The Costumes of Merlin

Anonymous asked: Do you have any detailed pictures of the blue and burgundy dress Merlin buries Freya in? I'm hoping to make one but I can't find any good pictures with details.

Thank you for the request - this was a tricky one! As I’m sure you know, Freya only wears the dress for one scene, and there are no high quality photos of her wearing it. I can see why you’ve been having difficulties.

I’ve made one post for Freya as a character, where I’ve included the best screenshots of the dress that I can find - I’m sorry that they aren’t that great. I’ve also made a second post of the dress it was styled after, which Morgana wore throughout series 1 until Merlin stole it. Unfortunately there are no good high quality photos of that either, but there are some better screenshots.

The two dresses are not identical, but are nearly the same in the cut, colour, fabric and choice of belts. The two main differences I can see are that Freya’s has golden embellishment around the neckline and two piece sleeves with bands above the elbow (not sure what the name is for that kind of sleeve?), while Morgana’s has very little embellishment and simple angel sleeves.

If you want more inspiration, many of Morgana’s series 1, 2 and 3 dresses shared a very similar pattern, and I think that this was also used for Freya’s. Of these dresses I’ve made posts on the purple and blue ‘dairy milk’ one and the emerald green one, and hope to cover more in the future. It might not be that relevant but it’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.

I’m sorry that I couldn’t be of more help, but if any high quality photos of that dress do exist, I don’t know where to find them. I hope you still go ahead with your project; I think it’d be a lovely dress to make. Good luck!

Anonymous asked: Hi! I love this blog! It's lovely! Could you please do some detailed pictures of Gwen's blue dress in season 5?

Thank you very much for both the compliments and the request :) I just adore this dress, so I’m glad you suggested it! 

Anonymous asked: Thank you for this blog! It's a light in the dark, truly. I'm working on an Honors Project that looks at the costuming of the female characters in Merlin while examining the roles of the characters, including a cross-textual analysis between several different renderings of the ladies as they appear in the canon as well as adding historical background.

Oh my goodness, thank you so much! That sounds fascinating, I’m so glad I could help you. I feel as though I should make an effort to update more regularly (or, you know, at all) if it’s that useful. Thank you again for such a lovely message! I hope that your project goes well.

Anonymous asked: Where can I get a Morgana dress from

Well unfortunately there are no official Morgana dresses sold, but you do have a few options:

• Some people online will create a bespoke cosplay dress for you. It’s quite expensive, so I have no experience of it myself, but the dress would likely be of a very high quality, and you’d have to do none of the work!

• The cheaper option would, I think, be sewing one yourself, but that is obviously a bit of a challenge. I made myself a medieval dress a few years ago with very little sewing experience, and it came out quite well, but that was more basic. To get it identical to one of Morgana’s you’d have to be a pretty skilled seamstress!

• Did you have a particular dress of hers in mind? Because some of them are similar in style to those sold on medieval clothing websites for larping, fancy dress etc. If you wanted one of her ‘evil’ dresses you could maybe even look at Halloween costumes. A couple of sites are: 

http://www.maskworld.com/english/department/larp/costumes–D-100/women-costumes–D-1000

http://www.fancydressball.co.uk/historical-costumes/medieval-costumes.htm

It really depends on your budget and how accurate you’d like the dress to be. Obviously, the more money you can spend, the better the dress will be, but that isn’t always possible. 

Finally, if none of those work for you, I suggest getting a cloak! Morgana’s velvet, flowing cloaks were a trademark part of her look from the first 3 series and very similar ones are available on eBay - not sure what country you’re from but they’re around £20 on the UK site. You can get them in a variety of colours, just wear any dress underneath to instantly feel like Morgana! Here’s one example:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Halloween-Black-Hooded-Velvet-Cloak-Cape-Wedding-Pagan-Witch-Various-Colours-/400566390916?var=670134677595&hash=item5d439e1084

Hope that helped, and feel free to let me know if you have any more questions x

Anonymous asked: Do you have good pictures of Morganas red dress with cape?

Yep, I’ve uploaded them - thanks for the request!