David Smith

Yeah, what is the costume made of? What sorts of materials?  

The white shirt is made from linen. The doublet, hose and jerkin are made from a gold damask and lined with linen. The jewels are all made out of glass jewels and rhinestones and glass pearls. Yeah, the slashing on the doublet and on the sleeves are made from linen and the slashing on the hose are made from white silk. The gown itself is made from cotton velvet and lined with sable fur and inside the gown is lined with black linen. The hat is made from black velvet. The hat pin is a gold-plated broach with enamelled red resin with a gold Madonna and Jesus, which is an identical copy of the hat pin that he wears in the portrait. The feathers on the brim of the hat are made from ostrich plume and the shoes are made from natural tan leather. All the fabrics and all of the materials are all natural materials, so there’s no polymers or nylon within the outfit, it’s all natural. And the outfit was constructed using a pattern that would have been used to make Henry’s clothing, and it was made the same way Henry’s clothing would have been assembled by actually hand-stitching it. There’s no machine stitching at all.

I mean, how do you wash it? I suppose it goes to the dry cleaners, right?

So, washing the outer clothing, if I was to even get it dry cleaned, I would have to unpick all of the jewels and trim. So basically, make the doublet bare and then it would go to the dry cleaners, and then I’d have to re-stitch and reassemble every single jewel and pearl, and each pearl is individually sewn on, so if a pearl does fall off, the rest of the pearls will stay.

It’d be a long process then.

It’s a very, very long process, so the best thing to do is just to give it a quick Febreze. The only thing that is washed is the linen shirt. So the shift is washed and my nether hose, which are effectively just like stockings.

Right, yeah, yeah, makes sense.