StarzIf only history class looked like Outlander, then we would have done so much better in school. (Although if our professor looked like Sam Heughan, we probably would have failed. Because we'd just be staring at him and daydreaming and generally not paying attention. Can you blame us?!)
But when executive producer Ron D. Moore and his wife, Emmy Award-winning costume designer Terry Dresbach, sat down to start creating all of the amazingly authentic looks of Outlander's characters, they had no idea they were in for the lesson of their lives...because what they thought they were going to dress their cast in was actually historically inaccurate!
"When Terry started doing research into what they actually wore, we were all surprised that a lot of our preconceptions of tartans and plaids and kilts was actually not true to the period," Moore tells E! News at the unveiling of "A Tartan Affair," the public exhibit of all the costumes from the Starz drama at The Grove in LA. "A lot of what we have come to think of traditional tartans are those bright yellows and reds and greens that you see in tourist shops but evidently that all comes out of a 19th century romantic revival of Scottish culture. But in our period, in the 1740s, they didn't wear any of that."
What Moore and Dresbach found to be the most surprising part of creating the costumes was the process of figuring out exactly what the Highlanders wore.
"As part of our story, the Battle of Culloden comes up and the Highland culture is essentially wiped out after that and they forbade the wearing of the kilt and tartans, so all of that culture is gone," Moore says. "There's very, very little historical reference to it. There's no paintings of it because paintings tend to be about the aristocracy. Terry told me there's one piece of an original Highlander kilt that they pulled out of a bog or something. She really had to go back and design from scratch because everything we thought about the culture and what the people wore turned out to be a later interpretation of it. It's interesting to go back historically and discover what the truth was."
And that became the most challenging part of designing all the kilts and dresses as well.
"We had to weave the fabric ourselves, come up with our own dyes and patterns," Moore says. "It was all a big process of research and learning and deciding how to build our take on their culture."
But all their hard work paid off—have you seen the incredible craftsmanship of each original costume? The detail on every single one is just amazing. According to Moore, that's been the most rewarding part of creating all the costumes: "Seeing the actors wear them."
"When the actors actually put them on they have this lived in look which I thought was really important for the show, so it didn't look like it just came off the costume truck and they're perfect," Moore says. "I like how, if you look closely, some of the Highlander outfits have homemade patches and places they've been sewn as if they've been torn and ripped. We have a big aging and dying department that beats the crap out of the clothes so that they look like they're worn and dirty. So whenever the actors walk around in them, they look like clothes as opposed to costumes."
While the Starz drama does a fantastic job of capturing the costumes in all their glory, there's no comparison to seeing all the detail on each one in person.
If you live in LA, now's your chance. The Grove's special Outlander exhibit, "A Tartan Affair", featuring 12 costumes including custom-designed Scottish Plaids and British Redcoat uniforms, as well as Claire's (Caitriona Balfe) awe-inspiring wedding gown, is free and open to the public now until Sunday, May 31. You can find more information about the exhibit here.
And start preparing yourself for the dark, gut wrenching and emotional Outlander season finale, airing this Saturday at 9 p.m. on Starz. You have no idea what you're in for.