Introducing Grace Snell, an award-winning Costume Designer specialising in feature films and television. We are delighted to be collaborating with Grace on The Sense and Sensibility Edit, exclusively curated for Brora. We spent the day delving into Grace’s admiration of colour, craftsmanship and heritage style, as we learnt about her career path into costume design, her creative process in bringing the beloved story of Sense and Sensibility to life through costume, and her personal style influences.

Can you tell us a bit about your work?
My job starts with a script or story document; I will then break this script down into questions for the director and areas of research for me to begin world building, whether that is a film set in 1995 or 1795.

How did you come to be a Costume Designer?
I studied History, English Literature and Art. It now feels quite obvious that costume design and film would be my natural path. In practical terms, I wrote to a lot of designers, agencies and production companies for traineeships. Whilst at university, I joined an extras agency which gave me an insight into how productions ran. I got chatting to the costume designer on one particular production who agreed to take me on as work experience. After 2 weeks, I got a paid traineeship with her.

Can you tell us a bit about your creative process for designing the costumes for Sense and Sensibility?
My research period was relatively short. After my interview I had a couple of weeks before I officially started on the film. I enlisted a dress historian to help me find all the less commercial and well-known areas of late Georgian and regency fashions. As well as my historical research, I looked at fashion shows and editorials from the 1980s and 1990s.

What is your favourite costume from the film?
I love Margaret Dashwood’s (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) blackberry-stained dress. We experimented a lot with natural dyes that would have been true to the period in the process of creating the costumes. White and light dresses were extremely popular for children, which to my mind is a recipe for disaster. I wanted to show the reality of a white dress in the countryside. She also wears one of my favourite hats in the film with this look; a deconstructed bonnet missing its crown, it’s a little straw halo!

What has been your biggest career achievement to date?
Building a team that continue to work and grow with me. I feel extremely supported and inspired by my team. A large part of being a costume designer is managing and delegating to a team, whether that’s 2 people or 50 people.

What was the biggest challenge you faced working on Sense
and Sensibility?

We had to produce an enormous amount from scratch. We needed to design, dye, construct, fit and alter the costumes in a very short space of time.

What makes you passionate about what you do?
No two days are the same, I love creative problem solving.

Any advice to a young person starting out in Costume for Film and TV?
Work hard, ask questions, be kind and maintain a healthy work/life balance.

What do you like doing in your free time?
I love swimming, walking and exploring the UK, I love collecting fossils, stones and shells. In another life I would have liked to be an archaeologist.

What is one thing that people wouldn’t expect about you?
I am extremely indecisive, or rather I can see value in all my options. High pressure is often the best way for me to make important design decisions.

What were the pieces that stood out to you when curating The Sense and Sensibility Edit for Brora?
Jane Austen is such a significant figure in British cultural heritage and Brora as a contemporary brand really aligns with that Britishness so although the film is set in regency England, Elinor and Marianne (Daisy Edgar Jones and Esmé Creed Miles) have such a modern feel in the film, it was surprisingly natural to find parallels between their costumes and the Brora current collections. There’s the black wool tailored jacket, the silhouette and collar of which is reminiscent of a lot of tailoring pieces we chose for Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. Daisy has this beautiful, elegant swan neck, so we chose collars that accentuated that and naturally suited her. Also, the velvet trim embroidered blouse from the SKYE collection as it felt so in line with Margaret Dashwood (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and the blouses she wears in the film.

Why did the collaboration between Brora and Sense and Sensibility work so seamlessly?
The love story between sisters is really at the heart of Sense and Sensibility, as well as a distinctive air of Britishness; and those two things are also central to Brora as a brand with all their support of British craftsmanship, manufacturing, storytelling and Jesse and Lola as sisters designing the SKYE by Brora line. We worked a lot with natural fibres and experimented with pigmentation and natural dyes when creating the costumes for the film and the colour palettes we ended up with really align with the Brora collections and their focus on cashmere, wool, linen, cotton and silk. A creative choice we made with the costumes in Sense and Sensibility was to have the Dashwood women often wearing woollen mittens and that felt like a clear overlap with Brora’s famous classic Scottish cashmere wristwarmers.

When did you first discover Brora and what is it that you like about the brand?
I discovered Brora on a family holiday in the late 90s, running out of the sea on a beach in North Uist and being wrapped up in a cashmere shawl. I love that family values are at the heart of the brand. How the garments are crafted, loved, treasured, mended and shared after purchase. When something is made so beautifully you repair it. Brora has always stood the test of time.

Your favourite piece you wore on the shoot?
The cashmere slouchy jumper, I love it in French Navy & Malt.

How would you describe your personal style? And has it changed over time?
There is a lot of me in the female characters I have designed for. Julie in The Souvenir, Rona in the Outrun and now Elinor in Sense and Sensibility. I find it hard to not put a piece of myself into these characters. At heart I am always in a jumper, my most favourite jumper is my dad’s navy gansey that now lives with me.

Find out more
Visit Grace’s Website
Grace’s Instagram

Sense and Sensibility is in cinemas only from September 25th.