Michele Carragher and Michelle Clapton on the secret narratives in Game of Thrones wardrobe
Game of Thrones has some of the most authentic costumes on television, but the intricacies of the design are often missed while watching on the small screen. In a new interview with SCPR, embroiderer Michele Carragher talks about the details and planning that goes into making the Game of Thrones wardrobe, particularly the imagery and secret narratives that went into Daenerys’ dragon scale dress and Sansa’s wedding dress from Season 3.
On creating the dragon-scale pattern for Daenerys:
“I started to be involved in embellishing her costumes in season three. The decoration on her costume develops from a subtle texture, and as she increases in power and strength, this texture becomes more defined to map out her journey in the story. … As Dany grows in strength with her dragons, the texture becomes more embellished and grows down the costume.”
On creating the details on Sansa’s wedding gown:
“Wedding days should be a joyous event for the bride, but, unfortunately, Sansa’s being forced into a marriage that she doesn’t want, into the Lannister family. For this dress, Michelle wanted it to be a confined, restricted bodice shape with bare, vulnerable arms. She wanted an embroidered band that would wrap around the bodice and tell Sansa’s life story.
“Obviously we imagined that the wedding dress has been commissioned by Cersei and the Lannisters for Sansa, and so the embroidery would have come from Cersei’s mind. We guessed that it wouldn’t be romantic or lovely and girly and pretty with dainty flowers, but a real strong message of dominance, saying that we own you now, Sansa.
“For the wedding band, I started at the back of the waist with some Stark direwolves and Tully fish entwined that represent Sansa’s parentage. Then, as we move to the side, the Lannister lion is tangling with the direwolf and emerging on top, representing Sansa being seduced and then controlled by members of the house of Lannister. As it moves up the center, there’s a central ascending lion that’s got a Baratheon-like crown, a nod to Joffrey’s parentage. At the back neck, the Lannister lion is stamped onto it, representing how the Lannisters now have total ownership over this girl who was once a Stark.”
Costume Designer Michelle Clapton expands on the idea in another interview with Fast Company, revealing that the costumes may even contain hints about how a character is evolving. “I don’t think any costume should be looked at in isolation, rather, through the arc of the character. Each thing will tell a story. It might look like a costume is wrong, but actually it’s supposed to look like that. It’s telling you something about the character at the time.”
Michelle admits that although most of the decisions made in the costume department are very purposeful, sometimes the best ideas emerge organically. Jaime’s golden hand was intended to be a creation imagined by Cersei to disguise a deformity that she fears, but turned out to exemplify his often overlooked personality traits. “It became the right thing for Jamie. He’s not just this sort of a brutal, sarcastic, callous man. He actually has a really sensitive, quite interesting side. It was really beautiful in a way.”
For more from Michele Carragher’s interview visit SCPR, and to see more of her work you can visit her official website. For more of Michelle Clapton’s interview visit Fast Company.
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