Downton Abbey: The Auction is being held online by Bonhams and runs between August 18 and September 16 with lots including a wedding dress worn by Michelle Dockery’s character Lady Mary Crawley and flapper-style harem pants seen on Jessica Brown Findlay in her role as Lady Sybil.
“We’ve been able to embrace and explore these really important sartorial steps forward, from 1912 to 1930,” the show’s costume designer Anna Robbins told The Telegraph newspaper.
“It’s a drama with such heart and it’s about family, but it also tells the story of our time … [Seeing the costumes again is] like being reunited with old friends.”
Charlie Thomas, group director for Private and Iconic Collections at Bonhams UK, said: “The extraordinary attention to detail is visible everywhere from Mrs Patmore’s handwritten recipes to the many revived costumes made with original vintage fabrics, like the famously ‘modern’ harem pants costume worked on by Lady Sybil in the first series.”
Lady Mary’s wedding dress is expected to fetch between £3,000 and £5,000, while an outfit seen on the late Dame Maggie Smith in her role as Violet Crawley has an estimate of £2,000 to £3,000.
Another dress going under the hammer is a green gown covered in gold lace worn by Lady Mary for a dinner in London in series six, and Robbins admits the frock – which has an estimated sale price of £1,000-£1,500 – is very special.
She told the publication: “I found about six metres of it [the lace], which is really rare to uncover – I’d never seen anything like it. I wasn’t completely sure what to do with it until I read the script of the scene.”
A wedding dress worn by Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith is also up for sale with an estimate of around £3,000 – £5,000.
As well as clothes, the auction also features around 120 props and pieces of furniture as well as the Grantham family car – a 1925 Sunbeam 20/60hp – which has an estimate of around £25,000 to £35,000.
Also for sale is a butler’s bell, a dinner gong, a signed script and a walking stick used by Maggie Smith’s character.
See all the pieces up for sale in the auction’s listing page.
