The Life and Times of Call the Midwife: The Official Companion to Series One and Two. Heidi Thomas

mum did with my dad’s shirts! Or, maybe you had a coat that your mum had made and you either wore it out completely or until it got far too small.’

      Amy applied these principles to the Cub pack featured in Series Two. Take a picture of a group of fifties’ cub scouts from Amy’s extensive collection, for example. A few were proudly wearing full uniform but most were missing some element of it. ‘People struggled to save up at the time before buying items like that. One month they would get a cap and the next, a scarf. No one went out and bought everything all in one go,’ explains Amy.

      Despite this rigorous authenticity, chances to showcase the more glamorous aspects of fifties’ fashion do arise. Popular interest in clothing and style grew throughout the decade, even when many women could only afford to window shop. Jennifer Worth loved the wasp waists and full skirts that swept the world after Christian Dior unveiled the New Look in 1947. In homage to her I created a scene in Series One that shows the young Jenny ironing numerous underskirts in readiness for an outing to a concert at London’s Festival Hall. Trixie – svelte in a pencil skirt – pours scorn. ‘New Look’s old hat, darling!’ she opines – and by 1957 it was, but only just.

      Although well into her seventies, Coco Chanel had sensed that the tide was turning and steered the market back to slim skirts in 1954. Christian Dior responded with H-, A- and Y-line clothes, with dropped waists, boxy jackets and a generally looser fit. One thing led to another, and in 1955 Cristobal Balenciaga presented the tunic dress. Two years later Hubert de Givenchy introduced the ‘sack’, a simple shift that caught on more slowly, but then endured in popularity for years.

      Then, as now, however, personal taste was more powerful than the dictates of couturiers, and women used clothes to express themselves, rather than simply following the rules. Amy bears this in mind with every ensemble she creates. Each principal actor has a wardrobe that not only reflects the period, but speaks of the character they play. ‘The young nurses have very distinct personalities,’ explains Amy. ‘Their clothes are actually telling a little bit of their story.’

      Jenny Lee’s feminine, fawn-like look was unveiled in her very first scene in the series. We first see her as a poised but perplexed young woman picking her way through the heaving dockside district, struggling with a heavy case. Jessica Raine was unwell with a bad cough on the day of filming, which added to her ivory pallor. This, in turn, was complemented by her vintage two-piece suit in beige and white houndstooth and her immaculate stockings and heels.

      ‘Jenny arrives in this extraordinary hubbub of dockworkers. A young middle class girl thrown into this very working class society. That scene triggers her whole look.’

      Amy carefully built a palette for Jenny that reflected her restrained femininity, but also suited the actress’s porcelain skin. She describes this as, ‘Soft and delicate colours, with the occasional olive yellow and chocolate brown thrown in.’

      For Cynthia – a quiet but sometimes whimsical young woman, with a hint of hidden depths – the hues tend to be deeper and more mysterious. ‘I like her in prune and charcoal, with touches of green,’ says Amy. ‘She is more quirky than Jenny, perhaps a little bit Prada.’

      As for Trixie, the clothes, like the character, are sassy. ‘She is gregarious, blonde, feisty and bold enough to wear black. Her outfits have strong, blocked colours that wouldn’t look out of place in a jazz club.’

      Chummy proved an interesting proposition costume-wise. She has a private income in addition to her nurse’s wage, and could purchase a wardrobe that all would envy. But practical Chummy prizes comfort above couture and chooses sensible materials like Crimplene, developed in the fifties as a crease-resistant wash-and-wear fabric. In awe of Amy’s expertise, I seldom reference clothing in the scripts, unless it is mentioned in dialogue, but in Series One I chucked in a Crimplene skirt suit without realising that at that time this material was not a by-word for frumpiness but, in fact, quite cutting edge. Amy alerted me to this and, after some discussion, we decided that Crimplene was actually a good social marker for this aristocratic renegade as it was then available only through the smartest establishments.

      Chummy has a palette mainly comprised of browns and greys, offset with accents of orange, pink and teal.

      These are colours conservative Chummy might have chosen and they work well with Miranda Hart’s lightly tanned complexion and deep hazel eyes. However, a surprise ‘gift’ of a length of fabric from Sister Monica Joan in Series One offered the chance to extend Chummy’s range. For this, Amy chose a glorious turquoise brocade, figured in gold. It had an Indian feel, which was a nice nod to Chummy’s childhood in the Raj, but it also seemed to hint that Chummy was setting sail for pastures new and that her life was opening out.

      In the story, she makes herself a dress from the cloth to wear for her momentous meeting with PC Noakes’ parents. She then ruins it by becoming involved in the surprise delivery of a litter of piglets. Amy made two dresses in order to accommodate this storyline. One had to be pristine, the other smothered in Nutella – to represent lashings of pig manure.

      It is not unusual for costumes to be created in duplicate, especially with frequently worn items such as uniforms. In Call the Midwife the nurses’ outfits and the nuns’ habits work exceptionally hard, and if a piece of clothing is torn or stained it needs to be replaced – often at a moment’s notice – with an identical item.

      The nurses’ working clothes and the nuns’ habits were all created from scratch by Amy after she carefully balanced painstaking research with the needs of the television medium. The uniforms worn by the real-life midwives were predominantly grey, but this would have looked very drab on screen. Amy compromised, keeping the belted, grey gabardines and choosing a soft blue for the dresses, with a crisp white Peter Pan collar. There was debate about the headgear: as young midwives, Jennifer Worth and her colleagues sported grey felt boaters, but these would do no one any favours. Eventually the team settled on a brimless hat in cherry red with cardigan to match, the latter a nod to the chilly domestic conditions in which nurses often worked.

      The hosiery proved interesting – it transpired that the sheer black stockings of popular memory were either a later arrival or the product of the collective male imagination. Stout tan nylons were the order of the day in Poplar in the fifties, worn with saddle-brown lace-up shoes.

      Research for the nuns’ habits involved a trip to Birmingham. Here, Amy and director Philippa Lowthorpe met with the Sisters of the Order of St John the Divine – the inspiration for the Order of St Raymond Nonnatus in the series. Though the Sisters no longer wear the habit, they had an entire, carefully preserved ensemble tucked away. This comprised the basic dress or tunic, the scapula, which is a tabard-like outer garment, and the wimple and veil. Amy was able to turn the garments inside out and collate information about how they were structured and made. Then Philippa modelled the wimple and veil, so that all details about fastenings and so forth could be carefully recorded.