just One of Elle Fanning's Catherine the Great Costumes

"Catherine's not from Russia — she's this young, romantic, idealistic girl who's actually all hope, love, and sunshine. As we go through the series, her palette changes, but it never really does quite fit into the world of the palace. When she's trying to bring change to Russia towards episodes seven and eight, her palette does get a little darker and stronger with a more Russian feel about it. We were making outfits constantly for her, and we weren't just making one dress. We might be making three of the same dress depending on how the schedule worked. For example, when she gets her carriage stuck in mud, we had to make multiples of that dress, one which would accommodate the mud."

"Elle had many shoes made and some jewellery made in Italy. It took about one week to make one dress, depending on how much embellishment it had. One of her coats even had handmade buttons. Elle was really tied to one of the coats she wore and the pink dress she wears at the end of the series. It was a jump away from the palette where we started with her, so I think she really loved that. She was so excited about the costumes and that made it a more enjoyable job for me."

"Peter is in his own animal world. I had so much fun dressing him with all the different fabrics I was using. There was a whole mad sense of mixing and matching. He's got this incredible fur coat! There is a point where he's been ill and he's changing his ways a little bit, and at this point you'll see him in a lighter colour palette — one that's actually quite pale."

"Leo and Catherine have a similar colour palette which is playful and strong. He's smart and funny, and I wanted to paint that sense of colour in his wardrobe."

"There was definitely a sense of incorporating the period with the modern fashion world, especially when it came to Georgina. She and Grigor were the power couple in the palace. Her looks were very catwalk — very clean and strong. She was basically the fashion icon. She's supposed to be charismatic and savvy, so she wore bold colours with little decoration. I wanted to keep everything really sharp."

"Aunt Elizabeth was great fun to dress. She had a wonderful, strange, eclectic mix of clothing as there was some cross dressing involved. When she dressed in a slightly more masculine way, she wore breeches. But there were other times when she had to have her sense of royalty about her. Her fabrics were a lot bolder than any other character and her outfits were fuelled with personality."

"We were making as much as we could for the cast in our work room, but for background cast members and in crowd scenes, those costumes were sourced from the UK, Italy, and France. A lot of this was part of my main task in the beginning, especially since we were working with this very specific colour palette. For example, none of the men had white shirts, and we might remove the decoration on a sleeve or the lace embellishments on a dress for the women."

"We went to this great vintage fair in London and ended up finding a lot of antique trim. We hunted high and low for buttons, because you need about 30 thick buttons for a man's cape. Finding a unique button you fall in love with and then discovering that there are only 25 of them is devastating. We also sourced a lot of lovely jewels from the markets. There's an eclectic mix of cross dressing in the series, so I could go in so many different directions. The aristocrats jumped more into the traditional Russian folklore clothing, so I could have fun mixing different textures, patterns, and fabrics."