Elle Fanning's Outfits as Catherine the Great on The Great
It Took a Whole Week to Make Just One of Elle Fanning's Catherine the Great Costumes
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"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."