John Bloomfield and Ann Beverley

John Bloomfield (born 1942) and Ann Beverley (1939–2022), were a British costume design and illustration partnership, known for their work on The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and The Mummy franchise. During five decades of marriage and professional collaboration, they designed costumes for theatre, film and television in a variety of genres. They have been described as "central figures in British costume design".

Bloomfield was the more visible member of the partnership on film sets and for awards, though he's stated that "we just worked side by side in the whole of the preparation". Curators at the British Film Institute recognise that Ann's "full contribution is less well known".

After jointly designing for touring theatre productions, Ann joined Television Wales and the West (TWW) in 1962. A few years later, in 1968, John joined the BBC as costume designer in the Corporation's newly expanded costume department.

Ann started to officially work freelance for the BBC from 1974, and also taught on the Theatre Design course at Wimbledon School of Art. The six-episode series was "hugely successful" and marked the beginning of a series of high-budget period costume productions that would cement the BBC's reputation internationally.

According to the head of the BBC's costume department, Peter Shepherd, Bloomfield had eight months preparation time for the series, in order to visit the V&A and National Portrait Gallery for research, and then start sourcing costumes from costume houses, "only to find we had been pipped at the post by the film Anne of the Thousand Days. There wasn't a thing in any of them and we had no Tudor in stock because we hadn't done any". So the principal costumes were made in the BBC workrooms, using "theatrical methods". Bloomfield drew upon his experience as a prop maker, using household objects such as curtain rings, lock fittings, screws and rice to create extravagant costume jewellery.

Following the success of the programme on television, the costumes for The Six Wives were displayed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1971. The exhibition "broke all attendance records in the history of the museum", according to The Stage newspaper at the time. An average of 2500 visitors came each day to see the costumes, with a total of 200,000 people attending the exhibit.

BBC costume department Bloomfield and Beverley followed the success of The Six Wives with numerous costume drama series including Casanova (1971), Bel Ami (1971), The Onedin Line (1973) and Poldark (1975). One of the pair's collaged costume designs for Margaret Courtenay in Bel Ami resides in the permanent collection of the V&A Museum.

Costume design for film In 1978 John Bloomfield left the BBC to concentrate on designing costumes for film.

Throughout the 1980s, Bloomfield and Beverley developed their collaborative approach to working on large scale action and fantasy productions, including Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987).

Chistopher Reeve's Superman costume from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The Superman costume, plus others designed by Bloomfield and Beverley for Conan the Barbarian (1982), were displayed in the 2012 exhibition "Hollywood Costume" at the V&A .

The BFI have stated that, "despite increasingly large budgets their process remained intricate, personal and rooted in their early training, nearly always starting with the sketch".

Bloomfield's journal while costuming the film Space Truckers (1996) recorded the period of negotiation at the outset of a new project, and the way that the partnership worked: "Drive to London for meeting... Ann comes with me – she is likely to work on this film ... so I have her involved from the beginning". A few days later, the couple scouted scrapyards for "personal rescue equipment and webbing, helmets etc" to use in their costumes. They also designed the costumes for the following two films in the franchise: The Mummy Returns (2001) and The Scorpion King (2002).

In the 2010s and 20s, The Mummy developed a significant online fandom, often centring on the costumes (and nudity) of the film's main characters. Numerous blogs provide detailed break-downs of the costume plot with links to purchase replicas. Others have created Instructable posts, recreating key looks, such as Evie's "librarian" ensemble. The internet culture website Know Your Meme documents several memes that play with the sexuality of the Mummy's characters.

Awards and nominations

Personal life John Bloomfield and Ann Beverley married in 1964, and they had two children and three grandchildren. For most of their career they lived in South London, later moving out to East Surrey.

Ann was diagnosed with vascular dementia and Alzheimer's disease in 2017, and she died in 2022.