‘It’s huge to be dressing the Dragon’

“Hopefully the fans will be happy because we’re trying to be as loyal to the source material as we can be.”

The season finale of House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones, airs on Sunday, with millions of fantasy fanatics expected to tune in.

Based on George RR Martin’s novel, A Song of Ice and Fire, the HBO drama sees fiery beasts, battles and family feuds take centre stage.

Behind the photo-realistic visual effects and intricate plots lies an immense effort in production with the show’s costumes captivating audiences and critics.

Emmy award-winning designer Caroline McCall from Portadown in County Armagh joined the show for its second season and plays a crucial role in bringing the fictional kingdom of Westeros to life.

Fresh from her work on the BBC and HBO’s fantasy drama His Dark Materials, Caroline said she was “really excited to try to get my teeth stuck into another one”.

“I was excited by the scale of it, and slightly apprehensive when I got the job… [House of the Dragon] is a huge show with an amazing scope of design as a costume designer,” she told BBC News NI.

“I was very excited to get the opportunity to pitch for the job.”

Caroline was hired to replace renowned designer Jany Temime – best known for her work on the Harry Potter film series – who she said built a strong foundation for the series.

“I had the benefit that there was already a really great costume team on board,” she said.

“A lot of the team already knew the workings of the show, so that was really helpful.”

Born in County Armagh, Caroline found early inspiration at Belfast’s Grand Opera House where theatre productions sparked her interest in costume design from a young age.

After studying a foundation course at Ulster University, she then embarked on a three-year costume degree at Wimbledon School of Art in London.

She then trained with the BBC, climbing her way up the industry before winning an Emmy in 2011 for her work on period drama Downton Abbey.

This summer, she is celebrating her 25th year in the film industry, during which she has witnessed significant changes back home.

Game of Thrones was primarily filmed on location in Northern Ireland and has sparked a film boom there.

“I’m rather jealous that there’s an industry now,” she said.

“I think it’s fantastic that it’s so well established. I have several team members from Northern Ireland who trained on Thrones.”

House of the Dragon is set 200 years before Game Of Thrones, and follows the fortunes of the Targaryens – a noble family with the power to control dragons.

With hundreds of costumes to oversee, where does a designer begin?

“It’s huge,” Caroline said.

“The fans of the show, and particularly those who have read the books, have got very firm ideas of how things should be.

“The politics and the economics of these places have changed between our show and Game Of Thrones.

“To dress people accordingly, basically in a redefined Westeros, was quite something to get my head around.”

In season two, the houses have separated, “so there’s a natural reason to redesign quite a lot of the principle characters”, Caroline explained.

Her research spanned “thousands of years of history” as she drew inspiration from cultures including the Roman and Byzantine Empires and the Mayans.

“I took all this reference and sort of divvied it up in to what aesthetically worked for each house,” she said.

“For example, the Targaryen look, it’s sort of brutalist in style, in terms of it’s adornment and embroidery, it’s more abstract, whereas the folks at Kings Landing are more naturalistic.”

With a team of up to 300 people, costumes are painstakingly dyed, printed and decorated, often taking months to complete.

The first series of House of the Dragon, much like its predecessor, faced some criticism for its dark cinematography, something that showrunner Ryan Condal has acknowledged and adjusted.

“We went into season two very conscious of that feedback,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

The cinematography is something Caroline was very aware of as she produced her garments.

“We tried before filming to look at colours on camera and in the environments that they would be in, to sort of make sure the greens were reading green or the blues were reading blue,” she said.

“Some of the sets are really dark, and they should be, Dragonstone and Harrenhal don’t have a lot of natural light coming in.”

House of the Dragon was one of the few US productions that continued to shoot during the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes.

For almost three months in 2023, industry writers and actors walked out in a dispute over fair pay and the use of artificial intelligence in the industry.

But the House of the Dragon cast did not take part because the show was mainly filmed in the UK under contracts overseen by British union Equity, rather than its striking US counterpart the Screen Actors Guild.

The show’s writer Ryan Condal previously told the BBC it was a “fraught period”, but a “great privilege” to keep the cast and crew employed.

So what’s next for the designer, and the House of the Dragon?

With details on season three kept tight-lipped, Caroline revealed that she will once again be working on the show, which she said will be her main focus for the next 14 months – albeit with a brief break for award season next year, one would assume.

Could the show repeat previous successes at the Baftas, Golden Globes or Costume Designers Guild Awards? It’s not something the designer has given much thought.

“You just have to do your best work and it all depends on what other productions are out…there’s an awful lot of fantasy and science fiction shows out this year,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

House of the Dragon’s season two finale is available on Sky and NOW in the UK from 5 August.