Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power's Costumes and the Challenge of Reimagining Tolkien's Unseen Second Age

extract

"Prime Video’s The Rings of Power explores the Second Age of Middle-earth, which is set millennia before the movies, and follows the story of Sauron’s initial rise to power, the creation of Mordor, and the forging of the great rings... And according to Kate Hawley, the costume designer for Rings of Power, a big part of her job was to find a way to honor what has come before in the world of Middle-earth while charting a new path—one that has never actually been represented onscreen before.

As for the Second Age covered in The Rings of Power, Tolkien never specifically set any of his books during that time period, though he made frequent references to the events that took place during it.

“I think we approached [everything] in a very organic way to relate more to the First and Second Age feeling that we were wanting to create. It has a sort of rawer quality to it,” she says.

“You look at the elves and Valinor and the vanity and everywhere you read there’s talk of jewelry and discussion about it. He talks about elves being born on shores of pearl and he doesn’t necessarily mean that in a literal way, but he’s always talking about ways to reflect the light and those qualities. There’s jewelry everywhere woven into clothes.”

Asked to avoid “a huge amount of prosthetics” when coming up with their ideas for what Second Age dwarves should look like, Hawley and her design team decided to emphasize “character more than anything.”