As he sauntered through the streets Hitchens, wearing a white linen suit and carrying a teddy bear, was regaled by more than one shout of “Hello, Sebastian”, so closely did he resemble Anthony Andrews’s portrayal of the doomed, teddy-toting aristocrat Sebastian Flyte.Īnd of course there’s the now infamous 1987 photograph of Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club featuring David Cameron and Boris Johnson in black tie and tails. The late Christopher Hitchens once recalled walking home through Washington DC in 1984 on the day his son was born, not long after Brideshead Revisited had screened Stateside.
Two years later the so-called Brideshead Effect was still palpable in the US. “The British fashion press reports that London’s new look is that of the ‘trad English gentleman – cool, dashing, aristocratic’, as exemplified by Nigel Havers, who plays Lord Andrew Lindsay in Chariots Of Fire, and Anthony Andrews, who portrays Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited … If these films have attracted appreciative audiences, none have been more attentive than the men and women who design American ready-to-wear – notably Perry Ellis and Ralph Lauren”. “Brideshead Revisited and Chariots Of Fire are having an undeniable impact on fashion, both here and abroad,” wrote The New York Times Magazine in April 1982. Two examples from the same year, and both set largely in the 1920s, are Brideshead Revisited, Granada TV’s 1981 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel, and Chariots Of Fire, the Oscar-winning film about the 1924 Paris Olympics. As proof, from time to time a costume drama comes along that not only “catches on”, as he puts it, but affect both fashions and manners. That is to underestimate the visual appeal of the form and the sartorial impact it can have. … Julian Fellowes isn’t quite right when he says that what the characters in a costume drama are wearing makes no difference at all. As its case study, the article, written by Barry Didcock, considers two costume dramas from the early 1980s:
In an article primarily devoted to the new Julian Fellowes dramatic series Belgravia that started a few weeks ago on ITV, The Herald (Scotland) also considers the effect successful costume dramas may have beyond the world of entertainment.
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