I just recently read your post about The Reign and first, I completely agree with you, the costume design is kinda messed, however as I was reading it I cannot help but think about The Witcher. I have the impression that the identical aspect you describe on the Reign costume design happens in The witcher. The characters' costumes didn't match. I know is a fantasy world but the clothes have to help to build that World, I think that in the witcher it was several costume worlds running on. WDYT?
After writing my last post about Merlin, I have to say that not really. I think the Witcher is not bad at all, and that the costume does a really REALLY good job at giving some uniformity to a fantasy world that, when not keeping track and identity, might end up being a mess with no cohesion like Game Of Thrones.
BUT I think I see what you mean.
For me, the only character that breaks the unity of the world is Yennefer. Let me elaborate.
We have these main characters:
Geralt, who has only like 2 outfits or something like that, he looks like an improved version of the game, with a style that I think is the base for the whole world: leather, metal, suit of armour inspired, and a pinch of medieval inspiration, and a lot of biker references. Again, his look is VERY close to what he looks like in the video game.
Jaskier, he’s a dandy and has a much more decorated look with references to the early Renaissance and late Middle Ages: short doublets, slashes, shine, big sleeves, a lute... He’s the flashiest character of the show and I love that (usually, the flashiest character is a woman, because it’s a lot easier (lazier) to make her stand out).
Yennefer has two aesthetics in the show: the first one is just one that makes her a wallflower (which is very intentional), she’s just wearing what people around her wears. The second one (oh boy) is this kind-of-dominatrix outfits that are pretty awful BUT are a lot less awful than the ones she wears in the video game. Now, why do I say that her costumes are awful? Aren’t we all supposed to see her and understand that she’s a strong dangerous woman who’s not afraid to get dirty? Well, yeah, it accomplishes that (kind of?), by using all the clichés at the same time: black, leather, long hair, corset, slashes, transparencies, dark makeup... Hers is the laziest costume in the show, it’s the equivalent of making costumes for La Traviata and simply dressing Violetta in red. It kind of works, but it is lazy. Also, her costume does not match to anything other in the show, it just stands out for the sake of standing out: the details in her costumes designs are not repeated in other costumes for any other character. This might sound like “oh, it’s because she’s very special and not like other girls”, but it is not that: we are used to find patterns in everything, and since there is no real pattern in her costume repeated in other characters, she seems to be out of the world, like added with no logic. I don’t know if the producers asked to make her mode “edgy” or something, but having design details that are not repeated in other costumes, is odd, because nobody exists in a vacuum, and I feel like it takes the personality out of her, because you do not get real information from the costumes, since they are all over the place.
This is not like not having information about her because she’s a secretive character and her costume is so well done that it gives away no extra info (this might be closer to Gerald’s costume than hers).
The rest of the cast are dressed in groups. Each place of the continent has a particular way of dressing, and those aesthetics are kept though the show so the visual narrative is clearer and when the story goes from one place to another, the viewer get to know where they are. This might seem like a lot of messages that make the world being to vague or lacking of an unifying aesthetic, but if we get that this fantasy world is (vaguely) based in Middle Ages and early Renaissance, we can use the fact that in those times, countries like we know them did not exist, and each court had their particular way of dressing (an early Renaissance Italian court would look nothing alike an English one, for example). They keep those looks for the entirety of the series, and it helps the viewed to remember the places (and the groups of people in those places) without having to remember names.
This is what Game of Thrones started doing, but while the series advanced, they became vaguer and vaguer and every season each house had different details (I still cannot talk about how they changed the entire look of the Stark women, that ended looking like they were wearing Alexander McQueen (yes, I’m talking about THAT Sansa dress), it was pretty BUT made no sense at all, again a lazy choice of costume that used clichés instead of good design), they changed stuff season to season, and they seemed like they lost their original bible of each house. The Witcher being a smaller and shorted show has a better grip in the world building aesthetic, while both shows had about the same budget per episode.
Now, one of my main complains about Reign is that the costumes had no personality and said nothing about the character, making that they could simply change costumes and nobody would care. Here I don’t see that at all, I think it is very hard (almost impossible) to swap costumes between characters because they are clearly thought for them. I cannot think of Yennefer wearing some Ciri outfit, or Jaskier going Stegobor (I HATE THAT CHARACTER SO MUCH), or Ciri swapping with her grandmother. Even though it is not perfect, I think the costumes really work in this. Or maybe I did not get your question right? Please let me know if there are some specifics you’d like to discuss and I missed!
Now, just for you all to have the same thing stuck in your heads as I do:
