Outlander the TV production

So now onto the TV production of Outlander. We decided to get the free trial of Amazon Prime to try out over Christmas, and guess what I found on there? Yes the TV show of Outlander, series one so I didn't bother to cancel the free trial and I can now watch it to my hearts content. I was truly hooked from the start to say the least, the acting is excellent, in fact there are many well known British actors in the series including Annette Badland who's acting I love, so it was a real treat to watch. There are harrowing scenes of violence as well as a lot of nudity and sex, but I feel it is all handled very well by the actors involved. Nothing is overtly gratuitous and there is some fine acting in what must have been very difficult to shoot scenes. The fact that the leading actors are very easy on the eye is also a huge bonus! These are the female and male leads, Irish model turned actress Caitriona Balfe and Scottish actor Sam Heughan in their costumes for the wedding scene

I am truly hooked on the costumes, they are beautifully designed and made, although I don't know much about the fashions of that period, the designer, Terry Dresbach and her team appear to have made tremendous efforts to get the costumes to look right, so no obvious zips or velcro, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned if you're trying to get authentication on costumes.

A confession from me, I often watch 'period' dramas to see how the costumes are made and lose a lot of interest if they are made in too modern a way with zips etc. While I appreciate that a production might have a lot of costumes to be made for extras I really think that effort should be made at least with the principal actors to make the costumes as far as possible, authentic looking. 

I suppose this is one of the reasons why I have been so pleased to watch this programme, to see the men wearing genuine Great Kilts in muted colours, not the gaudy Victorian kilts that are thought of by most people as being Clan tartan, and the women wearing the lovely muted colours that look like the Scottish scenery where the filming was done. I would love to see an exhibition of the costumes, and who knows, maybe they will one day go on display somewhere in the UK, then I can indulge myself in trying to find out what the fabrics are. I would especially love to have a closer look at that wedding dress, to me it looked like linen on the overskirt, certainly looked like plain weave in the close ups that I've tried to get, and the embroidery is utterly stunning, although I did see a little video & it is unfortunately machined not hand stitched.

They have apparently just wrapped filming on series 2, much of the storyline is based on late 18th century Paris, so the look of the costumes will be very different, just look at these beauties. 

 Again I don't know about how true to the correct type of fashion and textiles of the day they are, but I do love the way they look. I've been up to now more interested in primitive and Medieval to Elizabethan era textiles, dismissing much of the later eras as 'fashion', but I'm sure there is as much of interest in them as there is in early fabrics. I am not one to follow fashion in any way shape or form, but I will now add the 18th Century to my list of ever growing research along with the others that I have a passion for. Of course that was the era of what I suppose I would call the dandy fashions, even the men wore very beautiful clothes if they were mixing in the highest of Parisian society. I wonder if Scottish Highlanders will feel completely comfortable in all that satin!

Probably very strange of me but I prefer the Scottish look!