British film costume design rests on a small group of designers with an outsized record at the Oscars and BAFTAs, and on London costume houses that have dressed films since the silent era. Sandy Powell, Jenny Beavan, Jacqueline Durran and Lindy Hemming have won nine Academy Awards for costume between them, while Angels Costumes (founded 1840) and Cosprop (founded 1965) supply much of the period clothing seen on screen. This guide sets out who those people and companies are, how a costume department works, where designers research, and how the trade is handling reuse and sustainability.
British film costume design at a glance
Award record. Powell has three Oscars from 15 nominations, Beavan three from 12, Durran two from nine and Hemming one, according to their Wikipedia filmographies and the award lists they cite.
Hire before make. Period productions typically combine garments hired from a costume house with pieces made new in workrooms, then fitted and aged for camera.
Two historic houses.Angels Costumes has supplied costumes “for film, television and theatre since 1840”, and Cosprop specialises in period costume for hire and making.
Ownership change in 2026. Angels was acquired by John Gore Studios in April 2026, with Emma Angel leading the company under the new owner (checked October 2026).
Research access. The V&A’s free Order an Object service lets anyone book an appointment to see stored objects, including theatre costume, in person.
The designers who shaped the field
Sandy Powell
Born in London in 1960, Powell trained at Saint Martin’s and Central School of Art and began by designing for the choreographer Lindsay Kemp before becoming a regular collaborator of Derek Jarman. Her profile rose with Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992), made on a limited budget. She won Oscars for Shakespeare in Love (1998), The Aviator (2004) and The Young Victoria (2009), and BAFTAs for Velvet Goldmine, The Young Victoria and The Favourite (2018), from a record 16 BAFTA nominations (Sandy Powell on Wikipedia). In 2023 she became the first costume designer to receive the BAFTA Fellowship, and she was appointed CBE in 2025. Her Shakespeare in Love work is often cited for trading strict historical accuracy for what one critic called “emotional accuracy”.
Jenny Beavan
Beavan came to prominence through a decade-long partnership with John Bright on Merchant Ivory films. Their shared Oscar for A Room with a View (1985) was followed by Beavan’s wins for Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Cruella (2021), and she holds a record four costume BAFTAs, including one for Gosford Park (2001). She also won an Olivier Award for the 2001 West End Private Lives and two Emmys, and was appointed OBE in 2017 (Jenny Beavan on Wikipedia).
Jenny Beavan’s costume for Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, shown at the FIDM Museum. Photo: Johanna / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Jacqueline Durran
Durran studied at the Royal College of Art, sold vintage clothes at Camden and Portobello Road markets, and then worked at Angels before designing in her own right, as she told the Guardian in 2024. She has worked with Mike Leigh since the late 1990s (her Vera Drake won a BAFTA), with Joe Wright on Pride and Prejudice and Anna Karenina, and with Greta Gerwig on Little Women and Barbie. Her two Oscars are for Anna Karenina (2012) and Little Women (2019) (Jacqueline Durran on Wikipedia).
Lindy Hemming
Born in Haverfordwest in 1948, Hemming trained as an orthopaedic nurse before studying at RADA and spent more than a decade at London’s Open Space Theatre. She won the Oscar for Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy (1999), which recreated the 1885 production of The Mikado, dressed the Bond films from GoldenEye (1995) to Casino Royale (2006), and designed Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (2005 to 2012) (Lindy Hemming on Wikipedia). Later credits include both Paddington films and Wonder Woman.
Designer
Oscar wins
Frequent collaborators
Sandy Powell
Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, The Young Victoria
Derek Jarman, Neil Jordan, Todd Haynes, Martin Scorsese
Jenny Beavan
A Room with a View, Mad Max: Fury Road, Cruella
John Bright, Merchant Ivory
Jacqueline Durran
Anna Karenina, Little Women
Mike Leigh, Joe Wright, Greta Gerwig
Lindy Hemming
Topsy-Turvy
Mike Leigh, Christopher Nolan, the Bond producers
The costume houses behind British film
Angels began in 1840 when Morris Angel sold second-hand clothing and Savile Row tailors’ samples in Seven Dials, near Covent Garden. Actors then had to buy their own costumes, and their request to hire clothes instead created the business model the company still uses. Angels supplied its first Oscar-winning costumes to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) and acquired Bermans & Nathans in 1992 (Angels Costumes on Wikipedia).
In April 2026 Screen Daily reported that John Gore Studios had acquired Angels. The report describes “more than one million costumes and accessories on over 10.5 miles worth of clothing rails”, the largest privately owned costume collection for film, theatre and television, built up over seven generations of the Angel family. Deadline’s coverage adds that Angels keeps its own creative identity under the new owner.
Cosprop, in north London, is the other name that recurs in period-drama credits. Its own site says it “has been owned and managed by Academy Award winning costume designer and costumier John Bright since it was set up in 1965” and now employs fifty staff. Bright, Beavan’s partner on A Room with a View, was appointed OBE in 2024 for services to costume design and to heritage (John Bright on Wikipedia).
How a film costume department works
A designer starts with the script and the director, breaks the story down character by character and scene by scene, and builds a research file before anything is drawn. Cosprop describes the next step from the supplier’s side: a production “begins with a discussion between the designer and our costumiers”, who then select items from stock, advise on the underpinnings and accessories an outfit needs, and fit each garment to the actor through an alterations team. Where nothing suitable exists, its dressmakers and tailors make bespoke pieces “with particular knowledge of period silhouettes”.
The practical sequence on most productions looks like this:
Breakdown. List every character, every change of clothes and every scene, including doubles for stunts and repeats for damage.
Research. Paintings, photographs, surviving garments and, for contemporary films, observation of real people and places.
Sourcing. Hire from a costume house, buy vintage or new, or commission a make.
Fittings. Actors try garments early enough for alterations, and the designer checks colour and texture with the cinematographer.
Ageing and dyeing. New clothes are broken down, faded and dirtied so they read as worn on camera.
Continuity. The wardrobe team tracks exactly what each actor wore in each scene through the shoot.
Period underwear matters more than viewers might think. Corsets, petticoats and padded shapes set the posture and silhouette the outer clothes rely on, and the way an actor stands and moves in them changes the performance.
Researching historic dress in UK collections
The V&A’s Theatre and Performance collections were founded in the 1920s when the collector Gabrielle Enthoven donated her theatrical designs, memorabilia, books and photographs, and they now document drama, dance, opera, costume and set design across the UK. The museum’s online catalogue covers more than 1.25 million objects.
Through the free Order an Object service, a researcher finds an item in the online collection, adds it to a “crate”, books an appointment, and sees it in person with a member of the Collections Access team, either at the V&A’s stores or at the V&A East Storehouse in east London (checked October 2026). For a designer working on a period film, an hour with a real bodice or coat shows things a photograph cannot: the weight of the cloth, the seam placement and how the garment was fastened.
Awards and recognition
The BAFTA for costume design and the Academy Award are the two prizes most often used to measure British costume work. At the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards, Frankenstein won costume design, production design and make-up and hair, and Kate Hawley’s costumes for the same film won the Oscar in March 2026, as listed in the Hollywood Reporter’s winners list. Earlier winners are listed on the BAFTA Award for Best Costume Design page.
Recognition has also come outside the awards. Powell’s BAFTA Fellowship in 2023 was the first given to a costume designer, and honours for Powell, Beavan and Bright between 2017 and 2025 have recognised the craft at state level.
Sustainability and reuse
Hire is, in effect, the oldest reuse model in film: a single coat from a costume-house rail can appear in dozens of productions over decades. The wider industry tool is albert, which began as a BBC carbon footprint calculator and has been run under BAFTA since 2011. Its steering group includes the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Netflix, Amazon MGM Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery, Pact, Channel 5 and BAFTA, and productions can use its calculator and certification from pre-production onwards.
For a costume department, the practical questions are simple. Check what can be hired before buying new. Plan where garments go after the wrap: back into stock, to another production, or to donation. Record those decisions so they count in the production’s carbon report. Durran’s own route into the job, through second-hand markets and a hire house, is a reminder that much of the skill lies in knowing what already exists.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the most notable UK costume designers?
Sandy Powell, Jenny Beavan, Jacqueline Durran and Lindy Hemming have the strongest awards records, with nine Academy Awards between them. John Bright, Beavan’s Merchant Ivory partner and the founder of Cosprop, also won an Oscar for A Room with a View.
How does costume design shape British film?
Clothes signal class, period, region and a character’s state of mind before anyone speaks, and period underwear changes how actors hold themselves. Designers such as Powell have shown that costumes can bend historical accuracy to serve the story.
Where do British films get their costumes?
Usually from a mix of hire and new makes. Angels and Cosprop in London are two of the best-known suppliers, and both offer hire and bespoke making. Many contemporary films also buy from shops and vintage dealers.
How do people get into costume design in the UK?
Routes vary. Durran moved from art school and vintage trading to a job at Angels, Hemming came through theatre after training as a nurse and studying at RADA, and Powell started by designing for dance. Assistant and wardrobe roles on productions and in costume houses are the common starting points. You can find more coverage of UK creative careers on Creativity’s UK.
