The actress Sophie Turner turned heads at the premiere of her new ITV series, Joan, wearing a duo of Louis Vuitton outfits, both of which featured amazing wide-brimmed hats. The looks were a nod to her on-screen character Joan Hannington, the infamous 1980s jewel thief and mistress of disguise, whose incredible story she’s bringing to the small screen on Sunday in a new six-part series. Unsurprisingly, the role required multiple costume changes, as Joan takes on different characters to undertake her cons.
“Doing Joan’s outfits was like doing a show within a show,” the costume designer Richard Cooke, who cut his teeth working on the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility, tells The Telegraph. “There were almost 100 looks, which took up one whole costume truck as well as one wall of our studio. Then there were the accessories, boxes and boxes of them, four for bags, two for shoes, plus 10 big jewellery cases just for her. Almost every day of our 17-week shoot we did a fitting of some sort, right up until the final day of filming we were still establishing her looks.”
At the beginning of the show, Joan is a young mum in a seaside town, who is in an abusive relationship, yet as the story goes on, she escapes her old life and embraces a new one: as a jewel thief. As the promotional trailer and posters highlight, there were multiple facets to Joan’s character, as a mother, lover, liar and thief, each of which required a different guise.
“In the beginning, when she was the ‘mother’ character, I used softer colours and fabrics that were reflected in her daughter Kelly’s clothes to tie them together,” explains Cooke. “She’s wearing white stiletto heel sandals, white-wash denim, she’s got big hair – she’s wearing what any girl in a town like that would have worn at the time. When she was a lover it was about introducing a new sensuality, lots of silks and satins and stronger colours, and then as a liar and thief, I looked at Dynasty and Dallas and those bold silhouettes, as her confidence grows and she creates an armour around herself.”
Director Richard Laxton thought it was best that Cooke didn’t meet the real-life Joan before starting work, in case it would influence him, but he did read her memoir. “It’s not a documentary, it’s a drama,” he explains. Instead, Cooke drew on his own teen years in the 1980s, as well as how his mother dressed. “I immersed myself in the time, looking through the Getty Image archive, local newspapers from back then, old clothes catalogues like the Next Directory and 80s editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Debbie Harry, The Go-Gos, Kim Wilde and Toyah Wilcox were all on the moodboard.”
Cooke sourced around half of the pieces from hire houses, vintage shops (in particular The Dressing Room in Alfriston, where he found 80s YSL, Armani, Versace and Claude Montana) and made the rest himself, alongside Nicki Varney, who had worked with Turner previously on Game of Thrones.
The actress kept one of Cooke’s favourite looks, which she wore for her wedding day scene to antiques dealer and criminal mastermind, Boisie Hannington (played by Frank Dillane). “We knew she wasn’t the type of person that would wear a Lady Di kind of dress, so we created a suit and wide-brimmed hat inspired by Bianca Jagger,” he shares. “We paired it with a white and black striped organza blouse, which was a nod to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, because Boisie takes her under his wing and teaches her. On the day that Sophie came out of the dressing room wearing it I had a tear in my eye.”
His other favourite look was a green silk jumpsuit which she wore when picking out her engagement ring. “It’s one of the most truly joyous moments in the show,” explains Cooke. “We made her a silk emerald jumpsuit which had a v-neck split to the waist, with a faux fur coat and gold heels. In the 80s when people shopped for engagement rings, people were quite demure, but Joan is unapologetically herself. It was a big moment in the story.”
Another highlight is the gold dress that Turner wears during a nightclub scene, after her first shopping spree. Incredibly, it was made using fabric that had previously been used by Beyoncé’s stylist for one of her looks. “I found it when I was head first in the remnant fabric bin at Misan Midlands,” laughs Cooke. “I’ve no idea how Nicki was able to make something out of it, there was hardly anything left.”
Naturally, jewellery was a major part of the show, and Cooke spent two days at Gen Z’s favourite jewellery warehouse, Accessories of Old, in south London. “It’s full of amazing, completely unworn 80s jewellery,” he explains. Then, for any plot-driven jewels, he turned to long-time collaborator, the jeweller Victoria Bedwell, who made pieces that were integral to some of the cons.
The real-life Joan makes a cameo in the series later on, which was when Cooke was able to do a litmus test on whether or not he’d done her justice with his costumes. “I took her to see Sophie’s wardrobe and she said that every single look was something she owned or would have worn,” he shares. “That was really gratifying.”
Cooke also impressed Turner, with the two having an excellent working relationship. “At the end of my last day on set, we had a little moment where I said this has been the most important creative collaboration I’ve had apart from with a director, and she said she felt the same,” shares Cooke. “When you’re designing something it’s about getting an actor to trust you and she completely put herself in my hands, there wasn’t a single look she refused to wear.”
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