Wardrobe for The Lord of The Rings The Two Towers

The wardrobe/costume design for any film is one of the most important parts of film making. If the costume is wrong, the audience won’t buy into the movie, and all the rest of the effort put into the movie is for naught.  

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, specifically the Two Towers segment has a great variety of costumes. There were two main costume designers: Ngila Dickson (pronounced Nyla), and Sir Richard Taylor. Together They they won a BAFTA for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2003).

Dickerson has been working on fashion design since she was young. Besides the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, she has also worked on: The Green Lantern, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and many others. Dickson began work on Lord of the Rings in April 1999; six months before shooting began, and assembled a crew of over 50 to help sew and make the costumes.

Taylor is the creator and head of New Zealand film prop and special effects Company called the Weta Workshop. The created all the swords for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, as well as for other films such as The Chronicles of Narnia, and Peter Jackson’s other film, King Kong. Taylor and his crew designed and built all the armor, weapons and special props for the film.

Each of the main characters costumes was made an average of 40 times, and each race of characters has their own distinctive style. According to Dickerson, “Hero costumes are costumes that were mean to be seen up close.  These have fantastic hand details like embroidery, real chain maille, fine acid etched velvets, hand knotted wigs, etc.”  Even all the weapons were made realistically detailed and have their non-leather, non hero version.

For our chosen scene, four actor/characters are represented: Gandalf the White, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli.

                            

Gandalf the White: Gandalf's white costume starts with a white wool cape that is calf length and held with a rather intricate silver mallorn clasp. The edge is trimmed with embroidery. It is an intricate machine embroidered pattern, white on white. The tunic is quilted down to the upper hip.  It is an 8 petal floral shape. There is a different pattern in the yoke, but it is also quilted. Next layer is the cream under tunic and this fabric is somewhat textured. Last layer is the trousers.  They are wide culottes.

    

                           

Aragorn: Aragorn wears a fine, grey linen shirt, embroidered around neck and a smocked panel at each shoulder, and leather trousers. He also wears tall soft boots, a long sleeveless jerkin w/braided ties long duster/coat of heavier leather. This is to reflect his ranger status.

Legolas:  He is a woodland elf. Dickerson wanted the elf costumes to reflect the environment around them with lots of leaf shapes etc. Legolas’s basic outfit is a two toned suede jerkin.  This is worn over a pale silk shirt and dark suede trousers.  He wears knee high soft boots and wide leather vambraces.  He is seldom without bow and quiver.  The jerkin is dark olive over lighter olive with a shirt of pale blue. His Trousers are dark brownish/green which are tucked into his boots. Legolas' boots are really movie magic multipart constructs.  The basic boot is a short angle length pull on boot with elastic sides.  Over it are book toppers wraps that were created by the wardrobe department. These toppers wrap around and fasten on the inside.  A strap goes under the instep.

Gimli : He is a dwarf  warrior.. His costume reflected where he came from which was the Lonely mountains. Dickerson and Taylor had him in an almost full suite of armors with woven leather crisscross his armor. He also had a tunic made of leather as well as a Helmut. Even though his suite was only partly out of metal, and made with PVC cutouts, his costume still weighted around 70lbs.

Good costume design should be seamless where the audience doesn’t even notice it unless it is bad. While it is so important, Costume design remains one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated filmmaking arts and the visual design of any movie.