#that skirt os night unstainable i believe

[hopeheartfilia]

theese pants truly cant catch a break

[silvermarmoset]

Clara Oswald’s Wardrobe: The Eleventh Doctor Years

Yeah. You read it right. I’m back, bitches.

After a brief sojourn (like...two years) into not covering such fascinating topics as Martha’s elegance, Rose’s scrappy jeans, and River Song’s backwards-forwards style routine, I’m back to discuss Doctor Who and costume design, because we all have things we’re good at and mine is yelling about hemlines! So while we all mourn Bill Potts—please come back to the show, Pearl Mackie, I beg you honest-to-god—let’s throw in a flashback to a long time ago, and play around with CLARA OSWIN OSWALD.

One nasty bit that’s kept me from getting to this post earlier is that Clara’s series 7 arc, thanks to the fragmenting-into-ten-thousand-tiny-pieces bit, is a little hard to view from a “character/costume” perspective. Do I count Oswin as part of her, despite significant differences between "our” Clara and Souffle Girl, or do I view their costume choices separately? What about the Clara from “The Snowmen”? What about the one who ran after Tom Baker in a terrible incident of green-screen-enabled acid reflux?

Lord. Her feet don’t even hit the floor.

So after a lot of debate, I’m counting them, albeit shyly, and without extending to them the same connective layer I generally use between a character’s costume choices. They’re a part of Clara, so I can’t ignore them, but I won’t assume every choice they make extends to our Clara. After all, discussing all those Claras would just be impossible, wouldn’t it?

I know. Great segue, right? Join us, pals, for a new edition of The Companion’s Wardrobe.

When we first meet Oswin, I’m falling over myself because I love her so much. Ok, no, not really. But it’s hard to fend off the charm of this first outfit—it’s a mix of Pure Sex, Geeky Cool Kid, and Perky Sixties Air Stewardess that knocks together a couple diverse style types and leaves us unsure what her whole deal is. There’s the cheeky red dress with the asymmetrical neckline, the rose she tucks behind her ear, the sci-fi tool belt and watch, the youthful-chic sneaker-heels. It goes together, but what ties these into a cohesive character?

Uh, yeah, Os, and if you’re gonna sass me the whole post you can do it in a more productive fashion. What these posts do is analyze—not assume what the designers meant, ever, but take what we know from the dress, delete from our brains our own metas and conjectures and far-flung notions, fling whether we think it’s pretty out the window except for that one rose tyler outfit. it deserved to be sassed, and try to embrace this as Character Translated Into Dress™ (while of course letting insignificant details slide because not EVERYTHING ties into your analysis, dumbass). We’re being told something, here, or else it’s just shitty costume design.

Which is always perfectly possible.

But no, Oswin’s dress is aiming for something: perfection. Everything about this dress is right, but it’s also TOO much. Too clean. Too fun. She’s polished and pretty and happy and comfortable—and none of it could possibly be real, with a Dalek just outside the door. While most of the wrecked passengers we’ve seen in past under-siege dramas have looked a little wrecked, with a dusty spacesuit or a tattered hairstyle to prove it, Oswin’s perfect bouncy curls and scratch-free outfit signal us far before the Doctor does that something is off.

Besides the perfection of this outfit, unstained by real life’s messes, there are other hints of what Oswin’s got going for her. The bright red, like a warning signal, should hit us over the head: every other companion is a mish-mash of different hues and patterns, while Oswin reads like a stop sign. The heeled sneakers I love so much are almost kid-like, if not innocent—as is much of Oswin’s made-up life, as she calls her mum and lounges in her chair. She reads as both red-hot “NO” and a perfect, happy, straight-out-of-Pushing-Daisies “yes.”

It’s no wonder we didn’t know what to make of her the first time she showed up. She was popping into every different direction, and somehow making it work.

The next time we see her, the costumes hit us over the head with how this is the same character. Because guess what? The Lady in Red is back.

Same hair, same low neckline, but a subtler shade of red this time, all over.

I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this outfit (though it’s INCREDIBLY beautiful), except that red immediately marks Clara out as bold, and vivid, and a little bit larger than life. Remember how Rose dipped into dark reds slowly, after growing out of the safer pinks she got from Jackie? Clara’s already there, wearing blood red all over, inciting the Doctor to do something.

Until she isn’t. Count me confused.

I’ve got no answers why her bland young charge picks up her red, or why Clara suddenly wears something that departs so drastically from everything she’s coded into her dress previously. Sure, she’s in “disguise,” but isn’t she closer to her true accent now? Why align herself color-wise with the ice monsters? Why ricochet between blue/green and red to further this split personality deal?

I got no answers. Sorry, lads.

Modern Clara’s still got a touch of that “come on!” red, but it’s minimized. She’s wearing one of those light, tiny-pattern, floaty-fabric things that were SO EVERYWHERE in 2013, but that’s all we get from her. She’s a mystery, dressed in whatever’s currently in fashion, flaunting past a gravestone.

But the lady in red is never gone for long.

This is our first time with Proper Clara, and it lays out the elements of Clara’s personal aesthetic that we’ll see for quite some time. Little, adventuresome boots; black tights; a flimsy little dress with a subtle pattern; a big coat, comfortable and practical. The flying bird necklace is lovely. The skirt has the high-low hem of many skirts from this year; we’ll see one like it again. Aside from the visual shout-out to Dalek Oswin in the red dress/short boots combo, all this aligns with what little we know of Clara at this point—she’s competent at whatever she sets her mind to, she’s young, she's both adventuresome and fashionable; she’s very tidy and put-together.

I’d argue her look is still way more put-together than most normal people achieve—think of Rose’s slapdash jeans or Martha’s tank tops—but if I bite the inside of my cheeks and take deep breaths I can accept this as an outfit most TV costume designers would claim is normal, in the same impeccably-dressed “normal” vein of Iris West. It’s pretty, it’s contemporary, but it doesn’t tell me anything much.

[this briefly-seen outfit, with its cardigan and vintage-y blouse, marks Clara as a sort of pretty-librarian type, though again this look is very in with then-contemporary style.]

Which gets to the root of a problem I have with many of Clara’s outfits in Series 7. Clara is frequently accused of being “boring”—and I firmly believe this has loads to do with the way she dresses, divorced from any opinion on the writing or the plot at this point. Jenna Coleman is an engaging actress, but a lot of the costumes from this era give us a cute, ordinary woman at the expense of furthering her arc in a particular direction.

There are clues, of course. From the quality of her clothes, she’s somewhere in the middle-class range—not quite as effortlessly classy as soon-to-be doctor Martha, but not quite at Rose’s level of street style either. Clara probably reads The Guardian. Those boots aren’t cheap.

Her outfit is very well put together, though it doesn’t push any boundaries of style. Clara is always tied into contemporary fashion, from this point onwards, with her boots and jacket bringing a little frisson of tough to counter the femininity of the dress and bag. The bag’s a sharp, bossy red, and all together it kind of gives us who Clara thinks she is: perfectly turned out, girlish and flirty, tough enough to deal with a crisis, with just a small splash of opinionated red on the side. 

There’s red, again, in the flashback. (side note: how young is her dad????)

“Cold War” mixes it up, though this is still Clara: there’s the slightly flared skirt we’ve seen in the past two looks, and the tough jacket firmly in evidence. I love the buttons up the front, though, and the icy shimmer is a nice departure—a little more glam than we’ve seen before from Clara. Considering Clara thought she was heading to Las Vegas, we can see what she thinks is appropriate for a night out right now: that vaguely-retro 1950s look Taylor Swift started, with a strong streak of cute, but nothing your grandmum would hate. (Amy would have had that skirt at least 6 inches shorter and narrower.) She’s girly and tough.

“Hide” runs along the same lines. (also, bless all these full-costume promo pics.) The gentle cardigan look is back, and aside from the heels it’s all quite demure. It also looks great for the spooky tone of this episode! Incidentally, this is Clara’s third blue outfit in a row, leading me to wonder when we abandoned the vivid red Claras of earlier for these calm, cool, inward-looking young ladies. It’s almost a visual rebuke to the Doctor for seeing her only as the red adventuresses of earlier—those girls were red, sir, but this one is blue, so get your head together and consider the color symbolism.

Oh. Or fuck me for trying, I guess. That works too. Who needs consistency, am I right?

Aside from me throwing myself out the window because the red keeps coming back but I can’t figure out WHY, this dress is a lot like Clara’s others. Her favorite pair of boots is back, and it’s quite buttoned-up and modest, if a little shorter than before. And the tightrope of bold-but-girly continues to be Clara’s calling card, with the minimal jewelry keeping her just on this side of not-too-dressed-up.

It’s telling that she stands out in this episode, though: she’s in stark opposition to the cold blues worn by the Doctor and his TARDIS, a visible antagonist as these two question and frighten her about her right to belong.

“The Crimson Horror” gives us two great Clara looks, which is great because holy shit look what they did to this skirt.

I can’t quite explain what happened here, because for all the world it looks like they took apart a 1910s-style hobble skirt and  threw in a gradient underskirt for the solid reason of Why The Hell Not, but I love it despite it being bonkers-levels of  historically inaccurate.

Then there’s this.

I LOVE THIS TOO, but character-wise I really have to grit my teeth because I don’t get why Clara, ordinary girl from the twenty-first as she seems to be, would have either the knowledge or the inclination to dress her hair in the elaborate fashions of the period.  But it’s a spot-on perfect dress, with none of the historic bumbling Rose managed on her first try. It lacks the super-puff sleeves of the 1890s, but I can live with it because of those fantastic little V’s down the front. It’s perfect.

We’re back in red for “Nightmare in Silver,” and everything’s very much Normal Clara: the little heeled shoes, the slightly flared skirt, the tights and the tough jacket and the trim little collar. With stronger fabric choices, she looks more in control than ever; she’s developed slightly away from the girlishness of those high-low skirts, though that girly quality is still there in the short skirt. Her arc has not been consistently signaled so far in either silhouette or color choices, but this outfit marks Clara as being more in command than ever before.

In the finale, she’s in same silhouette as last time, but new shoes (Clara seemingly adores footwear that combines heels, boots, and little oxford-y things into one package). Compared to her first modern outfit, she’s much more visually controlled—dark-hued, geometrically patterned, no more flounce or flutter. The color scheme is much more similar to the blue/green of the governess outfit, and red’s completely vanished—she couldn’t be farther from the saucy little barmaid act in “The Snowmen.” And yet by the end of the episode, she’s shattered into her—and into a girl with spikes on her jacket, and a girl dressed like Sarah Jane Smith, and a girl and a girl and a girl and a girl.......

I can’t explain this. I’d love to say that Clara coalesces into a firm costume arc over the season, but I can’t find a clear arc without pushing my designer’s brain to untenable conclusions. Through costume, I watched Martha grow from a confident student to a warrior; I watched Rose grow from a thoughtless girl to a brave woman. River developed in ways that suggested where she was going and where she came from, despite the challenges of a plotline her costume designers couldn’t plan for. Series 7 Clara stretches my brain, and I still come up empty. Where was all that red going? Can a change so slight as “pretty girlish” to “a little less so” count as an arc? Did someone not tell Howard Burden the plot, so he couldn’t plan a clearer costume progression? What happened here????

Thankfully, Clara’s not done growing yet, though. Onto the specials!

Clara begins "The Day of the Doctor” in, again, red. I quietly scream because red can be such a dramatic and weighty color and I hate seeing it just pop up for reasons I can’t make sense of. Clara ignores my protests and hops into her adventure.

This outfit’s perfectly within the same realm as Clara’s previous gigs: heeled boots, check; black tights, check; small-print non-geometric pattern on lightweight fabric, all present sir; cheeky red and tough black jacket, reporting for duty. This outfit could have shown up any point in Series 7 and I would have accepted it. Clara’s working as a schoolteacher now (a very chic one), and the whole outfit reads as saucy and cute and just a little badass.

And then “Time of the Doctor.” Oh, I love the “Time of the Doctor” costumes. This is great. This is when Clara starts making sense.

Clara gets two outfits in this: the cheeky yellow-sweater one, and the red-plaid-skirty one. They’re both very twee and pseudo-vintage and Britishy, which is very much in Clara’s realm so far, but they take what Clara’s already had and push it—heartily, extremely, and in a way it’ll never recover from—into bold new territory.

Clara’s style has shifted in this episode. With the proud geometric plaid, the bright red hue, and the overall sharper fit, Clara has absolutely moved on from the girlishness from “The Rings of Akhaten” into something far more confident and controlled. There are significant details: the little infinity-symbols of her cardigan, the spikes on her necklace and bracelets, and the old-fashioned lace on her blouse make an unusual combo that finally distinguishes her from an H&M commercial. It’s strong and decisive, a little bit bossy, with boldness winning out over cute. Fashionable? Yeah! Modern? Always! But powerful, too, taking up the screen with tight shapes and controlled blocks of color.

The yellow sweater and leather skirt hit the same notes. The feminine flutter of early Series 7 is truly gone; without changing Clara’s style completely, the smack-you-in-the-face mustard sweater and the edge of the leather angle her away from “feminine adventuress” into “adventurer femme.” The priorities shift. It’s the signal of where Clara is going from here—into deeper, darker territory.

So, what do we take from this? Though Clara started out as a bit of a cipher—thanks to red dresses leading us in one direction, and then cute little floral pattern outfits taking us in another—over Series 7 Clara gradually came together as a bolder, more in-command character, and even started to develop a style of her own that verged beyond the norm. Where could that take us in Series 8? How will her costumes change to interact with an entirely new Doctor? Will I ever get to see that bird pendant necklace again? (yes.) Who knows! I’ll have to write a post about it!

Whatever happens, it’s going to be an awfully big adventure.

[Got thoughts & questions? Come at me! I love talking about costume, and anyway I had to edit this post extensively to even get it to post, so I couldn’t even mention things people might wonder about. LORD I LOVE COSTUME DESIGN SO MUCH.]