From Arthur Conan Doyle to New York City's "Elementary": The Costume Design of Holmes and Watson.

(This post is spoiler-free for CBS's Elementary.)

Like many Sherlock Holmes fans I had mixed feelings about the BBC's plan to make a modern-era Holmes adaptation, and was once again rather doubtful when CBS announced that they were going to film what sounded worryingly like Sherlock: New York City edition. But since BBC Sherlock won me over within about five minutes of its first episode, I decided to keep an open mind when it came to Elementary. I can understand people who don't like the idea of a US-set Holmes (particularly one that exists within the strictures of an episodic crime procedural), but I have no worries whatsoever regarding the casting of Lucy Liu as Watson. If Holmes and Watson are still platonic friends -- which the Elementary showrunners have already assured us will be the case -- then in a 21st century setting, it shouldn't matter that Watson is a woman. Will this be a close adaptation of Conan Doyle's vision? Probably not, but it isn't as if the existence yet another Holmes can retroactively damage any of the hundreds of other versions we have to choose from.

The PLAGIARISM SCARF in action.

I was impressed to notice that even though all we've seen of Elementary so far are a few publicity shots and (in some cases, anyway) screener DVDs of the pilot episode, Holmes and Joan Watson already have very distinctive costuming styles. Most of the costume-related fan-commentary I've seen so far, though, is people expressing irritation at the apparent similarities between BBC Sherlock's famous coat and scarf, and the costume worn by Jonny Lee Miller during some scenes in the Elementary pilot. The two outfits are, I suppose, quite similar, but in general Elementary Holmes' styling couldn't be more different from BBC Sherlock's. And it's worth noting that Elementary takes place during autumn/winter in New York, so a thick coat and scarf aren't exactly out of place.

More of Sidney Paget's Holmes illustrations can be found here.

In relation to the clothes worn by Holmes in Conan Doyle's books, the costuming in BBC Sherlock is surprisingly faithful. In his original iteration as a Victorian gentleman, Holmes was habitually neat and well-dressed whenever he was outside 221B Baker Street. His most memorable outfits are the floor-length housecoat he wears at home, the iconic deerstalker/tweed suit outfit, and the sleek black 19th-century suits he wears most of the rest of the time. The perception of Holmes as a conservatively-dressed, dapper urbanite was further publicised by Sidney Paget's accompanying illustrations, which live on to this day as the "real" visualisation of classic Sherlock Holmes and generally show Watson as a typical Victorian gentleman dressed in three-piece suits and long overcoats.

More info regarding BBC Sherlock's coat can be found here.

BBC Sherlock's costumes are very uniform, with Benedict Cumberbatch invariably wearing dark trousers and shirts tailored to button-popping tightness around his skinny frame. Much like "canon" Holmes, he's soberly and expensively dressed, with the iconic Belstaff coat serving to give him extra dramatic flare during all those scenes where he swoops around like a cross between Dracula and a flamingo. BBC Watson, on the other hand, looks rather different to his Victorian namesake, mostly because he's played by Martin Freeman. Freeman is short, middle-aged, and harmless-looking, and the costume designers evidently took this into account when picking out his clothes. Watson's characterisation is a bit of a free-for-all when it comes to TV and film adaptations because his role in the books is usually that of a narrator or foil for Holmes' info-dump speeches, meaning that his canon personality is less fleshed-out than Holmes'. BBC Sherlock's Watson is often underestimated by people who aren't Sherlock, characterised as a seemingly "normal" and friendly everyman who hides his adrenaline-junkie nature. And Martin Freeman's boring, jumper-wearing exterior supports that.

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In my opinion, the most canonical versions of Holmes and Watson would be Jeremy Brett's pitch-perfect Holmes from the 1980s-90s Granada TV series, and Jude Law's Watson from the Guy Ritchie films. Granada Holmes is widely regarded to be the most faithful adaptation of the short stories, and Brett himself was so obsessively devoted to canonical accuracy that he more-or-less acted himself into the grave. And he wasn't just a great actor -- he looked the part as well, with his slicked-back hair, aquiline nose, and excitable mannerisms. Brett's two Watsons, however, had more in common with the bumbling Jam Watsons of the WWII-era Basil Rathbone movies than with the character Conan Doyle set out to write. Jude Law's Watson is my favourite because he's Action Watson. When the Holmes stories first became popular, Conan Doyle was rather nonplussed to discover that readers far preferred the eccentric, misanthropic Holmes to the more classically heroic Watson, and public opinion has never really swung Watson's way since then. Upstanding, handsome, and a war hero, Watson is a good Victorian role-model but is nowhere near as intriguing a protagonist as Holmes.

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Robert Downey Jr's Holmes looks nothing like canon Holmes, but that doesn't really matter because his adventures take place in some kind of Victorian-adjacent steampunk universe rather than in the "real" world of Arthur Conan Doyle. It wouldn't be in-character for RDJ's Holmes to wear a sombre black suit, just as if canon Holmes dressed like RDJ then he'd be summarily banned from every gentleman's club in London. The costume design in the Guy Ritchie movies is far closer to the kind of character-led costuming you see in present-day movies than the costuming of a period drama, but dressing an actual modern-era Holmes is a completely different situation yet again. It's important to remember that in the 19th century, people had far fewer clothing options. Holmes and Watson are middle/upper-class men, so they wore suits and hats. Every day. Victorian standards of neatness were different from our own so while we know that Holmes was rather vain, we can assume that Watson still looked far more formal than most people we see today. In 21st-century London or NYC you can get away with wearing pretty much anything, so there can never really be an "accurate" modern version of Holmes and Watson's rigidly conventional Victorian wardobe.

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For example, if we characterise a modern Holmes as being a down-on-his-luck Oxbridge toff who follows the same basic life story of canon Holmes -- ie, posh upbringing; Chemistry at Cambridge; casual drug use and possible split from his family; development of his career as a consulting detective -- then we might well arrive at the character of BBC Sherlock, whose limited but high-quality wardrobe is very similar to that of canon Holmes. But in the 21st century, men are no longer required to wear a uniform of tailored suits and coats, so we already know that Sherlock's clothes are very much a personal choice rather than something he wears because it's the only conceivable option. You could just as easily characterise a modern Holmes as an academic or nerd (which he is), and have him wearing a pocket-protector or sloganised t-shirts. Or have him, as a consulting detective, wear outfits informed by the long tradition of noir crime-fighters from the past 80 years of film and television. Likewise, John Watson the rugby-playing ex-army surgeon could be a protein-powder addict who wears nothing but Adidas.

The thing is, I kinda love the costuming in Elementary. Last night I was listening to fan podcast The Slash Report review the Elementary pilot, and they expressed an opinion that I've already seen from quite a few people: that Elementary's Holmes and Watson have terrible fashion sense, and/or that Holmes looks like a hipster. To my eyes, it's more like Holmes has no fashion sense -- as in, he literally does not care what he wears -- and Joan Watson is actually quite stylish. Of course, Joan's collection of loose, drapey skirts and cardigans would look absolutely terrible on most people who don't have the build and cheekbones of Lucy Liu, but such is life when it comes to personal style. Personally, I love her Matrix-esque fishnet sweater. And Holmes doesn't so much resemble a hipster as the archetype of what hipsters dream of being: someone who cares so little about clothes that they accidentally end up wearing an ironically-ugly sloganised t-shirt. The only real hipster-fashion moment in the pilot was when he pulled on a waistcoat over his t-shirt (ugh), although the way I interpreted that was that he was literally just putting on any old crap until he felt like he'd reached the optimum quantity of layers for facing the great outdoors.

Regarding Jonny Lee Miller's costumes, it's incredibly rare for a main character to look like this on mainstream American television. His clothes are wrinkled, shapeless, and look like they probably came from a bargain-bin. In real life you see people dressed like this every day, but in TV-land even the costuming decisions that are used to signify poverty or "bad dress-sense" are often coded rather than truly realistic. Joan's style is pretty much set out from step one: classy, with a lot of neutral tones and chunky, flowing knitwear. Sherlock's is a little trickier because in the pilot he's only just out of rehab, and gives every impression of wearing whatever he just pulled out of a bag of second-hand clothes he had on the floor. I'll be interested to see if this develops into hard-and-fast "he just doesn't give a crap" costume characterisation later on in the series, or if they decide to go the classic Holmesian route of him being a master of disguise.

Oh, and one final thing? I love Elementary Holmes and Watson's coincidental matching plaid outfits.

Postscript: I've written previously on the costumes and set-design of BBC Sherlock, and if you want to read something more in-depth on the costumes of Guy Ritchie's Holmes movies, Clothes On Film has written about both.