Vintage Marianne
The highly anticipated TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s awardwinning book Normal People has been just the thing to light up our lockdown viewing and to get us thinking about life, love, sexuality and growing up. What I have been fascinated to see unfold is Marianne’s wardrobe. Even though the show hasn’t aired all of its episodes on RTE 1 yet (while others can binge watch on Hulu and BBC3), Marianne has already been lauded as “the first great millenial style icon,” by the Guardian, The Irish Times, Vogue and Grazia magazine, and it’s all down to the work of costume designer Lorna Marie Mugan, who has previously worked on Peaky Blinders and Vita And Virginia.
Mugan’s look captures how modern women dress right now, there’s no other way to describe it other than with the dreaded phrase, a mix of vintage and high street, but it’s a mix we all know and a lot of us wear. However, I think it does more than sum up the zeitgeist, it offers a look that is very Dublin. Maybe its how the locations and the costumes work together in each scene, Marianne’s velvet jackets, leather satchels and classic tweed coats as she walks the cobbles of Trinity and the 1940s and 1950s vintage dresses she wears to Dublin house parties and in her Georgian townhouse.
Quoted in Grazia Lorna Marie says, “Realism was really key for this project, because [Sally Rooney] speaks in a very truthful tone. I felt that the costumes had to be very real, very intimate, and very honest.” That honesty can be seen in the very real Dublin places she sourced the costume like Jenny Vander and Harlequin Vintage – two of Dublin’s best loved vintage stores. I think its totally Marianne, and its totally Dublin. What do you think? Do you think her wardrobe captures a certain Dublin style?
Looking to get the Marianne look? Let Jenny Vander and The Harlequin be your first port of call…
