George R.R. Martin Wishes the 'Game of Thrones' Costumes Were Crazier
There's a lot to obsess over in "Game of Thrones," from the insane plot twists to the great looking cast (helloooooo, Kit Harington and Natalie Dormer), but we here at Fashionista love following one thing about the show in particular: The incredible costume work.
That's because George R.R. Martin has put an insane level of detail into his books — the A Song of Fire and Ice series which serves as the inspiration for the HBO show — including the attention paid to how his characters style their hair and wear their clothes.
"I like it, I think it's a way of selling different cultures," Martin told Fashionista Sunday evening at 92Y, where he was promoting his latest book, The World of Ice and Fire. "If you actually look at history, where I draw a lot of my inspiration from, people have had some very outré kinds of clothing and hairstyles over the centuries."
It's a detail which one would think easily translates to the screen, but that's actually not the case. Avid fans of the books are quick to find deviations in these subtleties, like in season four when Daenerys's Tyroshi paramour Daario Naharis was missing his infamous blue beard. Martin notes that television and film costume design often back away from these kinds of details for fear that the modern audience will find them silly, interfering with the suspension of disbelief.
"I have noticed that's one of the things the show has been quite conservative about compared to what I've done," Martin says. "I think what the show has done has been great — I mean we've won Emmys for costume design and makeup and things like that — and I think they probably made the right decisions in being more conservative about this, [but] I do kind of regret that it's so because I'd love to see historical fiction represent what people wore and what they looked like, and fantasy shows could have more out-there stuff."