Tuesday, September 05, 2023
Wheel of Time's Costume Designer Explains S2's Scariest Outfits
gizmodo.com: Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time brings Robert Jordan’s fantasy realm to life with striking detail. Season two, which just kicked off last week, opens the story even wider, revealing new characters who bring menace to the screen just by the fierce way they dress—and accessorize.
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This is a testament to how important a well-thought out costume is to not only a character, but to the storytelling of a show in general. For a character that doesn’t speak much, having a costume that represents how intimidating and evil the character is incredibly necessary. I appreciate that the designer thought about the nails and the fact that the actor couldn’t just be in them all day and they needed to be easy to take off and put back on. It proves that a good costume designer thinks about more than just the design, but the logistics of it as well. I also like how they just found a piece of metal in the workroom that became part of the final headpiece design. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make a large impact. They also proved that proper research can help create a good design, when speaking about the silver covers over the mouths of women who can channel, and how it was a result of researching ancient Mesoamerican and Chinese culture.
Wheel of Time has been on both my to watch and to read list forever and I just never had the motivation to get to it. However, after reading this article I suddenly feel very motivated to get on that. This article really illustrates just how important costumes and makeup are to a character. Because High Lady Suroth doesn’t talk so much of her character has to be portrayed through her costume and makeup. Also, due to the fact that all of her acting has to be physical, there has to be some great collaboration between the costume designer and the actor. The costume designer also talks about the research she did into the world. Wheel of time is entirely fantasy so I wouldn’t blame the designer if she decided to just pull all of the designs from her head. However, the culture is based on Mesoamerican and imperial Chinese cultures so the designer did research and was able to find these gold mouth stoppers from a pre-Aztec society. She ended up including them in her design of High Lady Suroth and it worked very well. It shows just how important research is in design.
I found this article on Wheel of Time to be very interesting. As an aspiring costume designer, I was definitely able to take a lot away from this interview with Robert Jordan. When costuming a fantasy world, it is very clear that your imagination can truly run wild and experiment with so many different elements. However, from this article I learned that they need to have a lot of clarity because it can help signify to the audience the rules of the world. For example, the masks that they are wearing cover their mouths because people in power do not need to speak because they have people to do that for them. Even though this is a fantasy piece, it is still rooted in reality because the costume designer said that doing research on clothing worn by Mesoamericans and imperial Chinese. He also talked a lot about the nails one of the characters had, which is something I would probably forget falls under costumes.
I have really enjoyed the Wheel of Time. I haven’t started season two yet but I watched all of season one because Jeremy Pitzer is a huge fan of the book series. The costumes for this show have always been striking so I am excited to see what else this new season holds. The second season of the fantasy series The Wheel of Time introduces many new characters including new villains to the show. One of these characters is High Lady Suroth, whose appearance is accentuated by her stunning costume design. The costume designers discuss the challenges they faced in creating her look, which makes sense considering the particularly long nails and elaborate mask. They go on to explain more of the nuance with the design of the characters' costumes. The designers aimed to create visually striking moments that enhance the powerful text of the series. I am blown away by the visuals of this show every single time I watch.
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