Rings of Power Costume Review

hi I'm Jess part-time Hobbit and I'm here to talk to you about Tolkien I am going to try and do something ambitious today and that is cover all of the Rings of power costumes in one video if you've been with this channel for a while you know that I have an ongoing Series where I discuss the costumes for each of the major groups in Middle Earth in pretty good detail today I Endeavor to do the same thing with pretty much all of the characters in the rings of power mostly because I fear nothing and because I didn't want this video to be a multi-parter this will only cover the costumes in episodes one through seven since as of the time of filming and writing this those are the only episodes that have come out also in all likelihood this video will not be the last time that I talk about the rings of power costumes so make sure that you subscribe so that you can watch more rings of power analysis and commentary further on down the road but before I get into it I have a disclaimer I do not hate the rings of power or its costumes I certainly don't think the costumes are perfect and I have plenty of my own criticisms but if hearing me speak positively about this show and its costumes is going to turn you into a slovering dislike clicking lunatic in the comments I suggest you simply click away from this video and find one that agrees with you your blood pressure will thank you I am perfectly happy to entertain people that disagree with me and the points I may make in this video but please in the comments try and keep it respectful and don't just click dislike because you don't like this show with that out of the way let's get into the elves these costumes clearly draw inspiration from the previously established design language from the Peter Jackson Trilogy this is pretty unsurprising considering that the designer for the rings of power costumes Kate Hawley worked on The Hobbit movies and has worked on some other films with Peter Jackson I do find the similarities to the Peter Jackson Trilogy to be kind of disappointing but I'll get a little bit more into that at the end of this video but one of the main things that carried over from those designs is the silhouette the signature silhouette of the elves is this long draping kind of shape that hangs off of the top of the shoulders and it really lends these actors the sort of Grace and movement that you would expect from the elves but one of the specific Hallmarks of the Rings of power elves is that all of their costumes have a very particular lust faster or shine and I don't mind this as a choice since it really definitively like sets them apart from the other people and groups that we see in Middle Earth but there definitely are points where the materials that they're using look a little bit costumey and modern I think that the Peter Jackson Trilogy dodged the bullet on this by choosing materials that were ethereal but not necessarily shiny for example they used Some Velvet but when they used it they carefully over dyed these materials in order to give them this age and depth rather than resorting to Satin or glitter these materials were delicately hand beaded embroidered and layered and I think you end up with a much more mature looking wardrobe in my opinion the elves aren't just going to make clothing out of whatever flashy shiny material that they can find they literally have centuries of time to work on these fabric bricks and the techniques for making these fabrics and I think it would read better with more embroidery handmade lace and just overall a little bit closer attention to detail finally we should talk about hair and this has really been a hot button issue that if I'm being honest I've never really cared about Tolkien certainly does sometimes describe the elves as having long hair however that doesn't necessitate every single elf having long hair plus the definition of long hair is pretty subjective compared to a buzz cut a nice 80s quaff is pretty long it's also silly I think to believe that in all of their centuries of life in Middle Earth the elves would never once have experimented with their hairstyles I think pretty much every day about chopping all of my hair off and if 20 years was a blink to me and my hair would be back but before I even knew it I would definitely be bald right now so I don't really see a reason to claim that it is like World breakingly wrong for elves to have short hair however if you want to say that it just doesn't look good I think you're totally valid in that belief personally it doesn't offend me but I could see how some of these more modern styles could be a little bit immersion breaking but I also do want to point out that integrating more modern hair sensibilities into a fantasy or historically inspired show really isn't anything new even in intensely researched historical films historically accurate hair is often just not included far too often the heroine's hair is down and gently tossled by the breeze and in that accursed historically inaccurate half up half down Style in general people just prefer for their characters to have a more modern hairstyle I mean Peter Jackson did it just look at elrond so I personally don't really find short-haired elves to be a point of criticism and with that out of the way let's talk about Galadriel when we first meet her as a child she's wearing a super simple white gown with an embroidered neckline as we can see from the other children and even finrod this seems to be a very specific fashion in ballinor I I do think it's a little weird that they're wearing like the exact same thing it reads a little bit mid-somer and I don't know whose job it is to spend all day scrubbing grass stains out of white dresses but I do not envy them these gowns are a little boring and a little culty but the Simplicity is effective it's reminiscent of like artistic traditional depictions of heaven and it speaks of a very untouched and pure innocence garments like these appear kind of everywhere in historical clothing but I was reminded particularly of the prehistoric Irish garment the Elena I think it's interesting because Tolkien drew a lot from prehistoric Irish myth and folklore specifically the Tua de donnen when he was crafting the elves if you want to hear more about that and watch me make Elena I did a video on that a couple weeks ago so check that out Galadriel keeps this gown on throughout the rest of the prologue and up until the point where we see her switch into her armor when she's out on the field this establishes a clear and dramatic shift in her character from this innocent Maiden Living in a Dream Like Heaven to a battle-hardened warrior and that takes us to our first suit of armor and immediately I was thrilled because I couldn't see her hair her hair was up and wrapped up which was such an astonishingly logical choice that I was floored of course it was down in strong Mountain Top winds in the next scene so my joy was rather short-lived this is one of my biggest costuming pet peeves listen I am someone with a lot of hair and let me tell you something it is almost never just down like it is now now to be fair my day job is manual labor but even if I was working an office job it's just not practical to have my hair down and shedding everywhere and getting stuck indoors and chairs and just everywhere I personally can't even eat without putting my hair up to get it out of the way and yet all of these super tough cool practical fantasy ladies have to have their hair down and flowing in the wind even when they are chopping people's head heads off I'm like this is such a ubiquitous problem in the genre that I considered not pointing it out but her hair was up and it was covered I glimpsed heaven and it was ripped away from me okay rant over I I still really like this outfit they put her in this super fine chainmail shirt which maintains a level of Elven Grace but still makes her appear protected and after this we see her wearing what I'll call the Lindon gown and to be honest I just think this thing is so pretty it definitely kind of rides the line of being so shiny that it's a little costumey but the color is such a perfectly Rich gold contrasted with that cool dark blue and she just looks incredible the Gown is pretty simple with its only real ornamentation being this kind of corded drop waist Peter jackson-esque belt but it really lends her a lot of length and elegance I have like no complaints about this costume only praise I want it so bad to wear I'm just I just want to wear it like on a Tuesday night while I'm eating Pringles and sitting with my rats so that I can finally feel like the god of the old world that I was always intended to be and it's good I got all my compliments out on that costume because the next one I do not like yeah this set of armor just looks like it's made out of plastic I think the designers were trying to do something that was a little more elevated than just the traditional shiny plate mail look and I know they were mimicking some specific pieces of art of Joan of Arc but the finish of it is just all wrong it's simple which I appreciate but it's simple in like a Party City Halloween costume kind of way but after this when she is talking to elrond and then making her trip back to valinor we see her back in the white gown which is very reminiscent to the Gown she was wearing in the prologue this is a delightful little nod for her return to valinor but it also does imply AI that the elves in valinor have been wearing the exact same thing for the last like thousand years and I'm sorry but if that's what heaven's like I don't know if I'm gonna be able to handle that and after her insane little Marathon swim through the ocean we see her in numenor in a New Dress now this one genuinely scared me a little because it was all over the promo images and it just did not read as Elven to me at all which it turns out thank God was the goal the horizontal bands across the chest really just interrupt any chance at the drapey Elven silhouette that we're used to and it really looks like it just came straight out of eowin's closet to me the Gown reads as borrowed which is exactly what it is and then one of my favorite details of all she wears the dress again and again and again for like half the season and man I will never stop praising designers for being willing to repeat outfits the fantasy film and television genre really likes to have these big moments where the characters come out in a stunning Fantastical bizarre dress and everyone gets to ooh and awe and all the cosplayers start making them and they end up on top 10 fantasy costume lists The Witcher and if the costumes are good I don't have any problems with that until it starts to break believability if a character is down on their luck or in an unfamiliar place they're just not going to have a stunning brand new gown to walk into every scene in historically and get this even today people wear the same items of clothing more than once so having Galadriel in this one borrowed gown for the extent of her numenor vacation was immensely satisfying to me and all of that brings me to galadriel's final costume for the series thus far and that is her third set of armor I appreciate that they brought back in some of the super fine chain mail that we first saw her in but I do not love the plate armor it's not as bad as the ceremonial armor but the Finish is still just a little bit plasticky I will say though I do appreciate the general shape of it they didn't fall into the very well-worn boob armor pitfall and for that I am supremely grateful overall I'm pretty impressed with galadriel's costuming throughout the show there are some definite missteps but I appreciate that they kept her very simple she's a simple character who I don't think would demand an extravagant wardrobe or need a new outfit for every event and I'm really glad that they were willing to respect that now let us talk about our boy elrond we first see him in Lindon looking incredibly polished his costume is super expensive using lots of costly dark blue dye and gold thread it really establishes him as this young politician wheeling and dealing his way through the upper echelons of Elven Society however elrond is a bit of a bad boy he's half Elven and because of this he doesn't quite fit in with society and the designers tell us this by knocking his silhouette Askew and giving us some interesting asymmetric garments to contrast best with the careful symmetry of high Elven characters like Galadriel or gilgalad it's a kind of subtle detail but it immediately sets him apart as slightly off-kilter compared to the other elves he may wear the same Rich materials as the rest of Elven Society but he wears them in his own way this carries over into his second costume and the one he's worn throughout the rest of the season thus far the fabric is less outwardly ostentatious but it is all just as well made and worn just as roguishly one little detail I noticed is his cloak pin which seems to have a star Motif likely representative of his dear luminescent father I really enjoy elrond's costume it is polished but it plays upon the established costuming sensibilities in order to tell his story on the opposite side of polished we have a Ron deer he never looks like rough or outright discombobulated but he has a much more rugged look that sets him apart from the other elves of high society his biggest statement piece is his standard issue breastplate which is carved with this incredibly intricate design it appears to imitate the texture of wood but it has this fascinating foresty face very reminiscent of an ant I'm definitely not qualified to speak about this Armor's like real world practicality but I do want to point out that there are a lot of nooks and crannies where I think a sword could like get purchased and go in however the overall neutral color tone of his wardrobe keeps him from appearing too flashy and this intricate armor design kind of Fades into the background blending depth without necessarily drawing the eye he doesn't seem to Scorn the intricate Artistry of his Elven people but he is a warrior and his costume seems practical enough to fit that the last specific elf that I am going to talk about is calibrombor and unfortunately it is a bit of a critique by giving these younger more kind of like wild card elves the shorter hair I feel like the designers were establishing it as a style it's something a little bit more practical militaristic and modern however by giving Keller brimbor who really doesn't fit that description the same haircut they're kind of like breaking their own rules plus my co-worker pointed out that he looks like a 1980s British TV comedian and now I can't unsee that the Elven costumes are really just hit or miss sometimes they make bold choices like short hair or exotic materials but these choices are kind of watered down by a lack of full commitment if you want to make short hair on elves a style you have to follow through on that figure out what that style means and who would choose to wear it and use that to help build your story and your world building if you're going to characterize the elves with Rich beautiful Fabrics invest true time and attention to make those materials look as Lush as they would be they had some good ideas and I like the direction that they're starting out in I just hope that they can kind of smooth out some of these lumps as we move into the later Seasons next up let's flip it around 180 and talk about the bad guys overall the Orcs just look fantastic they made these really cool bold choices like giving them the animal skull masks which are just so intimidating and I think these kinds of choices really paid off the Orcs are very clearly wearing armor and garments that they stole from their victims I even noticed one of the Elven breastplates that a reindeer wears on one of the Orcs sorry that Uruk edar also follows these Trends but I noticed under that assorted armor he has some of the fine Elven chain mail that we saw on Galadriel oh spoiler alert I'm unsure if the implication is that he stole it from an elf or if he had it from back in the days when he was an elf but either way the implications of him wearing this chain mail layer underneath his orc-ish clothing has some pretty deep implications adar's breastplate stood out to me in particular it has this like wavy design gouged into the surface that really reminds me of the way that wood looks after termites have gotten to it I think this could be a nod to his plan to Tunnel his way through the Southlands eating the land from its foundations out like an insect and I just think it perfectly encompasses the rag tag fearsome Army that we're seeing speaking of people that dig in the ground round let's talk about dwarves overall I think one of the places that the dwarves costumes Excel is in establishing their proportions dwarves aren't just like short humans they're like if you took like a picture of a person and then and then did this they're stocky and Broad and these big structured costumes with lots of bulky geometric designs really serve well to emphasize that most of the dwarves from backgrounds to leads also have a very similar color scheme it's this lovely kind of warm mottled gray shot through with these super bright strands of gold it mimics the heart of their culture the mountain stones and the wealth trapped within it and I wonder if this was maybe adapted from the idea of camouflaging with their environment this even persists into the costumes of main characters such as durin who is wearing a cloak of gray and gold when we first meet him however under that cloak is a uniform of deep red and burgundy which mimics the clothing of his father the luxurious velvet material is offset with this chunky metal kind of armor-like accessories as a future king durin exemplifies power in both wealth and in military prowess desa's look has these same ornamentations but a color scheme that doesn't match the rest of durden's line I think this may kind of Nod to the ideological differences and difficulties she has with the current Monarch and it helps remind the audience that she was once a common dwarf as well I also love that her costume allows us to see these glimpses of her arms and legs because it really adds some vulnerability to the costume she has the rich materials and armor-like adornment of her husband but her character is exemplified by a kind of open-hearted warmth and her costume really shows that and of course there was some controversy with her character and that was with the lack of beard yeah she has like some sideburns going on but I think it was a coward's move to not give her the full beard I can only hypothesize that this misstep came from the same place as the fear of historical or non-modern hairstyles in fantasy television designers are terrified that doing anything daring with the hair styling or makeup of these characters will make them unattractive and thus completely unrelatable and unlikable and there are a couple of problems with that first off every main character does not need to be attractive in order to be appealing and relatable to an audience and secondly you cannot tell me that this woman would not still be an absolute bombshell with with a full beard I will not accept it overall I really do like the Dwarven costumes in a lot of modern depictions dwarves kind of get like pushed to the Wayside when it comes to establishing a specific design aesthetic they just give them like big beards armor and shoulder pads and call it a day so I am really glad that they Dove more into Dwarven culture in the rings of power their costumes enhance character connect them to their surroundings and help establish a very particular culture which honestly is all I can ask for in a show like this except a beard for diesel I will be asking for that and since we're on the topic of short people let's get into the horror foots first off I want to give credit for how different the design is from anything else that we've seen in the rings of power and any other previously established depictions of Hobbits the costumes are obviously reflective of the tools and skills that they have on hand since the hard foots are nomads they're not going to have the equipment for a large-scale weaving operation and we see this in the rough hand spun or knit quality of their clothing the garments also seem to make use of like entire uncut pieces of fabric and this is super common in pre-industrial garment construction if you just spent a month weaving a piece of fabric by hand you're not going to want to cut pieces out of it and waste material just to get a more tailored look instead clothing would be made of continuous pieces of fabric carefully puzzled together other and draped or tied to fit most of the colors are very muted and neutral and look like they could have been achieved with natural dyes there are also so many great little hand done details on the clothing they're tunics and shawls have hand woven patterns or embroidery or little patches where the material has been worn away and then repaired and this just adds such a nice depth of character to the costumes I can just picture the hard foots on the road or sitting by the Fireside stitching in decorative patterns or mending they're already existing clothing they clearly take a good deal of dedication and pride in maintaining and beautifying their clothing and all of these details just makes me think their hair looks a little off between the disarrayed styling of the actual hair and the somewhat seemingly random leaves and plants that make up their headdresses it's all all just a little too haphazard for my taste especially when you've already established that they put so much time and dedication into the things that they wear and I think you could make an argument for it being for camouflage's sake but I still just find it a little too distracting and this one really sticks out to me because other than that I really like their look it's really reflective of their lifestyle and their culture but I just think their hair and everything contained within it just is there to draw my attention away from all the super fantastic details that they included it reminds me of radagast from The Hobbit movies a little bit because I really genuinely enjoyed his character design there's a lot of detail clearly layered in there and the designers obviously thought a lot about making this costume but if you ask pretty much anyone what they think of it they're just gonna talk about uh you know to be fair it's pretty distracting so overall I can definitely see where the hard foot costumes are going but I just think they need a little tweaking but since we're talking about grubby folks let's talk about the southlanders I think this group exemplifies a problem that I have with a lot of fantasy costuming and that is just making people so gross and I hear some people screaming in the comments but they were like that back then and to that I say they probably weren't it is a very common problem and a clear result of human hubris that when we think about people in the past we usually just think they were more stupid than we are but the unfortunate fact is that I with my smartphone and my college degree am probably no more actually intelligent than your average medieval farmer and of course in the past clean meant something a little bit different to people but the fact is that people still liked to be clean even if they weren't taking showers every day and I would talk so much more about this and someday I will but I would like to publish this video on time the fact is through all of human history humans have cleaned themselves and their clothing on a pretty regular basis so I kind of have a problem with this hordes of unwashed villagers Trope yeah they're down on their luck but they're not disgusting they probably would have had the sense to wear shirts while at work walrig this probably would never really been a super big problem for me except that Bronwyn is noticeably cleaner than the people around her and I have heard some people complaining about that now to be completely Fair she is a Healer and probably would have had a better sense of hygiene than the people around her but the problem is not that she should look grosser but that the people around her should probably look a little less moldy there are ways to make clothing look worn in and beat up without just having them walk around their place of work in nothing but a grimy apron and a hat Wall Drug I think Theo is the prime example of how to do this well his coat is clearly patchworked and made by hand and his fabric is very rough spun but it's clear that there has been some level of care for the clothing and for his appearance can we also acknowledge that at long last they actually let a 16 year old look like a 16 year old the age of Riverdale is over we need more teen protagonists with the most god-awful haircuts that I've ever seen so going back to Bronwyn I have some complaints about this costume it looks good but I just really struggle to believe that she would have had access to that kind of blue dye blue dye is not really a easily naturally derived color and it would have been very expensive especially for a shade that dark also as a Healer she would have had to wash that outer garment more than the average person and blue dye specifically did not hold up well to pre-industrialization garment washing techniques now I think that they may have chosen the blue color specifically because the two other lead female protagonists are also in blue for much of the show but not only do I think that blue is kind of like overused for clothing in the show it just doesn't make sense for this poor practical character to be wearing such luxurious clothing that being said I do like that we get to see some white or neutral colored layers underneath the dress this is super common in historical clothing as these white usually linen under layers could sit directly next to the skin absorbing any sweat or oil because these garments are already white it's really not a problem to wash them regularly so I do kind of appreciate that little nod towards historical undergarments also also she has her honestly other than the color which I'll admit I'm kind of hung up on I really like her costume it's fairly practical and I appreciate that she wears it for the entirety of the Season outfit repeating like this makes it all the more impactful when the costume does change like in the most recent episode when she is given a Red Cloak to wear at the end of the episode this symbolizes a dramatic shift in the character perhaps a willingness to shoulder new responsibilities the costume is certainly quite effective I just wish that they had been a little more practical with its particulars the last southlander we're going to talk about is halbrand to like of maybe it doesn't count but I didn't know where else to put him so here he is there's not really a lot to talk about because he was kind of in like casual rag chic for the majority of this season but once he does get put into armor we get to see him in this lovely numenorian set with their signature fish scale pattern and I really like that they set him apart from the other numinorean Soldiers with this much warmer color palette I also think it's kind of funny that he's only in that armor for like an episode and a half before he's back in rags it definitely kind of spells out the Arc of his story from like nobody to somebody to homeless once again now moving on to our last group we have numenor and with these costumes I am truly torn because I like the direction they started out in a lot they went with this kind of Grecian inspired look but to me it reads more like a 19th or 20th century artistic depictions of Grecian attire more than any true historical accuracy in fact it kind of reads as specifically Atlantean to me which is kind of funny because there is no real Atlantean look but in a way I think that the designers were able to very specifically capture what we as a culture think of as the Atlantean look which if you guys know anything about numenor which you probably do is very appropriate and the colors on even the background characters are these really deep saturated tones that give off this air of wealth and excess even for the simplest of people and honestly I kind of like how like new and shiny everything looks it is clearly a nation that is prospering so I don't really have any problems with the city dwelling people having a kind of polished and brand new look I like the numenorian armor like well enough there is a point where the soldiers are wearing padded canvasens as armor which is just thrilling despite what d d teaches us gambeson or padded cloth armor is actually surprisingly effective not only is a gambeson usually worn under every other type of armor they can redistribute the force of a blunt blow as well as deflect sword slashes gambasins are highly flexible and one of the cheapest types of armor but unfortunately because they're not as pretty as shiny metal armor they are incredibly underrepresented in fantasy then again these armor pieces don't last very long on screen and are then replaced with I think leather armor historically speaking and practically speaking leather armor just doesn't really make sense but it has become such a well-known artifact in fantasy especially modern fantasy that I guess I kinda have to let it slide the constant use of the fish scale pattern though I have some problems with that I just think that that armor would be very difficult and very expensive to mass produce for everyone and the fish Motif is getting overused in numenor like we get it there's water there that does not mean that every single thing needs to have a fish themed detail the this issue is also incredibly apparent in Muriel's costume Doom every single one of her costumes has both a fish scale and a fishnet design other than that though I I do like Muriel's costumes they're super reminiscent of 19th and 20th century art with these ornate headdresses and the Very Grecian inspired forms most of her costumes also have a very high Empire waistline which sharply contrasts the low seeded Elven waist lines and kind of emphasizes this culture clash between the two groups and the colors River costumes are fine they're mostly blue and green because it's because it's numenor so it's sea themed it's just so heavy-handed so numenor overall I like where they tried to go I think they took some interesting strides in a New Direction but in the end they just hamstring themselves with stupid fiction references and that unfortunately is kind of where I land for all of the series most of the costumes aren't outright objectionable but they do lack a certain depth the materials are shiny and kind of cheap looking the metaphors are heavy-handed and the hair styling is lazy the good news is a lot of these issues are things that could resolve over time as the designers get more comfortable with the world they're trying to create I really loved how they didn't let themselves get bogged down in the traditional tenets of Western medieval inspired fantasy and instead Drew on various artistic depictions of historical periods however particularly with the elves there was a lot of similarity to Peter Jackson's original trilogy which I do not love to be clear I have no problems with Peter Jackson's Vision I just wish that the rings of power had tried to do something entirely new by skimming so close to Peter Jackson design they leave themselves open for comparison whereas I think that a completely original design would have been much more easy to judge on its own Merit at the end of this I'm mostly just excited to see what's next I think the overall Foundation they laid for the costume design in this first season is pretty solid I just hope that they are able to go a little deeper and commit a little bit more fully in the future so those are my thoughts and I would love to hear yours I covered a ton in this video and I ended up skimming over some of it so I would love to talk more details in the comments below what was your favorite costume what was your least favorite costume let me know make sure you hit the like button if you enjoyed this video and if you would like to see some more of my content consider subscribing so you can join me and my little Community here every single week there will be a semi-quick video coming out this weekend to discuss my kind of final thought thoughts for the rings of power but then the Thursday after that there will not be a video my schedule especially with this channel has just been an absolute mess lately and I really need to reset and just get myself back on track I look forward to coming back on Thursday October 27th with a super special Halloween episode as always thank you all so much for joining me this week and I hope that you all have a very happy poverty day [Music] all right [Music]

Channel: Jess of the Shire

Views: 39,676

Keywords: rings of power, lord of the rings, costumes, cosplay, lotr, tolkien, the rings of power

Id: MGVbtqMZiFY

Length: 37min 41sec (2261 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 13 2022