June Hudson

June Hudson (born 12 January 1933) , sometimes credited as June Wilson, is a British television costume designer and actress. She’s known for her work on various science fiction TV series’ in the 1970s, such as Doctor Who and Blake's 7. She has been described as "Doctor Who royalty ... one of the most highly regarded costume designers ever to work on the series".

June Hudson studied theatre design at the Royal College of Art. She worked as an assistant to Oliver Messel before starting at ATV studios in Hertfordshire in 1962, then joining the BBC in 1965.

Hudson was an in-house designer at the BBC until 1990, and created costumes for sitcom Are You Being Served? and soap opera EastEnders. When describing the appeal of television, June said "I love expressing humour in clothes, seeking out elements of the costume that are amusing not just in the obvious, but aso the subtext, the subtle things which the audience will recognise subconsciously".

Early BBC work In the early 1970s, Hudson was living in Chiswick and working at the BBC, part of a team of sixty designers. In their history of television design, Piers Britton and Simon Barker have noted June Hudson's "imaginative approach" to costuming the long-running series.

Her initial productions were "The Ribos Operation" (1978) and "The Creature from the Pit" (1979). Hudson later explained her use of colour in the series to meet practical and narrative requirements: Black in particular has certain practical advantages for the designer; there is a great deal of fabrics with different textures available in black, and literally hundreds of slightly different shades. Above all I like it because it gives a good outline – a strong silhouette is very important for science fiction design... blue I generally avoided for aliens in science fiction, because it was used as the key colour for Overlay effects".

Blake's 7

Hudson's contributions to science fiction show Blake's 7 began with the second series, known as Series B, in 1979. Her entry to the series brought "dozens of new and unique costumes all round". John Muir, a historian of Blake's 7, questioned whether it was necessary "in an ostensibly gritty series for the protagonists to sport an endless array of attractive costumes?" and opined that the costumes represented a "believability hurdle". and gave background information about several other costumes from the series. In the episode "Weapon", the characters Servalan, Coser, Rashel, and Clonemaster Fen all have large, elaborately decorated collars, and Servalan wears the same white feather cloak as Romana in "The Ribos Operation" episode of Doctor Who. Avon's "lobster suit," made of quilted crimson leather, proved difficult with producers, directors, and the actor himself; the original costume included conical spikes on the collar, originally designed to symbolize the character's angry nature, but were removed at the insistence of the producer.

EastEnders June Hudson was the first costume designer for EastEnders, a soap opera launched in 1985. She was chosen for her experience, and told it was time for her to do "something mundane" after years of science fiction and period drama. and a 2024 episode of Doctor Who, "The Devil's Chord." Other credits included the sitcoms This Country and Ricky Gervais's Derek.