Silent Stories: The Language of Style from the Old Masters to Bridgerton
Standing before a painting is intimidating. You see and, yet, you also don’t. Details of questionable importance fight for your attention. Should you examine the figure, study the composition, or direct your attention to the landscape? Should you, perhaps, contemplate the sitter’s gaze and uncover their story? Where should you begin?
I have an answer: start with the clothing.
Clothing is a silent language. From the dawn of the Renaissance, it has given voices to voiceless sitters, inviting them to express not just their status but also their personal stories. Bronzino’s (1503-1572) portraits habitually place their sitters against laconic backgrounds, reducing the revelation of their identity to their fashion. It is no wonder, then, that the first Grand Duke of Tuscany stands proud in military armour, denoting his territorial wins, while his wife remains clothed in moda alla spagnola, like her zimarra, to convey her Spanish lineage and present herself as the finest thread between the Spanish nobility, the Habsburgs, and the Medici.
Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici, c. 1550, oil on panel, 65.2 x 94.8 cm. Florence, Uffizi Gallery
Agnolo Bronzino, Portrait of Eleonora da Toledo, c. 1562, oil on poplar panel, 77.8 x 58.7 cm. London, The Wallace Collection
John Singer Sargent’s (1856-1925) women, too, pose against bland backgrounds, speaking only through the sheen of their silks. Madame X doesn’t even have to talk to provoke us; her revealing dress has got it (un)covered.
John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X, 1883–1884, oil on canvas, 235 x 110 cm. New York City, The MET
Beyond painting, the role of fashion as a visual language extends into modern media, where TV shows employ clothing as an essential tool for character development. In 2024, it is difficult to imagine a show that speaks the language of fashion better than Bridgerton. Whether consciously or not, the series turns its characters’ wardrobes into visual extensions of their identity, paralleling paintings and entire artists’ oeuvres to say what screen time omits. Most articles discussing Bridgerton’s fashion point out its costumes are historically inaccurate, which is a fact; but they don’t dive into the artistic comparisons that may be drawn to shed more light on the plot. Many omit the fact that as Daphne comes of age, for instance, her wardrobe trades the pastel tones and flowy fabrics of youth for the darker hues and heavier materials of womanhood. Just two seasons later, Penelope undergoes the same transformation, denoting her coming-of-age and increasing seriousness. Eloise, too, signals her looming maturity through the length of her dresses, which become progressively longer throughout the series, reaching the ground the second she’s invited to step into her first debutante’s ball.
Yet, as much as Bridgerton’s costumes reinforce the status, personality, and evolution of its protagonists, they play an even grander role in the image construction of its secondary characters. Costumes transform into a silent language. They give characters like Edwina, Cressida, and Lady Danbury a way to express their emotions, experiences, and personalities without having to take up valuable screen time. Just as French Impressionism, then, it seems that Bridgerton uses style, setting, and self-presentation to let its silent characters speak. Studying style therefore becomes the key to revealing characters’ interiority, namely their private dramas, tensions, and insecurities–along with all that remains unsaid.
That brings us to the curious case of Cressida, who may best be understood through comparisons to Caravaggio’s (1571-1610) body of work–his oeuvre…
As one of the most complex characters of the Ton (fashionable society), Cressida oscillates between victim and villainess—a tension seamlessly sowed into her style. Echoing the drama and theatricality of Caravaggio’s paintings, her clothes are over-the-top, with frills, flowers, and balloon sleeves begging for attention. They take up space and make her big, compensating for the way her family has belittled her throughout her entire life. In this way, they expose her desire to be noticed and picked—a desire that only grows the longer she remains on the marriage market.
But it isn’t just her clothes that invite interpretation. Her elaborate hairstyles, too, have a story to tell. In “Forces of Nature,” Season Three, snippets of Cressida’s backstory are finally revealed, rendering her manipulations a means of survival rather than a game she enjoys playing. This, in turn, gives her character complexity. The implication? She is a villainess by necessity—and not by choice. Her Caravaggesque hairdo is key to this reading. With strands of hair coiled into snake-like sections, Cressida evokes Caravaggio’s portrait of Medusa, a largely misunderstood mythological character. Although she is commonly perceived as a murderous villainess, Medusa was once an innocent maiden who fell prey to a conniving man—Poseidon—and was punished for it. Her petrifying nature was not a product of her making; but an unjust punishment from angry Athena. Cressida’s meanness is also not an extension of her personality; but a shield she wears to cope with her parents’ manipulations and self-interested orchestrations, which would push her into a “profitable” match with little-to-no consideration for her wellbeing or happiness. And, as Cressida is silenced into submission, it is only her clothes that hold the power to communicate her reality through allusions to canonical art.
Caravaggio, Medusa, c. 1597, oil on canvas, 60 x 55 cm. Florence, Uffizi Gallery
Cressida’s Medusa-inspired hairstyle from Season 3, Episode 3 – “Forces of Nature”
While Edwina Sharma poses a stark contrast to Cressida, she, too, speaks through costume. Throughout the series, Edwina establishes herself as the epitome of purity, naivety, and vulnerability—qualities woven into her Alma-Tademaesque outfits.
Across canvases like A Coign of Vantage, among others, the Dutch painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema depicts delicate flowers, graceful draperies, and gentle women, all to evoke a deep yearning for love and beauty. This same yearning penetrates Edwina’s costumes and, in turn, character. Embroidered with the symbolism of classical art, Edwina’s style expresses her innocence through the pastel pinks and purples of her dresses; her naivete and girliness through the frills of her gowns; and her longing for beauty, fluidity, and idealism through the gentle curves of her jewellery. Yet, Edwina’s ache for an idealised existence may not manifest outwardly, for it denotes a part of her that would make her vulnerable amid the competitive realities of the Ton. It may only belong in an idealised reality, like Alma-Tadema’s visions of peace and antique decadence. Because of that, it is no surprise when her wedding–otherwise staged quite like the banquet from Alma-Tadema’s The Roses of Heliogabalus—marks her ultimate disappointment. Just like Edwina’s, Alma-Tadema’s visions may only belong in an idealised world. When manifested in a society that prizes pragmatism over passion, they are bound to lead to disappointment and disillusionment. Her (historically inaccurate) white wedding dress, too, reinforces that, displaying her desire for idealism over the cold practicalities of life. Once again, as in Cressida’s case, Edwina’s clothing poses the ultimate insight into her inner realities, exposing desires and vulnerabilities that Regency society neither acknowledges nor rewards.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Roses of Heliogabalus, 1888, oil on canvas, 213.9 x 132.1 cm. Private Collection.
Wedding scene, Bridgerton
While much more may be said about them, Bridgerton’s costumes, at their core, echo the role of art itself. They speak the language of style, symbolism, and visual storytelling to uncover facets of character and story that would have otherwise remained hidden. It is through them that viewers may glance at characters’ interiority, seeing what remains unspoken and understanding that learning to look ultimately means learning to hear.