We spoke to Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer John Bright about his career – from opening Cosprop in a corner shop to his current exhibition Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop at the Fashion and Textile Museum.
As founder of Cosprop, please tell us more about this famous costume house
I decided to create my own costume house when my father wouldn’t allow me to become an actor. While at technical college learning a craft, I researched costume. By the time I left in 1961, I knew my stuff. After drama school and rep theatre, I founded Cosprop in 1965 in a tiny Gloucester Avenue shop, quickly expanding to more premises. We moved to Rochester Place, Camden, in 1980, later taking over the garage opposite. After 25 years there, we relocated to Holloway in 2005, where we’ve been ever since. From the start, our policy was to make costumes as close to real clothes as possible, so the stock remained universal. Along the way we have had to incorporate costumes which were out of this reality, but the stock still mainly consists of real clothes and copies of real clothes.
What can people expect to find if they visit Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop?
Visitors can expect to meet their favourite characters from some of the most popular and beloved film and television programmes of the past 60 years. This exhibition will take visitors inside the costume house – somewhere the public rarely sees – and understand more about how Cosprop works with a designer and an actor to create a character we believe is real.
Visitors will be able to experience at close hand the artistry that goes into making costumes worn by Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Nicole Kidman as Isabel Archer in the film adaptation of Henry James’s novel, The Portrait of a Lady, and Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen in the ’80s film Out of Africa. Film and television must take us on a journey, and we must believe that the people in the story are real; this is what great costume design is all about.
The exhibition features many costumes which have never been seen in public. Do you have any personal favourites?
The Room with a View costumes for actresses Maggie Smith and Helena Bonham Carter are special in different ways. Helena’s because it has its own back story – it was a half-made garment from the 1830s that I reshaped into an Edwardian blouse. And Maggie’s because Jenny (Jenny Beavan and John Bright designed costumes for the film) managed to find the perfect fabric for Maggie’s suit: a linen which holds its own no matter how many creases it acquires through sitting on dampened grass.
Apart from the Fashion and Textile Museum, tell us about your favourite museum, gallery or attraction in London
It must be the V&A South Kensington, where I have been learning from since the late 1950s (my art school training was held in the sculpture gallery).
I also very much like Sir John Soane’s Museum, followed by the National Portrait Gallery. However, I recognise we are blessed here in London with many other museums holding the most extraordinary items.
What do you like to do/where do you go to let your hair down after work?
Before Covid I enjoyed going to see the West End shows that we have been involved with but nowadays it’s more likely that I will go home and rest since I seem to have acquired a great many years of age.
If you could only eat dinner at one restaurant in London, where would you go? And what might you order?
The Wolseley – I would have the steak and chips. To me they are the best chips in London, together with the way they cook the steak. As a starter I would have the quails’ eggs.
Where is your favourite green space in the city?
St James’s Park, with all those enormous houses that open out to it, including St James’s Palace, which we have used as locations in Merchant Ivory films, such as The Golden Bowl.
Where do you like to shop?
John Lewis is my number one stop, but depending on what I need at the time, M&S for clothes and food, and B&Q for everything to do with the garden and planting at my children’s arts charity The Bright Foundation.
Is there a place in London that holds a special memory for you?
The place in London which holds a special memory for me is Wilton’s Music Hall, where I’ve seen several very special productions.
Finally, what makes London stand out from the rest of the world in your eyes?
Museums are mainly free, and the many and varied open spaces are all splendid in numerous ways, such as Hampstead Heath, Primrose Hill and Hyde Park.
Costume Couture: Sixty Years of Cosprop runs to 8 March 2026 at the Fashion and Textile Museum.
