A while back I did a post on the BBC Musketeers costumes, and for a long time I've wanted to do a follow-up, more specifically about Sylvie's costumes in season 3. I am obsessive about these costumes. I can't adequately express how much I love this kind of costuming, which references a lot of European and Asian folk costume.
Something that the costume designers in the Musketeers do really well is Lived In costumes: I think part of the reason the main four guys, and Constance in season 1 look so great is because they look like they live and work in those clothes. They look like they chose them for both practicality and aesthetics, they move in them, wash and darn them. They are really successful extensions of the characters. (Can we have a round of applause for whoever did the weathering/aging/cheese grating of the costumes. Look at all that frayed fabric in the picture above!)
Incidentaly the background extras are also really really good for this:
Couldn't find a great photo but pause on any street scene and look how the extras are dressed. If anything they seem more period accurate than the main cast, eg. almost everyone is wearing a coif of a hat. And those hats look like they have been worn (sweated in).
(Now, the nobility - Louis, Anne, various royality, even Constance in further seasons - look like they're wearing costumes, rather than clothes. And to be fair maybe there is a point to that, after all, you don't want to see the King wearing a stained or darned doublet.)
Okay on to Sylvie!
This is my all-time favourite costume of hers. Confession: I have actually written to the costume designer of season 3 asking for info on the fabric of this skirt - specifically this open-thread-work-trim-thing:
If she gets back to me I will edit this post and share.
Interestingly I think the above skirt is actually two sort of half skirts, one with this striped blue/green linen/openwork fabric and the other a heavy wood-block printed linen (You can see this in the first photo of this post where she has the blue one hiked up.)
I may be wrong here but Sylvie's actual origins/hometown have never explicitly been mentioned. She is just a "war refugee". So I sort of understand the idea of giving her a peasant/folk costume. The brightness sets her apart from all the other characters. The collection of fabrics and patterns and prints and textures suggests she has travelled, lived amongst different cultures and people even, picked up what was discarded or gifted to her.
The scraps of fabrics and panels in her costume also suggest someone who has had to make do with piece of fabric rather than large amounts. She is thrifty and practical, along with stylish!
I'm really enjoying the lace on her chemise here. We often think of lace as only being made in white, but there's a long history of black and red lace in particular. In the 16th century Polish Cochineal which provided vibrant dye was a huge export from Eastern Europe, but would likely have been too expensive for someone like Sylvie. However by the 17th century the New World had opened up, and cheaper cochineal red dye was been imported from places like Mexico. So now you know.
It also shows up here on her sleeve. I'm not sure how historically accurate these sorts of bunched sleeves are (not at all, I suspect) but they do look pretty. Incidentally you can get a similar kind of shirt from brands like Voriagh in the good old year of 2026, which is heavily influenced by European folk costumes:
It's hard to see but it looks as though Sylvie's sleeve might also feature some lovely smocking. You can get a brilliant pattern from Folkwear to sew a smock like this. Or, like me, you can buy the pattern and be too intimidated to make it:
Here are some examples of folk costume that have surely influenced Sylvie's costume:
The above bodice from Marken, which is an island near Amsterdam, and due to it being an island it has quite a distinct culture and costume. I can't figure out how old it actually is, but a lot of folk costume is based on clothing from the 16th-19th C so it could be from any period really!
The above photo is from this blog which has lots of amazing photos of costumes from Viana do Castelo in Portugal (photos copyright Daniela Sunde-Brown.) Pleating! embroidery! Lace! GASP!
Another image of a Marken folk costume with this crossed tassle scarf that looks similar to Sylvie's.
This above is a sarafan, a traditional pinafore dress from Russia. Look at that pleating! Isn't it just delicious?! While Sylvie doesn't wear something specifically like this she does wear a pinafore dress. She's wearing one in the below photo, along with this gorgeous jacket:
The paneled skirt here is reminiscent of German trachten/dirndl skirts
You can see more of the jacket here. It appears to have detachable sleeves as she's not wearing them in this photo:
(Again look at those chemise sleeves, it does seem that there is smocking there at the elbows at least).
It appears that the jacket sleeves detach at the shoulder turning it into a vest/waistcoat, and also at the elbow. Apparently this is another super un-historically accurate detail that costume designers love, but I don't care at all because I love it too! Also notice how in the image with Constance and Elodie, Sylvie's lower sleeves are a completely different fabric, which I think is a great detail, as if she took them from another jacket or from a piece of clothing that was otherwise not wearable. A lot of used clothing would have been sold at markets and picked over and repurposed, so this is a great detail.
I adore this chemise. I'm trying to work out if this trim is all one piece or is made of lots of overlapping embroidered flower shapes (most likely). It also looks as if the costume department hand-painted it with this yellow dye which I think is so beautiful.
I can't find much about this image other than it appears to be from Slovakia, and is similar in many ways to Sylvie's cropped bodice (it also looks like an Indian choli)
I had almost entirely convinced myself that Sylvie wears a pocket on the outside of her skirt amongst all those sashes, but alas I appear to have been mistaken. Still it would have been great to see, something like this (from a traditional Italian folk costume, which again is so reminiscent of a lot of Sylvie's outfits):
Usually pockets were worn underneath skirts - which often tied at the sides so provided access - and on top of petticoats or underskirts. You can carry a LOT in these things and I really really love them.
Finally, I want it on record that it is a crying shame that we didn't see more of Sylvie's Going Away outfit:
I feel like Athos must have cashed-in some of his Comte assets once and for all here because Sylvie's cloak looks like it's velvet and possibly even fur-trimmed on the hood, and those sleeves are beautifully embroidered, and that dress/tunic is amazing. Both the chemise and the dress look very Ukrainian to me:
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If anyone has anything to add or any good Sylvie costume reference photos please jump in and let me know! I am an enthusiastic amateur/occasional paid costume person but I've tried to be as accurate as possible here, though I'm open to corrections if anyone has them. Let's talk costumes! Do you love Sylvie's as much as me?
