Emmy Award-Winning Costumes from ‘the Tudors’ to go back on display at the Mary Rose Museum
Friday 13th January to 15th April 2012
At the Mary Rose Museum, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
The Mary Rose Trust is delighted to again be able to display some of the costumes, which were worn during the final season of the Emmy Award-winning series ‘The Tudors’ starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers.
The costumes will go on display in the Mary Rose Museum from Friday 13th January until Sunday 15th April 2012. Entry can be gained with a ticket to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The nine costumes on display will be those that were worn by Jonathan Rhys Meyers as King Henry VIII, Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves, Joely Richardson as Catherine Parr, Maria Doyle Kennedy as Catherine of Aragon, Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn, Annabelle Wallis as Jane Seymour and Tamzin Merchant as Catherine Howard.
They were on show in 2010 at the Outstanding Art of Television Costume Design Exhibition in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum & Galleries, Los Angeles. They came to the UK for the first time in 2011 where they went on display at the Mary Rose Museum before moving onto the Royal Armouries in Leeds to appear in an outstanding exhibition.
Joan Bergin is the Costume Designer and winner of the 2010 Emmy for ‘Outstanding Costume for a Series’, along with Wardrobe Supervisor Susan Cave. Bergin also won Emmys for the series in 2007 and 2008 and received Irish Film and Television Academy awards in 2008 and 2009. Her museum-quality costumes were featured in a Macy’s display in New York City on St. Patrick’s Day. Bergin has contributed to movies including ‘My Left Foot’, ‘In the Name of the Father’ and ’The Prestige’. She has recently worked on the Starz Network production of ‘Camelot’, starring Eva Green and Joseph Fiennes.
Across the series of ‘The Tudors’ they made around 500 costumes and rented and modified countless others. The degree of skill can be seen in every detail of the costumes from cloth to braid to button.
In an interview with the LA Times, Bergin described ‘The Tudors’ as a strange blend of trying to be as authentic as possible but with a twist. She wanted people to look at it and say, ‘Look how sexy and foxy,’ rather than, ‘Oh! who would wear that?’ Balenciaga corsets and Degas ballerinas were her inspiration.
The loan of the costumes has been through the generous support of Joan Bergin and the creator and writer of ‘The Tudors’ Michael Hirst, who gave a talk about the making of the series last year at the museum.
Michael Hirst commented that:
‘I am delighted to offer my support to the new Mary Rose Museum appeal and would encourage everyone with an interest in British History to support it too, and perhaps contribute something towards the £35 million, which it will cost to transform the Museum into a wonderful contemporary space through which to explore our extraordinary past.
The discovery of Henry VIII’s flagship and its retrieval from the sea bed, with thousands of contemporary artefacts, is reason enough to reinvent and reinvigorate a Museum which already houses many iconic objects from our glorious naval history.
So I wish the Trust well in all its endeavours to do justice to what was once lost and in darkness, but is now found and in public sight once more’.
The costumes are on display during the museum opening hours which is daily from 10.00am – 4.30pm. For more information please go to www.historicdockyard.co.uk or call the Mary Rose Museum office 02392 812931.
The Mary Rose Trust would like to acknowledge Joan Bergin for the loan of the costumes, Debenhams Southsea and the National Museum of the Royal Navy for the loan of mannequins
