4. Downton Abbey - Susannah Buxton
During the show's first season, set from 1912 until 1914, Buxton (the sensational costume designer) concocted dazzling Edwardian dresses with corsets and elbow-length gloves for the aristocratic Crawley family, and simpler dresses and aprons for their many maids. During the second season, which spans from World War I to 1918, she demonstrated how the upper classes made austerity look elegant. Handsome footmen, punctilious butlers, dreamy fabrics, fur and hats that looked incomplete without a bouquet of flowers on the brim. In short, the life of an English aristocrat was deliciously over the top, and Lady Cora and her three daughters dress the part with aplomb. Style-wise, the Edwardian era of Downton Abbey's first two seasons may not be the most obvious choice for fashion's latest obsession. Women entered the 20th century by taking off their corsets and hobble skirtsstraight into the anything-goes '20s, the setting for the show's hotly anticipated third season. Buxton says:
"I use photographic archives, costume history books, paintings, museum collections, and inevitably certain faces, particularly in the second series. Coco Chanel was one of the people I used. I didn't use any specific look of Chanel for Michelle Dockery (Lady Mary), but the simplicity of Chanel's designs helped me with the direction for her. And Queen Mary for Maggie Smith (Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham). I build up a series of images for each character, which become my starting point and reference."
Downton watchers know that one of the show's more salacious plot points (an amorous foreigner's late-night pursuit of Lady Mary) emerged on horseback; while love was in the air as the hunt began, it was hard to tear your eyes from the riders in crisp white stock ties and black tailcoats.