Sometime back when Kenneth Branagh was still making Shakespeare movies (and long before he dabbled in Christie), he tried his hand at literary horror with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994). In a similar vein as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), this movie promised to stick to the book more than the 1930s or 1960s monster flicks. In fact, Francis Ford Coppola had originally planned to direct this movie as he had Dracula, then stepped back to a producer role for this one. But reviews and the box office were not kind to this Frankenstein, even if its story is more accurate to Mary Shelley‘s 1818 novel than most earlier onscreen versions.
Still, I think this makes for great Halloween viewing with enough historical costumes by James Acheson and a lot of scenery-chewing by Branagh, Helena Bonham Carter, and Robert De Niro. After looking through these details, you can judge whether the film is a trick or a treat.
Acheson had already won two Oscars for Best Costume at this point (The Last Emperor and Dangerous Liaisons), and he knew what he was doing in general and with this period. He says in the book Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Classic Tale of Terror Reborn on Film (1994):
“I enjoy doing the research for the period stories and discovering things that I don’t know about, and I’ve always loved history. It was wonderful to go back to a period I had studied before (the 18th century) and look at it again. But Ken was not interested in historical accuracy for the sake of a pure recreation. He wanted something more to do with colors, silhouettes, and texture — costumes that suggested the period rather than slavishly coped it. This is sort of a hybrid world … say, the middle to the end of the 18th, edging into the 19th century.”
That might make it seem like he’s playing fast and loose with historical accuracy, but I think the costumes are reasonably accurate to the period. There are definitely choices made to emphasize the storytelling, which is what any good costume designer would do.
While the movie (like the novel) starts with a framing device set in 1794, I’m going to ignore that period because the costumes are boring! It’s all just men on ships in the Arctic, so not so much to look at. The real meat of the story flashes back to Victor Frankenstein growing up in Geneva, starting around 1773, so let’s also begin there…
Victor & Elizabeth Meet as Children
Young Victor and his mother Caroline (Cherie Lunghi) are introduced to Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan who the family adopts. That the kids are raised as “brother and sister” but fall in love and marry later is weird to me, but also feels like one of those things that pops up in 18th- and 19th-century novels randomly without question.¯_(ツ)_/¯
As for the costumes, everything here and within the entire flashback story has the look of generic mid-to-late 18th century, upper-class, but slightly informal as far as hair and headgear is concerned. The clothing silhouettes tend to hover around 1760-70s with a few exceptions I’ll point out.
Women do have their hair up, thought it’s very roughly styled, and only a few caps are worn indoors (when they’d all have caps) and even fewer hats outdoors. Men’s hair is sometimes tied back in an approximation of a queue, but nobody wears wigs (which they would) and again, extremely few hats.
What’s most notable about this earliest era in the film is that the clothing colors are light and bright, and the scenes are well lit. This is youthful innocence, fresh faces, before the fall.
Victor’s Mother Dies
Within the flashback, time jumps forward to 1783, when Victor and Elizabeth are adults. The family starts off happily dancing and laughing, but the mother goes into labor unexpectedly with a tragic ending. Before her death giving birth to baby William, everyone is still wearing bright, light colors, and while it’s a dozen years since the previous scene, the fashions have barely changed.
Her mid-1780s gown reminds me more of these 1760s stomachers:
Which could be worn with a fitted-back gown:
It’s easier to see the style of gown’s back on their servant, Justine (Trevyn McDowell), plus she gets a proper cap! They’re not just for suckers.
Compare her cap with this example:
This scene is one of the few times we’ll see Victor in interesting clothes. As befits the eldest son of a land-owning baron, he has a lovely embroidered waistcoat:
Very typical of the entire 18th century, like this:
The Going-Away Ball
Six years later in 1789, the Frankensteins hold a fancy ball before Victor goes to university in Ingolstadt, Germany. The great hall is full of people in formal dress, and everyone is dancing, including the children and servants (who are treated like family anyway). In the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein book, costume designer James Acheson said of this scene:
“We considered all sorts of different themes before we settled on a very classy, almost monochrome look for the gowns. All were done in very pale colors. Ken had told me he thought of the blue ballroom as a sort of heaven, so we thought of these pale costumes like clouds in the sky.”
I’m going to paraphrase what Kendra’s written about extensively on Frock Flicks because it applies here — most 18th-century European gowns fastened up the front, except for certain court dress styles. These court dresses were, as the name implies, very formal! The bodice was typically stiffened and boned like a foundation garment to create a cone shape with a deep front point and a wide, nearly off-the-shoulder neckline. This bodice laced up the back, although there would often be a hidden placket so this lacing gap wasn’t obvious.
For example, here’s a court gown from Sweden that’s cut in the French style:
So that’s the type of gowns that Elizabeth and the other ladies are wearing at this ball. But then there’s the question of would they all be wearing such formal French-style outfits for a party in the semi-rural area outside of Geneva? This reminds me of Claire’s wedding gown in Outlander (2014), which of course came later, but the reasoning for a formal French court gown out in the Scottish countryside is the same — it looks good on film! It fits the story and the characters in that moment.
This is costume design, not historical recreation, and the reason this gown was created is to tell a part of the story. This moment is the high point of the first act of the story arc, and Victor and Elizabeth declare their love for each other. It’s no wonder Kendra misremembered this dress as as Elizabeth’s wedding gown because it’s much more grand and impressive than her actual wedding gown, and, as we’ll see later, the high point of that part of the story isn’t the wedding itself, but the wedding night.
The menswear at this ball is quite grand too. Victor wears a pale suit with a light blue waistcoat, very shimmery in the candlelight. He’s in love and dressed to coordinate with his lady love.
Baron Frankenstien (Ian Holm) is also dressed appropriately for the occasion, as fits the local patriarch.
Victor’s father is still wearing a slightly older style, where his coat is cut straight and full-skirted. His highly embellished waistcoat is appropriate for the scene and his era.
Elizabeth at Home
Without going into the plot too heavily, I’m going to group together a bunch of outfits Elizabeth wears when she’s at home in Geneva both right before, during, and after the time Victor is at university, but not including her brief travels or their wedding.
During a scene where Victor, Elizabeth, Justine, and William run around the hills flying a kite (like a cross between The Sound of Music and Ben Franklin), Elizabeth wears this blue outfit. She’s still in light, bright colors, while Victor has already become more serious and drably garbed.
Compare with this very similarly shaped jacket:
While this next jacket closure is a little different, it’s a good example of how the jacket and petticoat were often made of the same fabric for the effect of a dress, same as in the movie.
To read one of Victor’s letter from Germany, Elizabeth wears this adorable stripey outfit, but unfortunately the scene is dark and she’s walking around, so my screencaps aren’t great.
Was James Acheson interpreting this fashion plate or what? There’s the stripey cutaway coat with solid lapels and cuffs, fitted bodice front, and pale skirt. Just an indoor version without the hat and neckerchief. This is one of the more fashion-forward costumes in the movie with a nod towards the 1790s.
In a later scene, Elizabeth is back in a sort of 1760s/70s/80s dress while reading another letter with Justine, whose dress is in the same general style. They’re both wearing the same cut of dress they wore back when Caroline Frankenstein died about four years ago, which already looked like what the ladies were wearing in the 1770s.
It’s not egregious as some flicks that randomly jump around from one costume era to another (or worse, my pet peeve of a movie saying it’s one exact year and then using costumes that are totally wrong for that year). Here, I can imagine that a wealthy but somewhat isolated and insular family are not keeping up with the latest fashions. They are well dressed in fine materials but not making gowns and coats in the latest styles because they don’t see that many other people. This isn’t Versailles or the London season, the Frankensteins aren’t trying to impress anyone or curry favor.
Then Elizabeth gets one black gown for mourning, but that high neckline looks way more 19th century than 18th. The only bodices I know of like that in second-half of the 18th century are for women’s riding habits or redingotes or maybe a traveling jacket called a brunswick (which has different sleeves). But this is clearly a full gown with long fitted sleeves and a high neckline. Unusual!
What’s far more typical for mourning at this period is just black versions of fashionable dress with added neckerchief, veil, cap, etc. For example, this portrait of Empress Maria Theresa is very standard-issue where you can see the low neckline of her gown covered with sheer black material.
About Hairstyles in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
I’m not going to do a full Kendra deep-dive on Elizabeth’s hair in this movie (seriously, go buy her book!). But I’m going to point out two things: 1) with regards to historically accuracy, you might say her hairstyle is going for this frizzed style of the 1780s, modernly called a ‘hedgehog’ style, that’s seen in many fashion plates and paintings such as:
But, point 2), I really just think this was Helena Bonham Carter’s default hairstyle for historical films in the 1990s (though later to be used for Harry Potter and seen on the red carpet). Let’s compare A Room With a View (1985), Howards End (1992), Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996), and The Wings of the Dove (1997):
With here, in Frankenstein:
Just a mess of curls piled on the top of her head! In every movie! It’s pretty! I love it! I’ve envied it forever! 10 out of 10, would wear and have attempted to wear! It’s just not always historically accurate in every period, just sos ya know.
Oh and while I’m at it, most of the men’s hair is pretty random too. Victor just wears what Kenneth Branagh wore most of the time in the ’90s, including the beard, which is not present in the first “grown-up” Frankenstein family scenes and then he has a beard at the ball which, I guess shows time has passed. Victor’s friend Henry Clerval (Tom Hulce) has the same kind of shaggy hair.
There could be soft, loose men’s hairstyles in the 1780s, but that would look more like this:
Elizabeth’s Travels
I’m grouping these outfits together for the obvious reason that they’re both coats, even though Elizabeth wears them at different points in the story (and doesn’t quite travel far in the second outfit).
First is this lovely red riding habit (I’m just calling it that because it’s a jacket and petticoat), worn when she travels to see Victor in Ingolstadt. This is one of the few bright red costumes in the movie, and they’re used judiciously to make the characters’ stand out, as you can see in this first image.
Designer James Acheson says of his costumes for Elizabeth in the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein book:
“You see her at the start, when she is Victor’s young adopted sister, in pale blues and pinks. In the ball sequence she is in creams, those very pale colors. Then transition starts when he goes away — she didn’t want to be the simpering sister left behind and becomes quite assertive. When she goes to see him, she is in a very vivid, blood-red riding habit. It’s as if the life blood has been drained out of Victor at this point, and she is symbolically bringing her blood and her life force into his wold.”
This is a style and even color seen in many period images and fashion plates, such as this:
Under the jacket, Elizabeth wears a menswear-styled waistcoat and shirt with a cravat. She even gets a tricorn!
Those underpinnings can be glimpsed in historical portraits like this one:
Elizabeth’s other “travel” outfit is this grey redingote (I’m calling it that because it’s a one-piece coat). This outfit’s long, slim line harkens towards the end of the 1780s and early 1790s, rather like that stripey coat outfit worn previously.
This style was popular in fashion plates with big lapels and buttons running from neck to hem. But Elizabeth needs a big hat!
Perhaps designer James Acheson planned for a hat? Check out his costume sketch that’s included in the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein book — it looks a lot like that fashion plate!
Elizabeth & Victor’s Wedding
Finally, the couple are set to be married, and we get a fun scene of Elizabeth being fitted for her wedding gown. She’s shown in her stays with side hoops, which can be glimpsed through her slightly sheer petticoat.
Her corset laces up both the front and back, not unheard of, though maybe not the most typical thing. I’d pull the sleeves of her smock up, and it’s more of a theatrical thing to tuck the petticoat under the corset than over. But this is a movie, so we’re doing what looks pretty onscreen.
After a few more trials and tribulations, they’re married. We get only a glancing view of Elizabeth’s actual wedding gown — it’s something white with some lace, good enough.
On to the wedding night and sexy times for Ken and HBC! Sorry, Emma :(
Movies and TV just love front-lacing corsets. I get it, that makes sense from a modern perspective because prospective lovers can face each other and unlace the garment, gazing into each others eyes all hot ‘n bothered. Plus, if you’re familiar with Victorian corsets, those pop open with a front busk, so why can’t all corsets and stays open from the front, even if they’re from earlier ears?
Well the big reason is that the earlier foundation garments weren’t stiffened with steel yet. Whalebone and reeds and even wood were used, and corset-like garments tended to have narrow channels with these items stuffed into them. If you want a flat, cone-shaped front of your gown, you want a solid, stiff, flat surface behind it — not a laced opening at the center. In the 19th century, the steel busk is invented, and this combines stiff boning with a front fastening. Also, the style changes a bit so the bodice shape is less cone-shaped and more hour-glass.
All that said, this is a nicely made 18th-century corset, and you can even see what are most likely hand-bound eyelets in the front (not grommets!).
You can find some front-lacing stays in museums, thought it’s usually either front or back lacing, not both at the same time.
The Creature
Lastly, there’s the creature Frankenstein builds, as played by Robert De Niro. I don’t have much to say about his one costume, but designer James Acheson did put a lot of thought into it. He told the LA Times:
“We knew there was always going to be a coat, but over a period of two months I did about 40 drawings for De Niro and made little models to decide on things like different heights of collar, different coat lengths, textures.”
He also said in the Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein book:
“It starts out as a beautiful coat belonging to Victor Frankenstein, but from the moment the Creature puts it on and goes out in to the rain, it belongs to him. From that moment, the coat starts to become more textured. It looks leathery, almost like the Creatures’s second skin, and as the story progresses it becomes filthier and increasingly torn and weathered.”
I can see the inspiration in 18th-century men’s greatcoats with that big standing collar and the capelets, like this: Compare:
But my favorite scene with the Creature is when he shows up at Victor and Elizabeth’s wedding night! Gruesome, yes, but this is a horror story. One Halloween, I made an 18th-century corset and smock, then poured fake blood all over my chest and went as Elizabeth Frankenstein on her wedding night ;)
Have you seen Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?
Find this frock flick at:
Hey, my great grandparents were a foster who fell in love with the son of the family. Do while it is a trope, it did happen! That was late 1800s.