COSTUME DESIGNER: JAMES ACHESON

Born on 13 March 1946, James Acheson has enjoyed a successful career as a costume designer for both TV and Film, and remains as a prolific costume designer for Doctor Who. Education was taken at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and then Wimbledon School of Art. Whilst at art school one of his teachers was Allister Bowtell, who would later provide freelance work on Doctor Who, and even provided services which were under Acheson’s command.

Acheson’s early career saw him work on an abundance of Doctor Who serials. He first worked on The Mutants which saw his old teacher Allister Bowtell, help make the Mutt costumes for location and studio recording. Acheson’s skills were highly regarded, and he was quickly booked to work on series 10 on The Three Doctors and Carnival of Monsters, and series 11 which saw him work on the historical serial The Time Warrior. He worked on Tom Baker’s debut story which meant he got to design the Fourth Doctor’s signature outfit. Although, the colour of the Fourth Doctor’s outfit would change, the same basic design was kept across the seven years. Acheson was back designing for Terror of the Zygons, another historical serial for The Masque of Mandragora which required Acheson to design authentic fifteenth-century costumes, and finally The Deadly Assassin. Acheson designed high collar outfits for the Time Lords, a design that was reused for numerous Time Lord appearances in the revived era.

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Acheson's designs for Time Lord came back for Arc of Infinity and were even resurrected for the revived series as seen during The Sound of Drums and beyond.

Acheson’s skills as a designer soon opened doors into the film industry and a successful career soon followed. He worked on: Time Bandits (1981), the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life (1983), Terry Gillam’s movie Brazil (1985). Future film designing assignments came with Highlander (1986), The Last Emperor (1987), literary adaptations of Wuthering Heights (1992) and Frankenstein (1994), which featured Robert De Nero and Kenneth Branagh in leading roles. Acheson found himself in the world of superhero movies, designing costumes for the Spider-Man trilogy between 2002 and 2007, which featured Toby Maguire in the title role. Since 2007, Acheson has appeared to wind down his costume designing career, but he did return for Absolutely Anything (2015) staring Simon Pegg. Acheson is also a three-time Academy Award winner for Costume Design. He won the Academy Award.