When I think of Downton Abbey, I think of the costumes

The best part of the recent film Downton Abbey: A New Era is when Hollywood comes to Downton. The aristocratic family agrees to rent their manor home as a film set to raise cash to fix their leaky roof. The arrival of “film people” is meant to signify a clash of cultures—the glitzy, false glamour of a movie set meets the stodgy but decidedly real glamour of old-world aristocracy. But watching these rooms, familiar to Downton viewers since 2010, turned into movie sets reminds us that we have always been watching a fantasy-film version of history. When the servants haul the movie star’s copious wardrobe up the stairs, we are supposed to chuckle at her vanity. But it’s a glib joke given that getting dressed in various outfits throughout the day has always been the main pastime of Downton’s occupants.

Plot-wise, Downton has always been a soap opera masquerading as a historical drama. The show opened the first of its six critically acclaimed seasons on the sinking of the Titanic, and this final movie closes on the eve of World War II; the 1918 flu pandemic, World War I, and the specter of socialism flit around the edges. But the drama was set firmly inside the house. Thomas, the closeted gay footman turned butler, was always scheming against someone; Bates the valet was accused of murder. The dowager countess might have had both Russian and French lovers. A Turkish lover died in Lady Mary’s bed. Later her husband miraculously recovered from a paralyzing war wound only to die tragically.

The convoluted plotlines tangle and blur in my head, but the costumes stand out clearly. The dazzling white summer dresses the Crawley sisters wear in the first season finale signify an innocent ease in contrast to the complex stew of emotions brewing in their hearts. When Cora Crawley flirts with temptation, she dons a vibrant orange jacket that contrasts with her usually muted grays, browns, blues, and lavender. When Edith makes her bid for a journalism career, she wears modern drapey coats in muted colors. Every single one of Lady Mary’s body-conscious, heavily beaded evening gowns is meant to signal her delicious desirability and unattainability. And, of course, Lady Sybil’s radical “Egyptian”-style pantsuit marks her as the rebellious sister who will soon run off with the chauffeur for love.