Director Richard Laxton thought it was best that Cooke didn’t meet the real-life Joan before starting work, in case it would influence him, but he did read her memoir. “It’s not a documentary, it’s a drama,” he explains. Instead, Cooke drew on his own teen years in the 1980s, as well as how his mother dressed. “I immersed myself in the time, looking through the Getty Image archive, local newspapers from back then, old clothes catalogues like the Next Directory and 80s editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Debbie Harry, The Go-Gos, Kim Wilde and Toyah Wilcox were all on the moodboard.”
Cooke sourced around half of the pieces from hire houses, vintage shops (in particular The Dressing Room in Alfriston, where he found 80s YSL, Armani, Versace and Claude Montana) and made the rest himself, alongside Nicki Varney, who had worked with Turner previously on Game of Thrones.
The actress kept one of Cooke’s favourite looks, which she wore for her wedding day scene to antiques dealer and criminal mastermind, Boisie Hannington (played by Frank Dillane). “We knew she wasn’t the type of person that would wear a Lady Di kind of dress, so we created a suit and wide-brimmed hat inspired by Bianca Jagger,” he shares. “We paired it with a white and black striped organza blouse, which was a nod to Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, because Boisie takes her under his wing and teaches her. On the day that Sophie came out of the dressing room wearing it I had a tear in my eye.”