Downton Abbey costumes are coming to Toronto—if the city approves the costly insurance

Twenty-one costumes from the popular post-Edwardian period drama could be heading to Toronto’s historic Spadina Museum next spring. The only potential glitch: while the cost of borrowing the garb is less than $10,000, its combined insured value is $140,000, which means the deal needs city approval before it can be finalized. Assuming the exhibit gets the go-ahead, Lady Sybil’s nurse costume, Lord Grantham’s tails and other Downton finery will be displayed from March 10 to April 13 at the Spadina Road museum, where it will be integrated into a series of the Downton Abbey–themed tours that were launched there last April. The museum, which touts itself as “Toronto’s Downton Abbey,” is housed in a late nineteenth-century manor house constructed by financier James Austin, whose family lived there through the 1920s. Unlike the fictional Downton clan, however, the Austins were upper-middle-class at best; even at its prime, the modest 55-room home employed only two maids, one cook, a chauffeur, a gardener and not a single footman. Needless to say, the Dowager Countess would be aghast. [National Post]