Crucial to bringing this tactile, ravishing romance to life is Grace Snell, the double British Independent Film Award-winning costume designer behind The Souvenir (Parts I and II), The Outrun, and Pillion, who brings a certain freshness to the Austenian formula: pared-back silhouettes, a more muted colour palette, natural dyes, antique fabrics, hand-sewn frocks, muddy boots and a glorious undoneness, which brings to mind Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights.
I first met Snell a year ago, on the set of Sense and Sensibility, in the sumptuous interiors of West Wycombe Park, where the cast were shooting a London ball scene. (The sisters decamp to the capital in the film’s second half.) Then, many months later, she provided costumes that were styled with straight-off-the-runway confections in Edgar-Jones’s British Vogue cover shoot for the August 2026 issue. Now, ahead of the movie’s arrival in theaters in the UK on September 25 (it opens in the US on October 16), she returned to speak to me over Zoom, laying out the unexpected historical and contemporary references on her mood board, Austenian couples dressing, and the need to move beyond bonnets.
Vogue: This version of Sense and Sensibility is set at the end of the 18th century. Can you talk me through some of your starting points?
Grace Snell: Loosely speaking, it’s set between 1795 and 1799—we left it a bit ambiguous. I went to Sands Films in Rotherhithe—they have an amazing archive of paintings from the time. One I came across was Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence, from 1794. That would go on to influence Marianne’s pink sash [which Margaret eventually inherits]. Also on my mood board was Henry Fuseli. I’d seen an exhibition at the Courtauld, and it was amazing: “Fuseli and the Modern Woman: Fashion, Fantasy, Fetishism.” It’s these amazing, shocking drawings of contemporary women [in the late-18th and early 19th century]. The silhouettes, shapes, the fetishized headdresses, the very revealing busts, and more high-fashion elements—that was inspiring for Fanny Dashwood, Mrs. Jennings, and the people at the ball [in London], where everything is a bit intimidating for the sisters. We also worked with a dress historian, Eleanor Houghton. I only had nine weeks to prep for this film, so she assisted me with research. I also went and viewed some original garments in Cosprop, and I had some more modern references on my mood board, too.
Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence, 1794.
Photo: Francis G. Mayer/Getty Images
Two Courtesans at a Dressing Table (1805-06) by Henry Fuseli at the Courtauld, London. Photograph: Private collection
