On Helen McCrory (RIP) as Polly in Peaky Blinders

In her role as Peaky Blinders matriarch Polly Gray ('Aunt Polly'), she wore her clothes like so many weapons. A purse dangling from her belt with a glinting steel frame hinting at Lady Macbeth’s dagger. A pistol in her breast pocket and a decorative hatpin stabbed through her coat lapel as a brooch. If there is one word that defined her, it’s dominance.

You sensed it in her clothes, the royal purples, the imposing hat she wore like the headdress of a Byzantine Empress, let’s-get-down-to-business skirt suits, and blouses fastened by pussy bows like a power-dressing Margaret Thatcher. Her admirer Aberama Gold (played by Game of Thrones Aidan Gillen) was spot on when he said she looked like royalty and called her Your Majesty.

Interestingly, Polly’s hard-as-Black-Country-nails surface melted when she had her portrait painted, arraying herself in a dress that was all about delicacy, femininity, and vulnerability: a fantastically soft and flowing shell pink silk off-the-shoulder floor-length dress, worn with long white gloves, transforming her into a devastating surprise.

Whatever she wore, she wore it well.