His gentlemanly dress often hid what Conan Doyle called Holmes’s “Bohemian soul.” The melancholy, violin-playing, cocaine-injecting insomniac was betrayed by his off-duty clothes, specifically his collection of dressing gowns, which ranged from “mouse-colored” to a dandyish purple. The camel version on display at the Museum of London is the most subdued of several Cumberbatch wears in the BBC series.

Holmes was well aware of the power of clothing to reveal as well as transform. Anthropometry—a legitimate scientific discipline in the Victorian era—held that physical characteristics corresponded to character traits; Holmes’s high forehead indicated the mighty brain behind it. Clothing, by extension, could do the same—a perfectly reasonable assumption at a time when read-to-wear was in its infancy and those who could afford to still had their clothes custom-made. “Dress is a main character in the stories when it comes to providing clues for Holmes,” Long says. No scuffed shoe or scratched pocketwatch escaped his notice; the smallest sartorial detail could be the key to solving a case. He once deduced an entire psychological history from the “very ordinary black hat” that led him to the famous blue carbuncle.