A hand-me-down gown, Lady Chatterley? Netf lix must be feeling the pinch
IS IT any wonder Lady Chatterley spends so much time in a state of undress if she’s otherwise reduced to wearing hand-me-downs?
Eagle-eyed viewers of Netflix’s new adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s sexually explicit tale have spotted that star Emma Corrin wears a frock that’s appeared in at least three other screen productions.
Corrin is not even the only former member of The Crown’s cast to have donned the dress, as Claire Foy and Gillian Anderson have both worn it in separate TV shows, too.
In the steamy new version of the controversial 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 26-yearold Corrin, who played Princess Diana in the Royal drama, is seen in the gown after the titular aristocrat flees to Venice, having become pregnant by gamekeeper Mellors.
Claire Foy, 38, who played the Queen in the first two series of The Crown, previously wore the same dress in an ITV programme called World War One: The People’s Story, which aired in 2014.
That same year it was worn by actress Daisy Waterstone, now 28, who played Clare Leighton in a 2014 movie version of the First World War memoir Testament Of Youth.
Then Ms Anderson, 54, who played Margaret Thatcher in The Crown, wore it in a 2020 episode of the contemporary Netflix comedy drama Sex Education in which she plays sex therapist Jean Milburn.
The dress’s varied screen career was spotted by users of the Recycled Movie Costumes website.
A spokesman said that some viewers might be surprised by the extent to which even bigbudget films relied on existing costumes, explaining: ‘Every production can’t make new costumes from scratch, it’s simply too complicated.
‘Having said that, it’s very surprising that the dress has appeared in period pieces as well as in a contemporary programme like Sex Education.
‘I think the pattern on it means it is very distinctive. It’s a dress that costume designers are likely to remember from one production to the next.’