Ghent exhibition explores history behind British costume dramas

The exhibition takes as its starting point the idea that period pieces do not have to be completely historically accurate. Movies can certainly be educative, but they are works of art and entertainment foremost, so a bit of embellishment in story or form is not only acceptable, it’s required.

The show is made up of costumes and clips from film and television series by the queen of period cinema: Britain. The county’s exalted status is hardly surprising, with centuries of dramatic royal history and novels by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens as source material.

The BBC TV series The White Queen features prominently – partially shot as it was in Ghent – and features memorable scenes of local hero Veerle Baetens playing Margaret of Anjou. The clothes worn in the scenes are on display on mannequins.

And so it goes through Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield and many more, culminating in Downtown Abbey, which gets an entire room to itself.

One could be forgiven for assuming that this is an exhibition about historical costuming, as these pieces are the exhibition’s focal point. But, curiously, no mention is made in the lengthy wall texts of the costumes. The exhibition is keen to talk about the real-life history behind the films, but studiously avoids its fashionable guests of honour. It’s an unfortunate lack of a link between what you are seeing and what you are reading.

And yet I did enjoy looking at the costumes. A highlight is one of the brilliantly bombastic 18th-century gowns worn by Keira Knightley in The Duchess (pictured). And viewing the clothes donned by the late Heath Ledger in Casanova and those worn in Sense and Sensibility by Alan Rickman, who died just three weeks ago, succeeded in bringing a lump to my throat.

Until 10 April at Sint-Pieters Abbey, Ghent