New Work for Season Two Of PBS’ Mercy Street

When costume designer Amy Andrews Harrell contacted me to create a second corset for the American Civil War drama, Mercy Street, we began a dialog about what the corset should look like. In order to more effectively communicate, we assembled a Pinterest album full of photos of 1860’s era corsets in museum collections around the world. Amy had a particular mauvish brown moire fabric in mind and I was eager to try out a unique heavily embroidered 1860’s corset design based on a beautiful pale blue silk extant piece in the Victoria and Albert museum. The corset was created for the character of Anne Hastings, played by actress Tara Summers.