James Keast, who has died aged 63 of cancer, was one of British television’s most revered costume designers, who brought colour and style to period dramas, from The House of Eliott and Mr Selfridge to Victoria and Belgravia, but whose flair, imagination and technical skills were also used to great effect in contemporary series.
For Luther (2010-19), he gave Idris Elba’s obsessive detective a distinctive coat and tie. “Putting Idris into a suit just makes him look like James Bond,” explained Keast. “I needed to find something that would show Idris’s shape, without making him look like a male model, hence the long coat.” Inspired by the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov, whose photographs are often monotone with a striking splash of primary colour, Keast added a red tie. “Without the tie, he’d almost blend into his gloomy surroundings.”
For Peter Flannery’s epic nine-part drama Our Friends in the North (1996), Keast followed fashion from the 1960s right up to date in the story of four Newcastle friends’ lives and the politics and policing throughout that period.
In Mr Selfridge (2013-16), a period drama set in the first two decades of the 20th century, he dressed Jeremy Piven, playing the department store entrepreneur, in the formal style of the time but added waistcoats and neckties to suggest his “showman” style.
Meanwhile, Keast developed the look of Harry Selfridge’s lover, the showgirl-turned-serious actor Ellen Love (Zoe Tapper), from down-at-heel – with her clothes looking second-hand – to wealthier as she becomes the face of the London store. Other characters’ costumes conveyed their class differences, the affluent adorned in silks and satins, with detail such as lace flowers and beading, and shop assistants in wools, cottons and linen.
Keast’s final project was this year’s series of Belgravia, written by Julian Fellowes, following his success with Downton Abbey. It stepped back to the very distinctive fashions of the early 19th century. “We start in 1815 and, as we go through the 20s and 30s, the waistline drops and the skirts get bigger,” explained Keast, who also added corsets and up to four heavy petticoats under each skirt. Tamsin Greig, as the middle-class matriarch Anne Trenchard, spoke of how each of Keast’s “incredible costumes told their own individual story” about the person and the place they found themselves in.
Photography books and catalogues of paintings in art exhibitions were often part of his research – he recalled visits to the theatre as a child being like “looking at a live painting”. Then he made, hired or bought costumes, sometimes from vintage shops, though always aware of budgetary constraints.
When he worked on the first three episodes of Victoria in 2016, his first challenge was to duplicate the coronation cloak to be worn by Jenna Coleman in her role as the new monarch. “If I’d had to have that embroidered, it would have cost me about £20,000,” said Keast, “so I found somebody that would photograph and laser-print the images on the fabric. Then, I found another person that could, with a machine, embroider over the top of the laser-printed images to give a bit of 3D.”
Keast’s love for the screen was ignited by watching late-night horror movies on TV as a child. He was born in Armadale, West Lothian, to Eileen (nee McGuinness) and Joseph Keast, a civil servant, and attended St Mary’s academy, Bathgate.
His ambition to be a painter led him to Edinburgh School of Art, but his interest turned to costume design and after graduating he joined the costumiers Berman’s and Nathan’s, in London, making and fitting garments as a costume assistant on films such as Death on the Nile (1978), Clash of the Titans (1981) and Victor Victoria (1982).
Then he joined the BBC on a trainee scheme, first working as a costume designer on the 1987 series of Bergerac. He followed this with the BBC film Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) and the second run of the 1920s dressmaking saga The House of Eliott, in 1992.
Keast’s first success after turning freelance came with the writer Jimmy McGovern’s bitingly topical ITV drama-documentary Hillsborough (1996), about the football stadium disaster.
The range of his work in television was demonstrated by his ability to hop between different eras. From 18th- and 19th-century costume dramas such as Aristocrats (1999), about the Duke of Richmond’s four daughters, he went to adaptations of early-20th-century novels, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (2001) and John Buchan’s The 39 Steps (2008), and on to two biopics about recent television history, The Curse of Steptoe (2008), reflecting on a classic sitcom, and Hughie Green, Most Sincerely (2008), about the philandering quiz-show host.
Keast won best costume design awards from Bafta for the gangland drama The Long Firm (2004) and the Royal Television Society for the director Peter Kosminsky’s TV film Warriors (1999), about UN peacekeepers struggling to return to civilian life in the 1990s after seeing the horrors of ethnic cleansing. Desperate Romantics (2009), a tale of the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists, was among five other productions to earn him Bafta nominations.
He was put to the test in an unexpected way when, during the filming of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (2009) for the BBC, a fire destroyed the principal costume truck, containing 750 garments worth £320,000 and his own prized collection of period jewellery, including cufflinks that had belonged to Laurence Olivier. He sourced new fabric and had costumes re-made within 24 hours.
Keast is survived by Rodney Gibson, his partner of 37 years, and his seven brothers and three sisters.
• James Andrew Keast, costume designer, born 11 March 1957; died 11 July 2020
