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Newsletter 'Morris a Life With bells On'

Morris: A Life with Bells On – another dance into the world of film.

It is not unusual for us to get a phone call completely out of the blue asking us if we will supply costumes for a film or television programme. However, this is not an every day event so still exciting when it does occur. Alex Mann, costume designer for “Morris: A Life with Bells On” got in touch with us on recommendation of Lucy Akhurst – the film’s director in the hope that we would be able to help them out with something special for one of the characters. We always relish a new challenge especially when one comes our way to take us out of our every day lives.

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Films for us have been an integral part of the business over the years and have always added an amazing dimension which enriches our world. Costumes for both film and stage are wonderful opportunities to push out the boundaries of our creativity enabling us to do something completely different to our normal ‘fashion’ range. It is fun working with a different set of rules and guidelines and the challenge of ‘solving problems’ can test our ingenuity to the full. When we get it right, it can be immensely satisfying.

Whilst “Morris: A Life with Bells On” was not going to be one of our bigger projects, it had a cast list noteworthy enough for us to have a closer look. Despite being a low budget film, it had some remarkably talented people involved which made us realise that it must be something special. The cast list included such an incredible array of talented icons of theatre and film and would be enough to seduce anyone to get involved - Sir Derek Jacobi, Harriet Walter, Greg Wise, Richard Lumsden, Sophie Thompson, Naomi Harris, Ian Hart and so on.

Quite often we have a matter of hours to get a collection of things to some airport ready to be shipped to some far flung corner of the world. This is what happened with The Wings of a Dove with Helena Bonham Carter, Charlotte Rampling and Alison Elliot and Ten Commandments with Clare Bloom and Padma Lakshmi. It becomes a frantic scramble to magically manifest garments in the right colours, style, shape and size that will suit the atmosphere of the film using whatever means we can to get them on location as swiftly as possible. What was unusual about Morris: A Life with Bells On was that we not only had a couple of days to sort something but we were able to take the clothes on location while they were filming.

Alex was a joy to work with and her enthusiasm made it incredibly easy to go through the criteria for creating the wardrobe for Magenta played by Hilary Wood. Hilary was wonderful to work with too. A woman of great talent herself enthusiastically tried on everything. The wardrobe was quite quirky a colourful range of outfits suitable for an artistic and creative soul who knows her individual style. Spending some of our summertime in Wiltshire with in the rolling crimson and gold hills, driving past the most incredible fields full of poppies was not exactly a punishment. My daughter, Anouska fulfilled her dream of helping the crew and I indulged in people watching and gossiping to a talented group of individuals who had all welcomed us with open arms.

We’ve now seen the film and I can only believe that it is going to be a great success. As is often the case footage ends up on the cutting room floor and sadly included several of Magenta’s scenes where she was wearing so many of our clothes. But editing has to be for the greater good of the movie itself and if it is all the more successful because of this – then why should we care. Thousands of people have signed the petition on line – and judging by the comments they have left, many are seeing this as being on a par with The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, Hot Fuzz, and Mamma Mia. People from all corners of the globe are demanding to see it – so how can it be anything else other than a success?