Total Bad Taste
The epitome of bad taste?
What is ‘bad taste’ if taste is so very personal? How do you make something to be in bad taste whilst still performing a function? What are the levels of bad taste that you can dial up or down? These are all excellent questions that surely must have been flying around BBC costume designer Pat Godfrey’s head when she was tasked with designing the Sixth Doctors distinctive and eye watering costume from Doctor Who that first appeared in 1984. The producer of the series, John Nathan Turner, wanted something in ‘total bad taste’ that also incorporated elements of the past doctors costumes. It also had to be comfortable, hard wearing and maybe also commercial. (JNT loved it if a costume had a commercial element that could be taken advantage of.) Poor Pat Godfrey was sent back again and again and again as her designs where just too tasteful!
Any designer is trained to make a garment tasteful, desirable or attractive so it really went against the grain somewhat. But what was created is so distinctive. It’s immediately identifiable and not just with the series but with that particular central character and period in fashion history. A complete original, a total one off and utterly unique.
The colour blind 80’s
During the mid 1980’s, you would be able to find style elements of this costume on the high street. The neck tie or cravat is very like the pussy bows worn with blouses of the period. The bright colours of the coat were still very fashionable and the high street was bursting with colour at the time and high waisted trousers were the norm for most people. What makes it all so unique is the way it is put together. Despite the immediate shock of looking like a tailors swatch book sewn together, it is very carefully considered, designed and placed. Most of the plain wools were from H E Box (and still available to this day) with others from John Lewis. At the time the much loved department store had the best haberdashery in London and a regular haunt of BBC costume designers. Its range and quantity was unrivalled but sadly this is now the stuff of memory. Pillow Ticking fabric was used to make the trousers and certain details on the coat, dyed bright yellow of course. Traditionally this fabric is very hard wearing and fairly cheap too, great for garments and it dyes easily as well.
It’s Design Darling
The colour pallet of the coat is mostly red, pink and purple, with splashes of green and yellow to make it come alive. The trousers are matched to the coat cuffs, also fabrics on the original waistcoat were included in a subtle detail on the back vent of the first coat. The shirt has a beautifully considered placing of red gingham fabric used on the cuffs, collar stand, under collar and button stand. Many of these items are very wearable in their own right. The shirt would be comfortable in many wardrobes (with the omission of the red question marks perhaps) and the waistcoat too has a super design. It included a scoop neck, bound pockets and buttons grouped unusually in two’s but the hidden detail are the waistcoats own tails! They were all made by professional shirt makers and tailored with extra length to the body of the shirts to keep warm on cold location shoots.
The Coat
Even the coat has a place in your wardrobe. Bear with me on this one! Although designed on a somewhat traditional frock coat from the 19th century, it has design elements that make it quite unique. The front lapels are extended all the way down the front of the coat, this was a deliberate decision to lift the design out of any particular period piece. The coat is fitted to the waist and has a lovely generous skirt section that really flows when you’re saving the universe at high speed. It’s panelled in different colours and it really shows of the cut of the garment. No two colours are touching each other and the placement of the different elements were carefully thought through and balanced. Notice also, that there are no buttons and no button holes. A lot of period frock coats do have buttons and button holes, some are designed not to be closed and others have button holes to be decorative. But the sixth doctors sensational suit, has neither and is not designed to button up. It makes you wonder what he would do if he got chilly. But imagine the same coat but in a different colour way, maybe a collection of coordinated tweeds and wools, or a tonal colour pallet like blue, black and grey or darker plum and red tones. I would certainly wear one.
Get the Look
You will find many a well dressed cosplayer and fan at events, conventions and even doing their shopping sporting this garish garb. Tailors and sewers are now offering the outfit and its various elements and accessories for sale, and its quite a task I can tell you. Everything has to be specially made or designed and nothing was bought ‘off the rack’. In my own shop you will find some of his Cravats and watch chains for sale. Others offer the whole look, all bespoke made of course, and all one offs. Some clever chaps have gone to the lengths of having fabrics re woven to achieve maximum accuracy, but what is fun I think is to make it your way. Take the inspiration, the ‘look’ and make it your own way. Make it in a different colour or introduce new elements, fabrics or designs. Just because it comes from a TV series doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place in your everyday wardrobe.
The legacy
This masterpiece of costume design does have an odd place in popular culture. Some love it and some hate it. Divided opinion is part of what makes these things such fun, but it seems the design has had something of a resurgence in popularity in recently years. A reassessment of Colin Bakers time in the TARDIS and of the programme during this period has brought lovers of bad taste everywhere out into the star light. During the 80’s and 90’s the costume came into quite a lot of criticism, even from the the shows then star. It was sometime in the early 2000’s that the then former producer, when pressed on the subject, admitted the costume was a mistake. I think time has been very kind to Pat Godfrey’s work (and that of Ken Trew who tweaked it for his second season) as have the fans new and old. One thing is for sure, you cant miss him in that outfit!
Images of original costume from the Grahame Flynn Collection
