Ranking 2022 Historical Movies & Shows on Costume Accuracy

Thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this video.

Let’s hear it for our glorious guest rankers! In order of appearance:
Malaika: @malaikatheclassicist
Zeynep
Angela Jaarma
Maria Maranan. (Books referenced: Coo, Stephanie. Clothing the Colony: Nineteenth-century Philippine Sartorial Culture, 1820-1896. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2019.
Higgins, Mark Lewis and Gino Gonzales. Fashionable Filipinas: An evolution of the Philippine national dress in photographs 1860-1960. Makati City: Slim’s Legacy Project Inc., 2015.)

And our stalwart production team who helped make this video possible!
Research Assistants:

Editing by @DannyBanner
@danbanstudio

Beyond YouTube:
Management contact for business enquiries:

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:22 Explanation of the tiers
00:04:07 A word from NordVPN
00:05:16 Romulus II
00:06:51 Three Thousand Years of Longing
00:07:41 Barbarians
00:09:56 Blót
00:11:34 The Last Kingdom
00:13:02 The Northmen
00:15:02 Ponniyin Selvan
00:16:53 The Tragedy of Macbeth
00:18:15 Vikings: Valhalla
00:19:54 Nayika Devi: The Warrior Queen
00:21:34 Samrat Prithviraj
00:22:51 Apteeker Melchior
00:24:27 Catherine Called Birdy
00:25:18 Medieval
00:27:04 Heirs to the Land
00:28:36 Rosaline
00:29:57 Margrete: Queen of the North
00:31:41 The Sandman
00:33:15 King of Tears Lee Bang Wong
00:35:20 Royal Feast
00:37:40 The Lost King
00:39:00 Sin Límites
00:40:35 Becoming Elizabeth
00:41:55 The Serpent Queen
00:43:27 Diane de Poitiers
00:44:14 The Witchfinder
00:45:41 Hocus Pocus 2
00:46:49 Cyrano
00:48:06 Aníkúlápó
00:48:53 Our Flag Means Death
00:50:11 The Highwayman: The Legend of Dick Turpin
00:51:20 Under the Queen’s Umbrella
00:53:08 Il Boemo
00:53:58 Marie-Antoinette
00:55:03 Outlander
00:55:55 Dangerous Liasons
00:57:08 Prizefighter
00:58:30 Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils
01:00:24 Persuasion
01:01:45 Bridgerton
01:03:01 Mr Malcolm's List
01:04:26 Sanditon
01:05:17 The Woman King
01:06:54 The Pale Blue Eye
01:07:39 Dodger
01:08:39 Gentleman Jack
01:10:41 Emily
01:12:51 Redeeming Love
01:14:22 The Empress
01:15:10 The Wonder
01:16:03 Around the World in 80 Days
01:18:11 Corsage
01:19:04 The Cursed
01:20:16 Miss Scarlet and the Duke
01:20:53 The Gilded Age
01:22:30 Maria Clara at Ibarra
01:24:11 Enola Holmes 2
01:25:01 Bloody Heart
01:26:22 The Drover's Wife
01:27:17 The Essex Serpent
01:27:57 1899
01:28:42 Walker: Independence
01:29:51 La Dama Velata
01:30:19 Cabinet of Curiosities
01:31:28 Against the Ice
01:32:26 Life After Life
01:33:00 Pachinko
01:35:12 Interview with the Vampire
01:36:03 Les Combattantes
01:36:35 Ghosts (UK)
01:37:15 Concluding thoughts

[bernadettebanner]

In other news, how did we do? Did we miss any? Which were your favorites this year?

[elleplaudite]

I think I would personally cut the category of "it was a design choice" into "it was a good design choice" and "it was an embarrassing design choice", because some of those choices are a hot mess.

[argilrienlothlorien]

I am blown away and humbled that "Blót" was mentioned, a short movie shot in Austria, and I am proud to say that I was the Lead Costume Designer for that movie!
The Costumes for the main characters (Freydis, Helgir and Ylva) and I have sewn myself. I do viking reenactment as well, and the director wanted a historical-fantasy aesthetic inspired by "Hellblade: Senua's journey" game (so it did not mean to be a completely historical movie), so I tried to pack in as much historical pieces as was possible for me to do, while still clinging to the aesthetic frame i had to work within. About adult Freydis: Her "gambeson" is made from wool and linen, the only leather in her travelling costume is the straps for the winigans, her pouch and belt, and some small decorational trims on the gambeson!
It was very interesting to work on :)

[quaryn]

I love that the expert in Korean historical costuming was actually dressed in the sort of period garments he was commenting on! Clearly a kindred spirit of Bernadette!

[aliecookie]

I'm Ojibwe, not Lakota or Apache, but I do have some knowledge of regalia making and different Indigenous clothing practices. The costumes in "Prey" are by far the best representations of plains clothing ever put to screen. From the design, execution, and creation of each outfit, you can feel how each person on screen could have walked out of a plains camp in the 18th century.

The women's style of dress are a t-shape, called a camp dress, and are common to see in modern pow wows on women's traditional dancers. Each one you see is so beautifully cut and decorated, and presents such an important view into how many Indigenous groups see that the neatness of your family''s dress and hair represents the love your family and community feel for you. The men's costumes are just as well done and I really appreciated seeing the neatness of each actor's hair which is so often never represented in Indigenous men. Naru (the main character) has a costume that slightly deviates from this, but it's presented as clearly a character decision. Tis peak Indigenous representation!

The costumes in "The English" are also quite good at representing the way later plains peoples incorporated various styles of European dress and fabrics into their clothing practices. Eli wears an array of traditional cuts of clothing in wool and cotton, which was very common in this period. I loved that we can see so many ways he personalised his army coat. An interesting part of this time period is this plethora of photography of Indigenous peoples in various types of traditional and modernised clothing styles. There was this prevailing idea that Indigenous peoples would be assimilated into the general American population (as shown explicitly several times in the show itself) and any white photographers sought to capture what was thought was a vanishing people. Instead, we have an array of photographs of what Indigenous people were wearing at the time that have helped many modern Indigenous peoples to regain traditional modes of dress. Also Chaske Spencer's hair is fantastic, 10/10, I love him in this.

Which brings me to "Walker" whatever reboot we're on. I have not watched this because everything about it looks not great, but from the screenshots I have looked at, the Indigenous costuming is oscillating between party city and Dances with Wolves. Justin Cortez's hair is like a weird feather cut mess, he wears clothing more suited to a Canadian winter, and it's just a horrible representation of Indigenous clothing styles from this period. It genuinely looks like the costume designers did a quick glance at old John Wayne movies, said "close enough!" and just ran with it. I don't want to be mean, but it was so generically and poorly done.

TLDR: I'm hopeful that Prey is going to set a new bar for representing Indigenous peoples on-screen and I'm really hopeful we will get to see more like this in the future.

[rburns]

Nami Sparrow holding a grudge about the lack of bling is a mood. A big, giant, fabulous mood!

[Lunareon]

"There are paintings of her in clothing, and they did not use them!" The literally lowest bar was not crossed. I loved the trivia about Chinese hobbyists improving the historical accuracy of costumes in tv and cinema. That is such an awesome thing, and I wish the same happened everywhere! Thank you all for your insights on these pieces of entertainment.

[achillendimond]

In the words of Taika himself: “this isn’t a pirate show, this is a love story about two dudes who just happen to be on a boat”

[HUMMEL]

I cannot believe you talked about Blòt. I don’t know if you are aware, this was a student movie production in Austria. I was part of it, it was my second ever production. We shot it in 10 days without any money, just a bunch of people having a of time during Covid and a lot of passion.
This is very special to me, that k so so much for your kind words. The costume design for the main characters was done entirely by two wonderful women who really made magic happen.

[RCKennington]

When my Mum was a child in the 1940s some of the older woman still wore Victorian fashions to town. There was a woman in a department store in a rural town near me that maintained a behive hairdo into the 1990s. I think it is understandable to have some fashion from past decades on older cast.

[XenonFae]

I feel that the Yearly Ranking of Costume Dramas by Historical Accuracy video has become the Super Bowl of Bernadette Banner videos in terms of anticipation, scope, importance, and splendor.

And I say that as a total compliment!!! ❤

[MarinaEariel]

In Gilded Age, Agnes is told by her seamstress that her dress style is being abandoned by most ladies and she replies she's not most ladies

[maddiemaynot]

The Our Flag Means Death section had me absolutely rolling with laughter! You obliterated it with love and I don't think a single fan of the show, die-hard or casual could disagree with it's ranking. David Jenkins and the entire team looked at historical accuracy, then spat on it and put Oluwande in crocs, and if that's not "it was a choice", I don't know what is 😂💙

[MarquisdeL]

For Gilded Age, I know there's an interview where one of the actresses says that it was her first corset fitting, so she went in thinking she should aim for as small as she could go, while another, more experienced actress deliberately had a large lunch before her fitting, so she'd be comfortable.

[Love-and-Salt]

I wanted to talk briefly about the whole “older people wearing older styles thing” because I’ve been thinking a lot about it. So I’ve determined, at least in our modern times, that it’s not that old people wear outdated styles. Your grandmother doesn’t look like she stepped directly out of the 80s. Instead she’s using items she has, some of which are older, in combination with new items to create outfits. Often she uses a combination of styling advice she learned back when she was learning to dress herself and applying it to modern styles. My grandmother often says “don’t wear a pattern with horizontal lines, it makes you look fat” which was common advice in the 80s and is something I’ve noticed younger generations don’t seem to follow. It seems as if rather than people becoming stuck in time as they age, they instead develop a unique style specifically for their generation that progresses and evolves just like young peoples fashion does. In reality, different generations developed different fashions that reflect their values, needs, and wants. Often young peoples fashion, at least in the west, is seen as the height of fashion as it’s often the most “new and unique” looking compared to past styles. But this doesn’t mean that older generations aren’t stylistically progressing. They’re just culturally different and are born from different places.

[alaskacosplay]

When I saw Maria Clara at Ibarra in this list, I was like "I feel so represented" because you rarely see a Filipino historical drama get this much recognition. When I look at the Filipino women's clothes next to the Spanish clothes of the time, it really resembles French fashions of the time because Spain probably got fashion updates from France.

[ingridbmangubat]

Just want to commend Bernadette for making the effort to collaborate with SO MANY other historical costume enthusiasts around the globe. I was so surprised to see a show from the Philippines featured. I haven't seen that show but I've only known about all the social media buzz around how good it is. Makes me happy that we do have local shows who make good historical.fantasy comedy/drama.

[journeyhancock]

Although it does greatly sadden me that Bernadette was unable to find historians for the movies that had Native Americans, I fully appreciate that she still acknowledged them and tried to find someone. Certainly happy she didn’t try to tackle that herself or completely dismiss them being there. Natives are far too often dismissed and forgotten about, so even though she couldn’t find a native historian, it’s nice to see some acknowledgment❤

[aditichatterjee]

Bernadette, as a fellow Indian, I am so SO glad you included Indian historic movies as well! That being said, I love your channel and appreciate your work and the effort you put in making historic clothing 💛

[phoenixyfriend]

I think a really interesting element of this is seeing how much different participants allow for leeway. Two guests can have near identical commentary in general terms, but one will give Tis Peak while the other will have Gets the Job Done, or even It's a Design Choice.