To belt or not to belt?
That was the question bedeviling Annie Symons, the costume designer of Amazon’s “My Policeman,” when it came to outfitting Harry Styles. In the film, streaming Nov. 4, the pop star plays Tom, a gay constable forced into a loveless marriage in 1950s Brighton. And, you see, it turns out that police officers at the time didn’t wear belts, which was a little bit of a problem for Symons.
“I needed Tom to look young, svelte and handsome and prior to introducing a belt, policemen looked a bit like navy blue tree trunks,” says Symons. “I had raging arguments with the so-called experts, but ultimately I decided to leave all the academics shaking their heads and the belt went on.”
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Symons used wool twill from a military fabric supplier to manufacture the uniform. She also brightened the color of the outfit, deviating from what was technically correct to the period.
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“The original uniforms were almost black,” says Symons. “It didn’t work on screen. I felt it would be better if they were bluer. It gave Harry an aura that made him seem more attractive and youthful and less authoritarian. When you have a young, handsome actor like Harry, you work with that. You don’t run away from it.”
She also has no problem using historical license when it comes to creating costumes. “I approach it emotionally and visually,” says Symons. “That’s the most important thing.”
Styles is a fashion icon, whose off-screen, slightly androgynous outfits are on the bleeding edge of haute couture. But Symons says he was up for anything she wanted to outfit him in during shooting.
“We weren’t working with Harry Styles, the pop superstar,” says Symons. “We were working with Harry Styles, the young actor.”
“My Policeman” unfolds at an interesting period in British history. Rationing, a staple of life during World War II and its aftermath, was just winding down, but the country’s economy had been devastated by the conflict and most people were still struggling financially. Symons made a point of only giving Styles’ character Tom, as well as Patrick (David Dawson), his museum curator lover, and Marion (Emma Corrin), the woman he marries, only a few outfits.
“People didn’t have a lot of money then, but they were just beginning to relax,” says Symons. “They took a lot of pride in their clothing, but they didn’t have a lot of it. It wasn’t like the U.S.”
To make sure the outfits were period-appropriate, Symons consulted old Pathe newsreels, as well as her family photos and those of Michael Grandage, the film’s director. She was particularly interested in swimwear from that era. In “My Policeman,” Tom and Marion meet at the beach and their relationship intensifies after he agrees to teach her to swim.
“There was a weight to the bathing suits of that time and a heaviness,” says Symons. “There was a modesty about it as well. It’s not evidently sexual. It is quite coy in a way.”
To create Styles’s navy swim trunks, the costumer used a heavy crepe silk and experimented with several different colors.
“We needed something that wouldn’t be warped by all the chlorine in the pool,” says Symons. “We did a lot of experimentation with buckets of bleach before we found the perfect fit.”
And there was no point in trying to find a vintage bathing suit. “They all look a bit ropy,” says Symons. “We needed something that looked new and fresh, not tired and exhausted.”