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Wound down its latest shooting season, costume designer Alex Reda took me on a tour of the wardrobe department. The suite of rooms is adjacent to the series’ Scarborough set, and it seems that every available inch is stocked with coats, hats, petticoats and police boots, with work areas carved out among the storage racks for cutting, tailoring and sewing.
Over five months, it’s here that Reda, wardrobe set supervisor Jenny Buck and their team do everything from design and cutting to aging and dying — and in the nearby fittings room, complete a character’s costume from a neatly-arranged selection of jewellery and accessories.
The Victorian, Toronto-set mystery series observes historical events and the passage of time; its costumes are designed accordingly. Season 6 is set at the turn of the century, an era sprinkled with historical figures, (Winston Churchill on a lecture tour), the Second Boer War, the invention of air gliders and the race to controlled flight (hint: pigs fly) — and even changes in foodie culture: the more daring at the precinct munch on a proto-sandwich known as a “hot hamburger.
Source: National Post