- 5 hours ago
Go behind the seams of HBO's ‘House of the Dragon’ with Emmy-winning costume designer Caroline McCall as she reveals how the show's unforgettable costumes come to life. From the intricate gowns of Queen Rhaenyra and Alicent Hightower to the battle-ready armor worn by Daemon and Aemond Targaryen, McCall breaks down the design and craftsmanship behind the 1,000 costumes created for each episode. She also takes us inside the costume workshops—from embroidery, leatherwork, jewelry and chain mail to the armory, where real swords are forged by blacksmiths and historically accurate armor is etched and distressed for battle.
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00:00Eamon is quite an agile fighter, he's quite light on his feet,
00:03and so making the armour that skin-tight helps that.
00:07360-degree scan of my whole body,
00:09and then these guys do a 3D printout of it,
00:12and then from that, they're able to create the armour.
00:15I remember the first time I played it,
00:17I was jumping around this room like Spider-Man.
00:21It's a massive undertaking.
00:23There's probably 1,000 costumes in each episode.
00:25There are about 140 full-time members of the costume team.
00:30There are four cutters, cutting mostly principal costume,
00:34but also the samples that then go out to be manufactured.
00:38We have embroiderers,
00:40we have a huge dyeing and textile department,
00:44jewellery department, specialist costume makers
00:47that can do leather work and chain mail,
00:51and then the armoury department that produce all the armour.
00:56We also have the massive crowd team.
00:59The first thing I did on series two
01:02was to try and sort of break down Westeros
01:05in terms of, you know, climate, economy, colour palettes,
01:11and try and work out a logic for all these peoples and places.
01:15Yeah, Ryan had said the loss of all these dragons,
01:19the war, the destruction that these dragons cause,
01:22then causes it to be warmer by the time we get to Game of Thrones.
01:26So in House of the Dragon, we're in a colder climate.
01:29It's about making it feel as grounded in reality as possible,
01:33because, you know, Jim Clay's production design,
01:36the sets are extraordinary.
01:38Tim, our armourer that makes the swords,
01:40he forges them with a blacksmith, they are real.
01:43And so if you're putting a real sword with beautiful belts onto a costume,
01:48the costume has to stand up to also feeling as real as possible.
01:52The colour is really important,
01:53and the silhouette in order to show that the Targaryens are a very different race
02:00to the Hightars.
02:02It's an instant thing to see those colours and know what side people are on.
02:07So the palette for the Targaryens is monochromatic.
02:12It's all greys and blacks with some red.
02:16This is Rhaenyra's dress from episode one.
02:21It has the Targaryen silhouette, the open skirt.
02:26We took the idea of plating from Daenerys in Game of Thrones.
02:29It's got Michelle Carragher's beautiful embroidery.
02:32I'll come in a little bit later once they've got the shape of the costume,
02:35so then I'll have an idea of where the decoration might sit.
02:39I tend to do a lot of my work on a tulle or a net that can be dyed to
02:46match the costume,
02:47so that I can then work on a lot of the pieces separate to the costume,
02:52because there'll be a lot of fittings and different alterations to the costume,
02:56and then put it on once it's had its final fit.
03:00This is the final dress that Rhaenyra will wear.
03:05She actually ends up ripping this to shreds.
03:08From the rest of the series, she's into more practical dragon-riding tunics.
03:14But then in order to make it feel more armoured,
03:17we made this chainmail sort of coat of plates.
03:21This sort of idea is found in Persian chainmail and armour.
03:25These are actual beaten metal plates?
03:28Yes, they are.
03:29Some of them are stamped, some of them are etched, and also they're hand hammered.
03:33I also work with a knitter called Lyria,
03:37who does these lovely pieces of crochet that give it a bit more detail.
03:41From this costume onwards, Rhaenyra is always in boots and trousers,
03:48ready for dragon-riding.
03:50This tunic is covered in these metal scales and in this belt.
03:57They're all made up of several different layers of etched metals.
04:01So some of the pieces were hammered by hand.
04:03We worked with pieces that were different shapes and sizes,
04:07just so that it had more of an organic quality to it.
04:10And then they were all individually stitched onto the costume.
04:13So in the end, the whole team got involved in making this one,
04:16because it was very labour-intensive.
04:20When I knew that Rhaen wanted Eamon to have armour, I thought this is the perfect opportunity
04:27to do the George and the dragon silhouette, that really classical, elongated, armoured silhouette,
04:36but do it in a Targaryen way.
04:38Because the Targaryens are all about power, dynamics, dragons,
04:44we try and get a feel for that in the form and the style lines on the armour.
04:48It's almost like the centre of a dragon across the chest and down the abdomen.
04:54The entire build and development process to get to one, the first single set of armour was 22 weeks.
05:01In Eamon's sets, there are 81 different components to make a single set of armour.
05:07Every single one of them is created as a new and unique piece,
05:11and every piece is tailored to fit Eamon.
05:13A 360-degree scan of my whole body, and then these guys do a 3D printout of it.
05:20And then from that, they're able to create the armour.
05:23So Simon has a life-size Eamon in his workshop.
05:28Eamon is quite an agile fighter, he's quite light on his feet,
05:31and so making the armour that skin-tight helps that.
05:35It's also informative to the performance, how intimidating it looks.
05:39I don't like to pick favourites, but I very much think this is my favourite armour set.
05:43These, this is steel, right?
05:46Yeah.
05:47As far as possible, we'll use real materials.
05:50And certainly chainmail is fantastic because of the way that it moves and so forth.
05:55Sometimes we literally will hand-roll every link and hand-link each link together.
06:01But because of the sheer massive amount of hours that that takes,
06:05as much as possible, we'll use pre-existing sheets of chainmail and essentially tailor it,
06:12almost like a piece of fabric.
06:14Some of the armours we originate in metals, but generally we have to then reproduce in polymers,
06:20so we can make it as light as possible.
06:22If this was real, how much would this actually weigh?
06:24If this was somewhere between £30 and £40 for the normal set.
06:29Wow.
06:29It gets quite hot.
06:30I'm not going to lie.
06:31I think the longest I wore it was about 10, 11 hours.
06:35We're talking 81 individual pieces.
06:37To take them off, like five or six pieces, it really does, it doesn't take that long at all.
06:42And so I can take the collar off, you can take the helmet off,
06:47and yeah, it cools me down a lot, a lot quicker, you know.
06:50To work with these guys, it means the world to me.
06:53Geniuses at work, it's just so immersive.
06:55This sword's particularly, which is called Blackfire,
06:57it was made in season one by an amazing sword maker called Peter Johnson.
07:01We had to make replicas of it, so we just ended up having to sort of completely take it apart,
07:05mould it and make loads of different versions in aluminium and cast in rubbers,
07:11so that Ewan can go on set and use it to fight with.
07:14How many aluminiums have we got?
07:17There's probably about three aluminiums, and then you've got the real steel one,
07:22and then there's countless numbers of rubber ones.
07:25I'd love to have one of the aluminium ones.
07:30If you've got three of them, one of them won't go on this, right?
07:34We see Eamond in a very desperate position at the end of season two,
07:38and he's going to make some rash decisions.
07:40Episode two finishes with Eamond storming Harrenhal.
07:43Eamond takes the castle by force, wearing these nice new threads.
07:48So I can't wait for people to see them. It's going to be incredible.
07:54The creaking sounds will be replaced by the sounds of metal.
07:58There's so many characters in this world that when we bring a new one that is significant into it,
08:05you really want to meet them with a bang and know exactly who they are and exactly what they are
08:10about.
08:10What is the weather to be today, Bold John? Raining piss or shit from the looks of the messenger.
08:16Here we have got Lord Ormond Hightower. So I wanted to engrave the characters of the Seven into the armour.
08:25We have the warrior, mother, crone, father, smith, maiden and the stranger.
08:32In terms of actually physically creating these, it wasn't very different from the techniques that would have been used hundreds
08:40of years ago.
08:41We essentially chemically etch into metal, but we then have to take a mould from it and recreate it in
08:46kind of lightweight material.
08:48So it's flexible and safe to wear as light as we can make it.
08:52For Ormond, we ended up making almost five sets for him.
08:55Obviously, we have to then have a stunt duplicate of each one.
08:58So something like this sort of between four and five is kind of quite ordinary.
09:03Someone like Daemon, we're getting up to sort of nine or ten.
09:08Daemon, we wanted to give him something that felt really strong silhouette.
09:13So this is all leather work that has been hand whipped to create these really strong shoulders.
09:20We didn't feel it was right for him to have the Targaryen sigil just on his front.
09:24So we've adapted it to create this new sort of dragon riding look for him.
09:30This was a dress of Alicent that she wore very briefly in series two that we brought back for series
09:37three.
09:37At the beginning of season two, she's very much in green, very definite green.
09:43Then as we move through the series, it becomes more of a teal.
09:47We created this fabric in the dye shop.
09:50It's little flames that are sort of entangling each other.
09:55The embroidery and things of Alicent, it's all about her being kind of trapped in this web of issues of
10:03her own making.
10:05Pretty much every costume on a principle is made from scratch.
10:10In a lot of cases, for a lot of the characters in this show, they will have many multiples of
10:17the same costume.
10:17This is Shirako Lohar, who was first featured in series two.
10:23The triarchy are three different cultures.
10:26In order to differentiate them, I wanted to have each have a slightly different textile technique.
10:32And I found this vintage child's tunic.
10:35So we took it and adapted it and created our own sort of version of that applique and coins.
10:42Also, as she's a pirate, she'd have got treasures from all the different places she'd been.
10:49Just one of these is so labour intensive because this is all hand done.
10:55We needed multiple repeats because she's taken part in a sea battle.
10:59There is the actor and then there's the stunt and then there's all the different variants.
11:04You have a hero, which is the one before any damage is done to it.
11:09We might shoot the sequence out of sequence.
11:12So then we might have one that's really bloody and torn.
11:16But then you have to go back to the mid-section.
11:20And how many of those did you make?
11:22We made nine repeats.
11:26We made nine repeats for Shirako because of what happens to her character.
11:32It became a bit of a joke.
11:34We'd be in a fitting and it'd be like, actually, I think we need two more.
11:38Actually, I think we need two more.
11:40She's probably the most labour intensive.
11:42Yeah, definitely.
11:43We've got a breakdown team, an entire department that works on ageing and distressing,
11:50whether it is just a light ageing.
11:54This, you can see, has had all sorts of ageing done to it to look like the salt
11:58and sunshine has bleached it or whether it's, you know, actually been through a war
12:03and has to be covered in mud and covered in blood.
12:06So this is another new character this season.
12:09This is Roddy and he's the Northman and a warrior.
12:12We have his costume and we have his stunt doubles costume,
12:15but we also have another three versions of this.
12:20So this is Alice Rivers' new costume for season three.
12:26I believe we made this costume in approximately seven days.
12:31I have a work room of predominantly six or seven girls and it consists of 24 panel pieces.
12:40Not only you have a mirrored image of the devore, so the left and right mirror each other,
12:47and then also the pattern runs at the same level as it goes round.
12:52So as a cutting pattern, it takes longer.
12:55We started off sort of making samples, particularly for the inner sleeve,
13:01with different styles of embroidery that would perhaps run up.
13:06And then we worked through processes with different colours and different threads, different weights.
13:12For Alice Rivers, we've layered up the fabrics.
13:15So not only have we got the really delicate silk devore that's been specially made,
13:22we've also got the silk lame, which actually starts off as the gold a colour,
13:27and then it goes through the dye process to become more sumptuous.
13:32So all the fabrics have been through a lot of processes.
13:35The silk devore is overlaid on top.
13:38And then in the sleeve, you've got the silk organza as well,
13:43which means that you have this wonderful texture and contrast that come through and shimmer in the light.
13:51So if you're filming in quite a dark set, you get these twinkles.
13:55It needs to have the gold, it needs to have all those different colours in it,
14:00because once we get on that set, it's so dark.
14:03There are costumes that you know are only going to play on the set that can have more highlights and
14:11things in them,
14:12but they wouldn't play necessarily in daylight.
14:14And you do something different.
14:16The thing about working on this show is that there is so much attention to those details,
14:21and that even if people don't see them on screen, they will seek them out.
14:27So adding pieces of jewellery or interesting textiles that the audience finds is really rewarding.
14:34Everybody, all departments get along really well and are really supportive of each other.
14:41And if the actors are happy and that they feel that you've created, helped create that character for them,
14:48then that's the most important.
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