The costumes of "Chernobyl" is a documentary in itself

We see an apartment with low ceilings and wallpaper walls. An explosion surprises a couple in the middle of the night. She wears a white nightshirt with orange and green polyester flowers and he gets out of bed in shirt and underpants. We are in Pripyat and it is 1:23 am Moscow time, April 26, 1986, and one of the first sequences of Chernobyl.

The latest HBO success recover a tragedy that we never knew more than its owner. Before the accident, nobody knew this name. Later, we knew what the government of the Soviet Union wanted us to know. In addition, few Westerners traveled there in the 1980s. Just as we do not know what happened that unhappy day, so we do not know how lived those who affected them, how were their homes or the clothes that children wore every morning to go to school. school or women to go to work.

Chernobyl seeks to correct what the official version says little, late and badly. Chernobyl It's new, it looks new. Due to the ignorance of the theme and its rigorous staging, the series is still topical and should sweep the next Emmys and Golden Globes. He has already achieved the highest score in IMDB, surpbading Break the bad and Thread. He speaks with respect of something unfamiliar and does it from the point of view of the affected people whose stories are sometimes taken from Svetlana Alexievich's book. The Chernobyl voices.

One of the protagonists, Lyudmilla Ignatenko, played in Jessie Buckley's series, He lives today with his second disabled son, while his name appears in the media around the world. "This is not an accident series," summarizes Craig Mazin, creator, scriptwriter and executive producer on the podcast The Chernobyl podcastbut on "the cost of living"; Chernobyl He talks about lives like those of Lyudmilla, the blonde woman in the permanent that we see looking out the window in a bloomy nightgown.

Watch Chernobyl It's hard, that must have been too because there were few reliable documents at the time. This historical drama opted for a meticulous recreation of every detail, through the costumes designed by Odile Dicks-Mireaux. Mazin explained that this "obsession" was due to those who experienced the tragedy, many of whom are still alive. "We always knew that the series counted a lot for many people and It was important to tell the story accurately. I wanted those who have experienced this and that, even those who were in the control room that night, say about us: "they worried," says the creator in the podcast which accompanies each chapter. Dicks-Mireaux is worried.

The costumes are an exhibition of respect, documentation and creative strength. The series, starring Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson, features factory workers and their families, scientists, firefighters, health workers, soldiers, volunteers, biorobots and members. of the party apparatus. In the series are the so-called liquidators, the nearly 200,000 people who helped clean up and try to minimize the consequences of the explosion and the great heroes of this story. I had to dress these characters. Each of the people in whom they were inspired owed their veracity.

This British author of costumes like Brooklyn, An education and The faithful gardenerhe faced a daunting task. We had to settle in the 80s of a city, Pripyat, that we find today in Ukraine near the border with Belarus, built in the 70s to accommodate those who were working in the factory; He lived 50,000 people.

The challenge of this woman was, in her words, "to create a wardrobe as Soviet as possible". The Soviet of that time, which was missing for a few years for the dissolution of the USSR, was very different from the European. The series is raining praises both inside and outside Russia. Alena KH, a Belarusian writer living in Spain, acknowledges that she is "very well acclimatized and narrated, especially in the political aspect. People were as educated as confident. "

She, who has experienced the explosion of 100 km at the age of four, recognizes the accuracy of the staging and says that the series receives a very warm welcome in his country, even though his compatriots criticize A nuance. It is Pripyat and it is explained: "The average age of the inhabitants was 26. The factory workers who lived there were trained people who were making money. It was a modern city and in the streets, you could see clothes that were not in the rest of the country.Ukraine today has always been more present than others. "She considers that in the series "they added something of decadence" and "the garment is more of the USSR than that of the time of Pripyat, where You could see jeans, colorful shoes and clothes from abroad. "

In the 80s, they began to arrive in this region jeans used by the inhabitants themselves, buying on the markets of Bulgarian cowboys, sleeveless pullovers, ballerina-crabs and Moonboots, it was the pinnacle of modernity. Chernobyl does not reflect that and the reason can be a license for the story to fit the image that the West has from Russia at that time.

Russian journalist Slava Malamud has posted on Twitter a very neat thread highlighting the accuracy of the staging. He says it's "everything, and by that I mean, everything is incredibly authentic: the babushkas from the province speaking on the street, the kitchen utensils, the white uniforms of the children who celebrated the 1st of May – the tragedy occurred just before, the shoes, the hair … "Go further in stating that "this is not Chernobyl to be more realistic than any series or film about Russia, is that it's more realistic than anything the Russians have done for themselves, at least about it. And I do not exaggerate. "Even the way you paint your lips seems to be what it was.

Part of the responsibility for this authenticity comes from Dicks-Mireaux. She and her team were confronted with a survey conducted by the Minsk, Kiev, Moscow and Kaunas markets; They examined the Ebay Ukraine to find glbades similar to those of Leganov, they had access to the documentation of institutions such as Belarus Film Studios and met professionals who had sewn in the 80s.

A Lithuanian tailor of the time was the one who had told them that all the costumes were then made of polyester and wool. The designer recognizes that she "hates polyester" and that despite this, everything in the series is in this material. The director, Johan Renck, has given the following instruction: I wanted an ugly wardrobe. It freed, according to the designer, to have to create looks of stars. To Jared Harris, whom we know by Mad Men (at the antipodes of the ugly) asked what color he did not like and answered that beige. Dress in beige throughout the series. The color palette oscillates between all possible shades of beige, blue, brown and gray.

Dicks-Mireaux had to do a good job because she says her husband, who is Russian, is excited about the result. Chernobyl It's a series of uniforms because it's all about collective. The sacrifice for the good of the people It is one of the great themes of history. The cancellation of the individual in favor of the community, the no questioning of personal needs generates a company with little space to explore personal identity through clothing.

The costume team found a lot of documents on the uniforms. He found hundreds of suits for firefighters and pilots, including minor cases. The original uniforms of the liquidators, in reality, were about prosecution of fires to which improvised lead plates have been added, It was also necessary to invent on the fly masks to face the radiation, which never stopped being gas masks with visors more lead.

Once her job was done, her clothes had to be cleaned as much as possible and her underwear dried in the air; therefore, in the series are visible in some scenes. The production team manufactured rubber aprons and aluminum lead parts. He bought many new original uniforms that had never been used and he had to age them. "Wherever possible, everything is real," says Dicks-Mireaux. The children went to school with the same uniforms and backpacks as those in the series. Politicians dress in blue and gray jackets with big lapels and wide striped ties. Power and the working clbad had the uniform.

It is the women who unravel this aesthetic. They are also the most suspicious of the official version and those who believe least in lies. The character of Ignatenko, a sort of ray of light in the middle of the drama, wears hand-woven jackets (they sting on the other side of the screen) over flowered dresses colored. There is, in the first moments of the series, coquetry in the character; then he disappears and The colors that she wears fade until she has finished wearing a white coat.

The scientist Ulana Khomyuk, played by Emily Watson and one of the few fictional characters, She wears shirtless dresses while in school, wearing burgundy and red clothes, suede jackets and raincoats to go out into the street, and simple, authoritarian clothes when she has to face power. His glbades, like those of Legalov, help us define the time and place.

The children who lived in Pripyat contribute to the little joy who has the series. With their thick woolen cups and their uncoordinated coats and scarves they live unaware of what is happening a few miles away: we even see them, to our horror, playing with the radioactive rain as if it was snow. Alena KH says that these years did not include children 's clothes from abroad. Thus, "while the parents were modern, their children were Soviet".

At the beginning of the series, in the first episode, it's the only time we see color. That night, when Pripyat's neighbors watched the explosion as if it were an attraction, we see a man coming out to see the explosion with a sweat jacket (there is a detail of the modernity of the city); we see neighbors who grabbed the first knit they found and put it on the flower dress. The next day, while the government had not yet sounded the alarm, life was still the same: the neighbors were going to the market, the women walked in the park with white shoes.

This never happened again: 36 hours after the explosion, the inhabitants of Pripyat were evacuated and the city deserted. They were told that they would be back in a few days, although many had time to refuel and carry their bags without wheels. People believed in authority without questioning it. At that time pink, blue and green disappear and gray and beige are replaced. Never again have they seen flower dresses or sweat jackets Chernobyl nor to Chernobyl.