Few tv collection can declare to have impressed a trend motion. But Peaky Blinders isn’t just any television series.
In the series and its new movie adaptation, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Tommy Shelby’s (Cillian Murphy) Birmingham gangsters are sharp in each sense of the phrase — clever, harmful, and dapperly dressed. Those outfits haven’t gone unnoticed by audiences. UK division retailer John Lewis reported that flat-cap sales skyrocketed 83% between 2016 and 2017, and the Peakys’ waistcoats and lengthy overcoats impressed a full-on fashion festival.
But when we meet Tommy Shelby again in The Immortal Man, he’s not fairly the trend icon we keep in mind. “We very much didn’t want Tommy to be the silhouette, the Peaky three-piece suit and the cap, at the beginning,” Murphy tells Netflix. “We wanted him to be kind of unrecognizable as Tommy — still stylish but just like he’s hung up the costume.” This Tommy is a damaged man, left reeling by the losses he endured over the six seasons of the original series.
So costume designer Alison McCosh, who labored on Seasons 4–6 of Peaky Blinders and the movie Steve, introduced Tommy again all the way down to earth. “We start off in a very different place for him,” she tells Netflix. “He’s in such a different place emotionally now, so we have to show that and reflect that in the costumes.”
“We’ve brought in more of a silk midnight turtleneck for him, and that would be underneath the cardigan, which kind of feels as if it’s his comfort piece at home.”
Alone in a drafty mansion, Tommy is dressing for heat and consolation, not for struggle. “We’ve brought in more of a silk midnight turtleneck for him, and that would be underneath the cardigan, which kind of feels as if it’s his comfort piece at home,” McCosh says. “That’s his first look: a shawl-collar cardigan that we made for him, all hand done, beautiful cashmere.”
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, the Peaky Blinders are again in motion with a brand new chief: Tommy’s illegitimate son, Duke (Barry Keoghan). This is the subsequent technology of Peakys, with the identical brutal edge however even fewer ideas. Their costuming is simply as clear, however instances have modified. “Rather than the tie and the usual that you see the Peakys in, we decided to have the open-neck collar, a little bit of color in the shirts, a little bit more life, a little bit more youth to it,” McCosh mentioned. “We did the scarves and the jewelry; we took original pieces of jewelry and we manufactured them. Barry really liked that touch.”
Keoghan initially pushed for a good greater distinction. “I wanted to make it a bit more cheeky,” he tells Netflix. “I wanted shorter legs, and I went so far that we ended up going back to what Ali suggested at the very start. I needed to go there to see it and go, ‘OK, that’s not [it].’ ”
Tommy is drawn again into motion when his son allies himself with the treasurer of the British Union of Fascists. Duke isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool fascist; he’s a nihilist, solid apart by his household and completely happy to affix the reason behind anybody who will hearken to him. Into this fatherly void steps Beckett (Tim Roth).
“We took original pieces of jewelry and we manufactured them. Barry really liked that touch.”
McCosh costumed Roth to attraction on to Duke’s bruised sense of abandonment. “He wanted to play it slightly, as he would say, [as] a geography teacher, which would play into the vulnerability of Duke,” McCosh says. “We chose shirts that were slightly softer, so that when he wanted to convince Duke to do what he needed him to do, he [would] feel like a father figure, so to speak.”
Duke’s flirtation with fascism lastly pushes Tommy out of retirement — and into his traditional Peaky look, full with the razor-blade cap that gave the Peakys of the original series their name. As Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ irrepressible “Red Right Hand” performs, Tommy rides again into Birmingham on horseback, dressed to the nines. “We’re calling it the ‘I’m Back suit’,” McCosh says. “It’s just more of a rich texture this time around, and the coat that he’s chosen is midnight, and the cashmere’s so beautiful — it looks like a waterfall.”
For Murphy, suiting up was like coming residence. “When you put on the full Tommy gear, it’s like body armor or something,” he mentioned. “When you pull the cap down, you feel invincible.”
Unfortunately, Tommy’s swimsuit isn’t lengthy for this world. Upon confronting his son, Tommy hauls him right into a pigpen, the place each of their lovely outfits are properly and actually dirty. The Peaky kingpin has by no means hesitated to get his fingers soiled, however in the pen, he and Duke take it to a different degree, exorcising all of their familial enmity in a single all-out brawl.
“I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know if I can watch that.’ We’ve always seen him so controlled and perfect, and then he came out of there covered in pig shit.”
Alison McCosh, Costume Designer,
It was a becoming manner for Murphy to get into the swing of issues, filming the scene on his first day again in the function. “It was mad,” Murphy says. “My first thing on set was rolling around in pig shit with Barry. It was hard: When you stood up with mud dried on, it was like adding three stone to the costume.”
The dustup was tough for McCosh to observe. “Tommy has that beautiful cashmere coat, and he goes into the pigpen,” McCosh says. “I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know if I can watch that.’ We’ve always seen him so controlled and perfect, and then he came out of there covered in pig shit.”
“I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know if I can watch that.’ We’ve always seen him so controlled and perfect, and then he came out of there covered in pig shit.”
But in fact, simply because it does for Tommy and the Peaky Blinders, the work continues despite the mess. “We shoot out of sequence, so we had to let the coat and everything dry,” McCosh says. “We couldn’t use the original ones, of course, because it was actual dirt, but we had to use paint to make it look like it was the actual suit and coat that he fought in.” Might we quickly see dirty overcoats taking British trend by storm? With Tommy Shelby, you by no means know.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now streaming on Netflix, together with the original series.
