Costume designer Grace Snell had never done a period film before she jumped on a call with filmmaker Georgia Oakley. You can approach historical costumes in many ways, but Snell wanted to tackle the project with both good sense (in-depth research into Regency England) and a particularly modern sensibility.
“ I often think about when I look at the ‘Little Women’ that was made in the ’40s, and the ‘Little Women’ that was made in the ’90s, and the ‘Little Women’ that was made a few years ago. Although you are designing for period, even in the 1940s version of ‘Little Women,’ you can see 1940s fashions,” Snell told IndieWire. “ I love the idea of making something that feels that it is of the time now, and of where we are, particularly as women: how we’re dressing and what we see in our friends.”
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So the 2026 “Sense and Sensibility” would of course feature the gracious dresses with empire waists and jaunty ribbons and frock coats that pop up in nearly all adaptations of Austen’s first novel, charting the adventures of the pragmatic-to-a-fault Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and romantic Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles). But Snell was just as inspired by the fashion of the ‘90s and early ‘00s — which do feature a similar silhouette to Austen’s own era — and by the relationship families and friends have to clothes that are timeless.
Namely, that sisters are in and out of each other’s closets.
Snell wanted the Dashwoods to dress as if no whole costume team is coordinating things behind them — though haughty sister-in-law Fanny (Stacy Martin) is another matter. Especially once they’re pushed out of their family home and must make do in a cottage in Devonshire, Snell wanted to show how the girls borrow from each other, adapt odds and ends, and don’t always put outfits together to match. By the end of the film, Snell wanted what the two heroines have learned from each other to reflect in how they dress.
But Elinor and Marianne start out with distinct philosophies that Snell brought to the first costume fittings. “You could tell how Daisy was Elinor and how Esme was Marianne instantly, even in how I set up the fitting for them. Daisy was very structured, very formulaic, labeled; it was systematic in how we tried on things. And then with Esmé, I bought loads of fun things, boxes of trims and ribbons and flouncy things, a lot of hats, and it was about accessorizing and playing,” Snell said. “I got her to dress herself, and I wanted to see how she might make ‘mistakes’ dressing herself, how things might not be done up correctly.”
Marianne, after all, isn’t really concerned with correctness or propriety (to Elinor’s continual dismay), so Snell and Creed-Miles embraced those instinctual first choices in crafting a look for Marianne that was just a bit irreverent and rebellious. Snell decided the character would reach back to “vintage” fashion from older eras, keep dresses she loved that were a bit too big and adapt them, and sport a sash around her waist — being the dashing cavalry officer she wants to see in the world.
Marianne feels most vulnerable and out of place in a “correct” ballgown in London, heartsick for the handsome Willoughby (Frank Dillane) and without allies when she sees him again. “ I really wanted to show how intimidating a place like London could be when you don’t have the means, through what everyone’s wearing at the ball,” Snell said.
The sisters are much more at ease in Barton, needless to say, and Snell found sneaky ways to show how they adapt and learn from each other. She gave both Elinor and Marianne jackets cut from the same pattern, but crafted to express their different sensibilities.
“We lengthened Elinor’s to make it a longer jacket, which is something that was used in the time [period], and then they were made in different fabrics but the same color. They could wear the same outfit, but they were styled differently. So [the characters] are in those details,” Snell said. “This is about pulling down the pedestal of what Period Drama is and seeing ourselves in these characters contextually with clothing.”
More than any of the Dashwoods, no one embodies that unabashed joy of expressing oneself through clothes like the voluble Mrs. Jennings (Fiona Shaw). Snell wanted to challenge the audience’s perceptions of how women of a certain age dress by giving Mrs. Jennings a style as excitable as she is. “I think she’s a romantic at heart and is very conscious of what she looks like and what she wears and tries things that don’t necessarily fit some of the societal expectations for an older woman,” Snell said. “But I imagined that she just wears things she likes the look of, and I had a lot of fun with Fiona.”
It was fun for Shaw, as well, who’d never gotten the Regency costume treatment before. “Fiona would always, you know, get dressed with me and just be like, ‘What are we wearing today? This is just such a wild ride,’” Snell said.
It’s a wild ride for every character, from Mrs. Dashwood’s slightly too-gracious gowns (Catríona Balfe) to the utter betrayal of Willoughby’s glittering vest in London (based on a CosProp archive piece that uses a natural material called cellulose for its sequins). But that’s because Snell leaned into letting the characters in “Sense and Sensibility” dress the way we always do: expressing ourselves by picking things from the people around us.
“Sense and Sensibility” is now in theaters.