Tweeds, Jumpers & More: An Interview with All Creatures Great and Small’s Costume Designer

 From plushly colored minidresses to cozy tweeds, All brutes Great and Small ‘s costume developer Ros Little has the characters covered literally! In an interview with MASTERPIECE, Little takes us behind the scenes to reveal how she helps bring the characters to life and, over all, make them credible through their clothes. Get the scoop on the overalls, the Fair Islands, the marriage gown and further, plus how Little would rig Tricki Woo if given the chance. 

 

 MASTERPIECE 

 The characters of All brutes Great and Small have grown and changed over time. Is that reflected in their costumes? 

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 ROS LITTLE 

 perhaps in some, and not others. The bonethat perhaps has changed a little bit isMrs. Hall, only because when we first see her, she’s veritably much the professional woman wearing veritably modest clothes veritably uniformed looking, rather dowdy. And gradationally she’s come out of her shell a bit and is further part of the family, and her clothes are richer colors. 

 

 Another bone who has changed is James Herriot, because originally we had a color palette for Glasgow, which is veritably important gray, so when we start off in Glasgow at the veritably morning of the series, everything’s argentine tones. And also we go to the Dales, and it’s all rich, warm colors, a veritably cozy and heathery kind of uproariousness. We had James firstly arriving in a argentine suit, which was a quadrupled suit( four identical suits) because we incontinently see him being demurred by a stallion! That was in the first series. also at the morning of the alternate series we saw him back in Glasgow again, making up his mind whether he was going to make his life in the Dales or not. So sometimes he’s in argentine, but largely he’s more in kind of tweedy effects. 

 

 Generally, their clothes do n’t change a lot, the men in particular, because it was the Depression. There was n’t important plutocrat. It would be wrong for them to have lots of clothes. sometimes, we need special effects for them, like white tie ball, or suddenly Helen, who works on a ranch, has a gorgeous evening dress. There are effects that we ’re suitable to do with the story, but they would n’t really be in the wardrobe. We're just trying to make them look nice in their everyday look. 

 

 MASTERPIECE 

 Can you describe a departure from the regular wardrobe forMrs. Hall and Helen? 

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 ROS LITTLE 

 Well, we ’ve seenMrs. Hall in effects that aren't exactly glamorous, but for illustration in Series 2 there was a justice match where she’s in a lovely green stripy dress and it’s veritably fresh looking. She’s comforting and she’s with Gerald and she’s having fun. That’s veritably different to the image we've of her utmost of the time. 

 

 With Helen, there’s the evening dress I had made for her in the first series, a kind of petal- y blue velvet thing. It was really nice. That’s a good discrepancy for her because she’s worn quite a lot of nice summer dresses of the period, but they ’re nothing special. They ’re originals, utmost of them, hired from the costume house Cosprop. Quite a lot of the clothes are originals when we can find them. We've made some blouses and effects with replications of original prints, but only original effects like dresses really last and indeed slightly. They ’ll do for a many scenes, but they ’re about 80 times old, so they ’re relatively fragile. effects like the beautiful evening dress, we vaguely modeled on another dress, and recreated. A lot of the effects in the costume houses we use as a kind of pattern to try on different effects, find commodity that suits her, and also go from there. Because it might not be really quite the right fit, but it’s the idea of chancing a look that suits. 

 

 MASTERPIECE 

 Is there commodity in each character’s wardrobe that you see as representational of who they are? perhaps we can start with Helen and her overalls, which observers far and wide have fallen in love with 

 

 ROS LITTLE 

 Yeah, I suppose everybody likes the overalls, but it’s just what people would wear. I mean, dungarees come and go, but they were veritably in fashion around the time that she started wearing them. I try to keep her wearing nice trousers at home and overalls when she goes to the ranch, because she’s now married and living at Skeldale. So the overalls are just to be what she wears for work. Helen’s got two sets that we ’ve used — one set is blue, and those are hired, also there’s a brown set, and those are actually bought from a workwear company.  Some of these effects are especially made, and some are hired. At Cosprop, for illustration with women’s stuff, you tend to find plenitude of nice dresses, which have had veritably little wear and tear because they ’re worn in scenes where they ’re presumably not going to be damaged. But you would n’t find work wear and tear, or you just find limited work wear and tear. It has to be made, really. But Helen’s got two overalls and they were easy to find, so that was lucky. And that’s just the look you want wellingtons, big socks, jackets. 

 

 Hall’s thing is surely her old faded cardigan. The actor herself( Anna Madeley) is wedded to this cardigan. She does n’t wear it as much in Series 3, but as long as it’s there She feels that really typifiesher.With Sam( West, who plays Siegfried), when we first talked about this series, he said, “ I do n’t want to be too smart. I should be a bit seedy. ” I said, “ Well, good. Because you would be, ” because I ’d spoken to people like aged stagers I ’d made contact with. And one — he’s an senior but well- known warhorse — was at pains to tell me that when he was a boy in the ’30s, the warhorse came on a bike. Indeed a auto was beyond the means of a warhorse, really. You suppose of a warhorse as a relatively well paid part now, but it was n’t particularly also, and you see the character Siegfried Farnon economizing together and forgetting to shoot the bills. They're fairly well out, compared to a lot of the townies, but their clothes would be limited. 

 

 His thing is the ties. We've some nice silk ties that we ’ve used, but we ’ve used them so much that ultimately I started getting dispatches last time saying, “ Can we do anything about Sam’s ties? He ’d like some new bones . ” I ’m like, I allowed we loved these ties. But he ’d love them so much that because they were silk, they actually fully started to shred. I ’d allowed they were exaggerating they were worn on the edges before but we used them so much that when I saw them, there was just the filling left, really, where the knot would be. I had to find some other bones . Because he likes particular colors, we tend to try and add with him — the suits are fairly plain and sensible, lovely tweeds, and also we add quite a flamboyant handkerchief and a rich multicolored tie, and sometimes slightly eccentric effects, bits of knitwear, just because he ’d like his character wearing an old cardigan or commodity like that in his time-out, perhaps playing Scrabble at home. 

 

 Tristan, he’s quite spruce. He’s just been spruce the whole time, really. He likes wearing the suits. I had some trousers made for him because he spends quite a lot of time now in the surgery, so it’s the white fleece, shirt and tie. You do n’t really see the trousers, to be honest, or the minidresses, but you might do when he's taking off the white fleece and putting on his jacket and going to the cantina. We ’ve always had relatively bold minidresses for him.  At the morning, I fitted Tristan( in some) Fair Islands, and( the directors) were like, “ Oh, yes, all this knitwear, it’s great. ” It looks good, and it looks good against the backgrounds. There’s been a lot of veritably positive feedback about all the colors, the rich palette, not just in the costumes but in the set, and in the locales that are chosen. 

 

 The whole feeling is rich in a real way without it being flashy in any way. It’s just rich colors have been used by Jackie Smith, the product developer. And we worked nearly together before we ever chose anything — I knew the colors that she'd be using. It’s delicate, actually, because it’s relatively dark in the set.Mrs. Hall’s pinnies are relatively cheerful, and light colors, indeed though she’s wearing a drab skirt and teary old shoes and frequently her cardigan. A cheerful pinny was a cheap thing that would be bought in a request cube, or perhaps she made them. Everybody wore them. So that’s how we amp her and try to make effects help neutralize her against the set.  effects like the maroon dress. We gotMrs. Hall in a lovely rich colored dress I had made for her for Helen’s marriage. Actually, it’s a dupe of an original dress that looked really nice on her. It was green, but I had set up a company who do reduplication fabrics, and they can do them in all feathers of colors. They could show me all the prints they could do, also I could choose what color I wanted. But you can also choose the scale, so this might have been bigger, but we gauged it down to this size. It’s just a simple, elegant dress. I did n’t know if it would work for the marriage, but it could be worn again because there’s quite a lot of these reds and effects in the house. 

 

 James, well, he has a really simple tweed jacket, kind of greenish argentine, and that's him, kind of likeMrs. Hall( and her cardigan). He has another jacket that I had made for him, which looks further kind of grown over, commodity a bit darker as he’s come more mature, but I ’ve tended to keep that for good. When he has to go to the Ministry of Agriculture, I suppose wears his good tweed jacket at the time. tête-à-tête, I prefer, and I suppose he prefers, the first jacket. 

 

 MASTERPIECE 

 The corduroys, the tweeds, the knitwear — they all feel so dateless. Can you cquaint us in to any details that would gesture to a bystander that this is 1930s in men’s wear and tear? 

 

 ROS LITTLE 

 I suppose they've relatively long collars, and the cut of the trousers they ’ve got high waisted double pleats. The problem is that some of these effects have come( in and out of fashion), so these clothes could have been worn nearly between the ’20s and the ’50s, really. Not so much the suits and they do n’t wear so numerous suits but clearly these tweed jackets, the midriff fleeces and so on. One of the reasons their clothes wo n’t change important is because you could still buy a jacket like the bones that we ’ve had made or hired. They would n’t be quite the same cut, they might be a bit shorter or a bit more cubical or have different types of reflections, but they ’d still give the overall look. 

 

 For men, their clothes are limited. With knitwear, it tends to be v- necks, and we can see the tie and so on. Not so important crew necks, but polo necks( turtlenecks) could be worn, but that would be further of a nonmilitary thing at the time. I ’ve had growers and people wearing polo necks, that might come in a bit more. I allowed having a polo neck knitted for a James, but also I allowed , no, he has really got to be professional with a tie on, duly turned out. Ties are going out now, but back also, a professional man would always be in a tie. It’s small effects — cuff links rather of buttons, for illustration — that hopefully people are induced it’s the ’30s.