Emily Blunt has said that she found fresh inspiration for her version of Mary Poppins in the P.L. Travers books that originally introduced the character, an eccentric and decidedly vain nanny. Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell (Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, The Young Victoria) also found a way to set Blunts Poppins apart from Julie Andrewss wholesome incarnation—by making the 2018 Poppins a bit more stylish.
“We aimed to make her more elegant and definitely fashionable,” Powell said of her costumes for the Rob Marshall reboot Mary Poppins Returns, in theaters this week. “Marys definitely vain, so she would have made sure that she was very well-coordinated.” Powells Mary Poppins costumes reflect 1934, the year in which the film is set—polka dots, chevron patterns, chiffon, and stripes were in vogue—but they also have a dash Devil Wears Prada, thanks to a vibrant palette of ruby red, pink, and sapphire. “It was like doing a collection—designing different shirts, different ties, and different skirts that all sort of coordinated with each other,” the designer said.
Powell was also careful to include a few sartorial nods to the Julie Andrews film.
“In the original Mary Poppins, she always has a bow at her neck—on all her blouses,” said Powell, explaining that the bows became a recurring theme for Blunts costumes. Each of Blunts looks—even the Victorian swimsuit she wears in an underwater sequence—feature a bow. The only difference: Powell adjusted the ties this time around to make them “neater and chic-er.”
For Marys first look—when she magically floats down from the sky to help the Banks family—Powell wanted Marys costume to echo the same scene in the original movie. So she maintained the first Marys silhouette, and gave her another hat that was “similar in scale to the original hat, but a 1930s version, perched on the side of her head rather than straight on top.”
Though the original film was set in 1910, some of the costumes had 1960s sensibilities reflective of its 1964 release date. Powell wanted to find a way to replace one such anachronistic flourish—a daisy tucked into Marys hat. “I just really wanted to keep flowers away from her hair,” said Powell. “It didnt seem right. I had to think of something else to go on a hat, and was thinking of ribbons, bows, and feathers. Then I thought of a bird, and remembered the robin Julies Mary has while singing A Spoonful of Sugar.” Powell thought the robin would look just strange enough if it were obviously fake, as it is in the first film. (For the underwater hat, Powell swapped out the robin for a more appropriate flying fish.)
There was another costume element from the original that Powell wanted to sort out. “As much as I loved the original, I always felt that the live-action characters stood apart from the animated world,” said Powell of its signature hand-painted sequence, which Mary Poppins Returns ingeniously replicates. “I wanted our characters to look like they were part of the same world.” Powell found inspiration for Marys look here—a frilly pink concoction—from a Tissot painting. The dress, along with all the other costumes in the sequence, were painted in “a 2-D way, to make them more integrated with the animated world.”
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Mary Poppins Returns marked a milestone for Powell, who has been designing costumes for over 30 years: it was her first musical. Fortunately, director Rob Marshall—who started his career as a choreographer—had lots of ideas about how he wanted costumes to move during musical numbers. And, as an added challenge, he wanted to stay away from costuming en masse. So for a scene when a group of lamplighters join Lin-Manuel Mirandas character for an energetic outdoor number, Powell designed different costumes for each dancer.
Costuming another musical scene allowed Powell to work with a legend from the original film: Dick Van Dyke.
“He was incredible,” said Powell, who met the actor at his home. “We sat there and he just beguiled me with stories.”
The then-91-year-old dances in the film, and Powell was surprised to be given a wardrobe parameter by Mary Poppinss chimney sweep. “His only requirement was that he wear his own dancing shoes. He said he could only dance in his own.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Julie MillerJulie Miller is a Senior Hollywood writer for Vanity Fairs website.
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