How the Queen of Denmark Formed the Look of Netflix’s “Ehrengard: The Artwork of Seduction”

As soon as upon a time, there was a princess in Denmark who aspired to turn out to be an artist.

Although she was the eldest little one of the nation’s reigning king, for the primary 12 years of the princess’s life, solely males had the appropriate to inherit the throne. That modified when the Danish structure was amended in 1953, and the princess grew to become her father’s presumptive inheritor quickly after turning 13. She continued to pursue her curiosity in artwork all through her teenage years, producing drawings by the stacks earlier than largely stopping in her 20s.

Across the time the princess turned 30 — and after she had earned a diploma in prehistoric archaeology on the College of Cambridge, and had studied at Aarhus College in Denmark, the Sorbonne and the London College of Economics — she learn J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” It impressed her to start out drawing once more.

Not lengthy after, upon her father’s demise in 1972, the princess was topped as queen: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, to be particular.

Margrethe, now 83, celebrated 50 years on the throne in 2022. However in assuming the position of queen, she didn’t abandon her inventive passions. As a monarch she has taken classes in sure media, has taught herself others and has been requested to convey her eye to tasks produced by the Royal Danish Ballet and Tivoli, the world’s oldest amusement park, in Copenhagen.

Her work have been proven at museums, together with in a current exhibition on the Musée Henri-Martin in Cahors, France. And her illustrations have been tailored into paintings for a Danish translation of “The Lord of the Rings.” (They had been printed below the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, and the e book’s writer approached her about utilizing them after she despatched copies to Tolkien as fan mail in 1970.)

Margrethe not too long ago notched one other artistic accomplishment: serving because the costume and manufacturing designer for “Ehrengard: The Artwork of Seduction,” a function movie that debuted on Netflix in September and has wardrobes and units based mostly on her drawings and different artworks.

The movie is an adaptation of the fairy story “Ehrengard” by Karen Blixen, a Danish baroness who printed below the pen title Isak Dinesen. Set in a fictional kingdom, the story is loosely a few lady named Ehrengard who turns into a lady-in-waiting and foils a royal court docket painter’s plot to woo her.

“It was nice enjoyable,” Magrethe stated of engaged on the movie in an interview in August on the Château de Cayx, the Danish royal household’s property in Luzech, a village close to Cahors within the South of France.

“I hope that Blixenites will settle for the best way we’ve finished it,” she stated.

Conjuring Atmospheres

The Netflix adaptation, a form of fantasy dramedy, has been greater than a decade within the making.

JJ Movie, the Danish manufacturing firm behind it, approached Margrethe about engaged on the film after she served as manufacturing designer for 2 shorter movies it produced, “The Snow Queen” and “The Wild Swans,” which had been each tailored from Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. These movies, launched on Danish tv in 2000 and 2009, additionally featured units based mostly on artworks by Margrethe, who in 2010 grew to become an honorary member of the Danish Designers for Stage and Display union.

For the Netflix movie, the queen designed 51 costumes and made 81 decoupages — a kind of cut-and-paste paintings — that had been used as the premise for units. (She was not paid by Netflix or JJ Movie.) Her sketches, together with a few of the garments and lots of the decoupages, are being proven on the Karen Blixen Museum simply exterior Copenhagen by way of subsequent April. Afterward, there are plans to point out them in New York, Washington and Seattle.

To compose the decoupages, the queen lower up photographs of assorted landscapes and interiors and pasted the items collectively to create new scenes, like a luxurious sitting room and a rocky canyon with a fortress and a waterfall.

“Typically it takes hours, and generally issues wish to come collectively they usually do as you need them to do, and instantly you’ve finished a complete decoupage in a day,” she stated. “It’s type of a puzzle.”

She was guided by Blixen’s “very visible writing,” she stated, noting that Blixen, in addition to Tolkien and Andersen, had been writers who additionally painted or drew.

Bille August, 74, the movie’s director, described the queen’s decoupages as a “tuning fork” that he used to construct “a world that’s indifferent from actuality with out being a full-on fairy story.” (He in contrast the final visible model he sought to the tone of Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!”)

“Conjuring that particular environment is maybe the queen’s biggest achievement right here,” Mr. August stated.

Scouts would search areas that mirrored the decoupages, which set designers would then model with props to additional emulate the artworks. Components within the decoupages that couldn’t be discovered had been rendered utilizing computer-generated imagery. Some decoupages had been scanned and particulars from the artworks had been added to scenes in postproduction.

Blixen didn’t set “Ehrengard” in a selected time, giving Margrethe freedom to interpret the look of the costumes. She selected to base her designs on garments from the Biedermeier interval in Austria and different elements of central and northern Europe, which befell from 1815 to 1848.

Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen, 56, the movie’s costume supervisor, stated she typically translated Margrethe’s sketches “one to at least one” when fabricating the clothes, which had been made with textiles and trimmings that the queen helped choose.

Margrethe stated that for one costume she had sketched — a costume in hunter inexperienced with pink paisley-like specks — she had hoped to discover a sprigged cloth. “However we couldn’t discover one,” she stated, so the sample was customized printed. One other costume designed for the movie’s grand duchess character was impressed by a portrait of a French queen.

“She was carrying a beautiful get-up,” Margrethe stated. “It appeared to me precisely what the grand duchess needs to be carrying.”

Sure components of the costumes, like leg-of-mutton sleeves, mirrored style on the time of the Biedermeier interval. “I fairly like that model,” Margrethe stated. “I’ve been concerned about model and within the historical past of favor and costume for a really very long time.”

Different particulars had been much less traditionally correct: Some attire had waistlines that had been barely decrease than these typical of that period, to provide them a extra flattering match.

Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, 39, the actor who performed the court docket painter, Cazotte, stated that when Margrethe noticed an early model of his costume, she thought it lacked colour. “And he or she was clear about precisely which colours she wished to see,” he added.

The actress Alice Bier Zanden, 28, who performed the title position of Ehrengard within the movie, stated that at a dressing up becoming attended by Margrethe, the queen’s enthusiasm was palpable. “You’re simply captivated with it,” she stated.

Sidse Babett Knudsen, 54, who performed the grand duchess, described the queen’s presence on the becoming this manner: “naked legs, stunning footwear, good jewellery — smoking away.” (Margrethe has made no secret of her fondness for cigarettes.)

Ms. Knudsen added that she felt comfy “clowning round” in entrance of Margrethe, who has typically been widespread in Denmark. In line with a 2021 ballot by YouGov Denmark, she was essentially the most admired lady within the nation (essentially the most admired man was Barack Obama), and in a 2013 Gallup ballot carried out for Berlingske, Denmark’s oldest newspaper, 82 p.c of contributors agreed or partly agreed that the nation advantages from the monarchy.

Her critics have included members of her household. Prince Joachim, the youthful of her two sons, bristled at her current choice to shrink the monarchy by stripping his kids of their royal titles. In 2017 her husband, Prince Henrik, introduced that he didn’t want to be buried beside Margrethe as a result of he had by no means been given the titles king or king consort. (He died six months later.)

Helle Kannik Haastrup, 58, an affiliate professor of movie and media research on the College of Copenhagen, who focuses on movie star tradition, stated that some detractors have dismissed Margrethe as “a Sunday painter.”

However to different individuals, Professor Haastrup added, the truth that Margrethe is a head of state with a “aspect hustle” has made her extra relatable.

‘Truthfully, She Can’t Cease’

Margrethe sketches and makes artwork on the chateau in France and at studios at Amalienborg Palace and Fredensborg Palace, the royal household’s residences in Denmark. She described the studios as locations “the place I can let issues lie about,” including, “I attempt to clear them up sometimes — however not too typically!”

“I work once I can discover the time,” she stated, “and I appear often to have the ability to discover the time.”

“Typically, I feel individuals are at their wit’s finish as a result of I’m attempting to do these two issues on the similar time,” Margrethe stated of her royal duties and her artistic undertakings. “Nevertheless it often works, doesn’t it?”

Annelise Wern, one of many queen’s 4 ladies-in-waiting, stated, “Truthfully, she will’t cease.”

Within the Eighties, when she was in her 40s, Margrethe took weekly portray classes. She has largely targeting portray landscapes with watercolors and acrylics — or “lazy woman’s oils,” as she known as them.

Then, within the early Nineties, she began chopping up pages from The World of Interiors magazines and catalogs from public sale homes like Christie’s and Sotheby’s and utilizing the paper cutouts to embellish objects.

“I didn’t even know there was a wise title for it,” she stated, referring to decoupage. “I known as it ‘chopping and sticking.’”

Since then, her relations have sometimes been “smothered in decoupage,” as she jokingly put it. And in needlepoint, which she had discovered as a woman and picked up once more later in life.

Her colourful needlepoint designs, a few of which had been not too long ago featured in an exhibition on the Museum Kolding in Kolding, Denmark, have been normal into purses for members of the family and have been used to upholster fire screens, footstools and cushions for the royal household’s yacht, Dannebrog, which shares its title with the Danish flag.

Margrethe’s style for daring colours may be additionally seen in her wardrobe. In a 1989 biography of the queen by the Danish journalist Anne Wolden-Raethinge, Margrethe stated: “I all the time dream in colour. At full blast. Technicolor. In all places. Each shade.”

Her garments typically function vivid prints and fur trims, and are virtually all the time accessorized with jewellery. Among the many objects in her private assortment are gold items by the Danish jewelers Arje Griegst and Torben Hardenberg, whose designs are each baroque and gothic-punk, and costume jewellery like plastic clip-on earrings she discovered at a Danish drugstore.

For her eightieth birthday, in 2020, Margrethe had a robe made utilizing velvet that she had requested be dyed a specific shade of sky blue. A floral raincoat she had made with a waxed cloth meant for tablecloths, which she picked out on the division retailer Peter Jones & Companions in London, has impressed different style designers’ collections.

“I often am fairly deeply concerned,” she stated of getting garments made for her.

Ulf Pilgaard, 82, a Danish stage and display screen actor, has parodied the queen some dozen occasions over the a long time. (He was knighted by Margrethe in 2007.) “I all the time wore earrings and a necklace and really good colourful outfits,” Mr. Pilgaard stated.

For his final flip as Margrethe, in 2021, he wore a shiny yellow costume with oversize pearl earrings and a chunky turquoise ring. On the finish of the efficiency, she shocked him onstage.

“Folks received on their toes and began roaring and clapping,” he stated. “For a couple of seconds, I assumed it was all for me.”

On the premiere of “Ehrengard: The Artwork of Seduction” in Copenhagen final month, Margrethe wore a pantsuit within the purple colour of the Danish flag (and the Netflix emblem), together with a hefty turquoise brooch and matching earrings by Mr. Hardenberg, who earlier than beginning his namesake jewellery line made costumes and props for theater and movie productions.

Nanna Fabricius, 38, a Danish singer and songwriter often called Oh Land, who has labored alongside Margrethe on current productions at Tivoli, stated, “I feel a really large a part of why the queen is so favored is as a result of she does issues.”

“We aren’t completely shocked when she makes a Netflix film,” she added.

“She’s type of what Barbie desires to be,” Ms. Fabricius stated. “She does all of it.”