Stephanie Collie, who has died from cancer aged 60, was an award-winning costume designer known for her expert attention to period detail, her work including creating the distinctive sartorial style of the menacing Tommy Shelby and his gang in the BBC’s hit series Peaky Blinders.
The violent drama, starring Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy and Joe Cole, was set against a background of working-class criminal goings-on in the 1910s and 1920s, and Stephanie Collie’s designs, inspired by police mugshots from the era, featured polished suiting and traditional fabrics: tweed coats, three-piece suits, penny-collared shirts, tie pins, cufflinks and, of course, flat caps – with peaks suitable for concealing razor blades.
As the gang prowled the cobbled streets of Birmingham over six seasons, its swaggering masculinity and formal, somewhat dressy costumes sparked a major fashion trend, David Beckham and Guy Ritchie becoming early adopters of the show’s gangster aesthetic. By the beginning of the final season, Moss Bros reported a marked rise in searches on its website for flat caps, up by 110 per cent, and three-piece suits, up by 250 per cent.
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