Doctor Who: The Main Inspiration Behind Each Doctor's Costume

10. The Fourth Doctor

Doctor Who Tom Baker the Fourth Doctor
BBC

Arguably the most iconic costume in Doctor Who history, the Fourth Doctor's unconventional look was the result of many different creatives putting forth many different ideas.

Star Tom Baker and producer Barry Letts pondered a few separate options, but the basic idea for the Fourth Doctor to wear a hat and a scarf came from a painting by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, which depicts a man wearing - you guessed it - a hat and a scarf, similar in style to the Fourth Doctor's own.

And speaking of that scarf, its famous multi-coloured design was something of an accident. Costume designer James Acheson gave several different styles of wool to a friend of his, not expecting her to use all of it - but that's exactly what she did.

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!