Cape This A Secret But The Night’s Watch Wears IKEA Rugs To Keep Them Warm On 'Game Of Thrones'

As members of the Night's Watch on Game of Thrones, men are sworn by oath to uphold certain tenets:

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the shield that guards the realms of men. I shall wear the black rug of IKEA as my warmth. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch.

Okay, so maybe that IKEA bit isn't exactly verbatim from the Night's Watch Oath, but considering #GameofThrones is one of the most expensive shows ever it makes sense that from time to time they'd want to pinch a few pennies after spending a ton of cash on the CG dragons. And when funds are tight, the costume team heads over to the local IKEA and browses the Living Room division to find a rug fit for the King in the North. Seriously.

While speaking at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, costume designer Michele Clapton explained that the capes we see in Game of Thrones are actually IKEA rugs that were cut, shaved, dyed and then put through an intense breakdown process that made the costumes look as worn-in as they would have appeared in the reality of the setting for Game of Thrones.

Clapton explained that the various capes were properly ravaged as you would expect for a group of men sworn to survive in the harshest of elements with no means of going out and simply buying new garb. She wanted their capes to seem so real that the audience could 'almost smell the costumes' because for her it's more than simply making a costume that looks nice; it's about the bigger story overall:

I did realize that I love the narrative. I like the fact that you use costumes to tell a story, and to create character... You know the story, you know what they're doing. You know what their relationships are, you need to show that, somehow in cloth. ... Game of Thrones is much harder in a way, because you have to make it up.

With all the costumes being so precisely designed to tell bits of the story that dovetails with the narrative may hint at is a big reason why the visuals of Game of Thrones are so on-point. Not only are the cloth, silk, and wool costumes meticulously crafted, all the metalwork and armor is designed uniquely for each character. After Season 3, in fact, Clapton began working with an Italian armorer who made everything by hand.

I hadn't designed armor before I did Game of Thrones. I worked initially with one armorer, who then became unavailable for Season 3, and then I started working with an Italian armorer, and he makes everything by hand, leatherwork, metalwork, and it's extraordinary. To be able to draw an idea and say, well, I'd quite like to start here and to actually see someone handbead, for instance, Jaime's hand, and hand-decorate it... If you as a designer realize almost anything can be made, it enables you to be much more extravagant in your design.

The work that the costume team puts in has been evident from the beginning, considering that Clapton had won three Emmys for her work in the first five seasons of Game of Thrones. After taking some time off, she's returned as the chief costume designer for the current season. Since she's already managed to find capes at IKEA, it's anyone's guess as to what item Game of Thrones will incorporate from the Swedish megastore next.