The research process was great fun and diving into the period had its many pleasures, such as looking at photography and watching films from the time before collecting all the clothes to make all the different wardrobes. “I’ve always liked Hollywood’s period of movies from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,” the costume designer said. She found the period fascinating especially postwar when there was so much change. “It was just a big thing in Europe, the Second World War, how it affected different people’s lives and the decisions they made. And I think Eilis’ life was affected by it. There was no work so people had to make much bigger and bolder decisions to leave their homes and families to be able to move forward.”
The lovely color palette happened as a result of instinct. It was a happy accident as Dicks-Mireaux didn’t set out to create a deliberate color palette. “I knew there would be more color in America, just generally and there were certain colors in the clothes and fabrics that weren’t around in Europe, for instance the wedding suit, that apricot suit when she gets married. You wouldn’t have been able to buy that in Europe at the time. So it was fun to use things that you wouldn’t be able to if you were doing just a British movie,” she explained.
The conversation about what Eilis would wear when she moved to America was one Dicks-Mireaux had early on with the director. She knew the character would change in America and eventually want to wear what Americans wore. It was a creative and interesting process to contrast the two worlds through Eilis’ journey there. “The challenge was to get her from one world into the other world and so by the end she was completely different. That was fun to do,” the costume designer said.