Stephanie Collie, British Costume Designer on ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,’ Dies at 60
Stephanie Collie, the acclaimed British costume designer whose work on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Peaky Blinders moved beyond the screen and made its way into mainstream culture, has died. She was 60.
Collie died Saturday at St. Christopher’s Hospice in South London following a terminal cancer diagnosis six months earlier, a publicist announced. Her husband, director of photography Hubert Taczanowski, died in June, also of cancer, at age 63.
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Collie’s résumé also included Michael Winterbottom’s The Look of Love (2013), starring Steve Coogan, Anna Friel and Imogen Poots; London Has Fallen (2016), starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman, and its 2019 sequel, Angel Has Fallen; and Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017), starring Samuel L. Jackson, Ryan Reynolds and Salma Hayek, and its 2021 sequel, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.
Collie had a career breakthrough with the British gangster film Lock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Matthew Vaughn.
“Anyone old enough to remember when Lock, Stock arrived will remember just what an incredible influence its Mod-inspired costumes had on the world of fashion,” Christopher Laverty of Clothes on Film wrote in 2021. “You could not pick up a men’s magazine of the time without seeing some guy in slim trousers and a jersey polo shirt.
“Stephanie Collie invented this look, thus providing one of the clearest examples of how costume design can transcend a movie and become something more. We would go so far as to say Stephanie Collie helped define an era.”
It was a return to the British criminal underworld with Stephen Knight’s 1919-set Peaky Blinders that cemented Collie’s status as a renowned costume designer. She based the look of Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby and his Birmingham street gang seen on the BBC series on actual criminal mug shots of the period.
The choice of white club collar shirts, tweed waistcoats, flat caps and baker boy hats ushered in a revolution in contemporary British menswear.
Collie had suits made for Murphy by London-based tailor Keith Watson. Over the years, so many people would write to her seeking advice on how to achieve the correct “Peaky Blinders look,” she created masterclass cheat sheets on how to dress the part.
“You need a good three-piece suit,” she said in a 2021 interview with Esquire. “I’d suggest that you get the trousers narrowed and shortened … a good pair of lace-up boots that go above your ankle … pick the right six-piece section cap (baker boy), and I think you’d have a great outfit.”
The eldest of four daughters to Scottish parents Peter and Elizabeth Collie, Stephanie Elizabeth Collie was born on Nov. 16, 1963, in Warrington, Cheshire, England. Her maternal grandmother was a seamstress.
Collie attended Pates Grammar School for Girls, Cheltenham Arts College and the London College of Fashion, then started out in the sewing room at the BBC with costume designer Susan Coates, whom she had met at the London College of Fashion.
Following an introduction via Coates to David Parfitt, who founded the Renaissance Theatre Company with Kenneth Branagh, she served as a wardrobe assistant to Branagh on Much Ado About Nothing (1993) and as a costume designer collaborating with Coates on Peter’s Friends (1992), also helmed by Branagh.
After Lock, Stock, Collie reteamed with Vaughn on his directorial debut feature, Layer Cake (2004), creating another memorable look for Daniel Craig’s lead character.
She paired him with a dark brown, Alfred Dunhill leather jacket; a light gray, short-sleeved T-shirt; medium-dark wash blue Levi’s denim jeans; and R.M. Williams Chelsea boots, according to the men’s fashion blog BAMF Style.
“I love dressing men. I love it,” she told Clothes on Film. “Right from the boys on Lock, Stock — I’ve always just loved dressing men. They can look so good. And not even just vintage. I just think men have lost the art of dressing themselves. It’s all too casual. I just think that people don’t look in the mirror anymore and really look at themselves.”
Director Susanna White, who teamed with Collie on Woman Walks Ahead (2017), starring Jessica Chastain, said the costume designer “had a true originality about her sense of design — there was never anything received about what she did.
“Her work on Woman Walks Ahead was extraordinary — she went back to primary sources and found references for the clothing the Lakota people and Jessica Chastain wore, which both made her costumes absolutely truthful to period detail yet gave the film a very contemporary spin.
“She told powerful stories through her work, but like her personality, her costumes never shouted ‘look at me’ — she was always at pains to make sure that what she did fitted seamlessly into the aesthetic of the whole creative endeavor. No matter how stressful a day was, she treated everything with her characteristic humor and grace. She will be greatly missed.”
The spy thriller The 355 (2022) reunited Collie with Chastain alongside a cast that included Penélope Cruz and Diane Kruger.
Collie also designed costumes for Coky Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl (2019), starring Beanie Feldstein; Ritchie’s Wrath of Man (2021), starring Jason Statham; and Vaughn’s Argylle (2024), with Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jackson, Dua Lipa and Sam Rockwell.
Collie worked on the Amazon period drama series My Lady Jane, which dropped this year. Her final project, Stunt Nuts: The Movie, another collaboration with Vaughn, is in postproduction.
Survivors include her siblings, Fiona, Alison and Nicola; her nieces and nephews, Holly, Lucy, Amy, Sam, Connor and Ethan; and her stepdaughter, Julia.
“Stephanie and I worked together for 30 years and made seven films,” Vaughn said in a statement. “She was always a beacon of good taste and positivity, and no matter how hard the task, she would never give up until it was accomplished to perfection.”
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