Yesterday, HBO released a new teaser video for Season 7 of Game of Thrones, and while it showed us not a single frame of the actual season, one thing is clear: Winter is here. There's a chill in Westeros, as Cersei Lannister’s visible breath shows, and things are only going to get colder.
But climate change isn’t the only thing the new teaser reveals. As with all things GoT, the drama is in the details. On its surface, the the clip simply braids together footage of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) walking down separate hallways and sitting in their various throne rooms—but if you look closely, their clothes signal what's coming in Season 7.
The first one we see is Jon, in Winterfell, so let’s start there.
Jon Snow
For the most part, Jon Snow’s outfit consists of his standard-issue cloaks and shawls. Now that he’s reclaimed his place in Winterfell, though, his draped garments seem to be held on by a fancy new gold clasp now. (Also, that fur around his neck looks like it could’ve come from one of the Stark family direwolves—Grey Wind, maybe?—but that seems too dark even for Game of Thrones.) It’s hard to tell for sure, but it seems highly likely that at least part of his outfit is new. Last season, after Jon complimented Sansa’s ’fit, the new lady of Winterfell made her bastard brother one to match, adding “I made it like the one father used to wear.” Sansa’s cloak, you’ll remember, had quite a bit of symbolism: the Stark’s direwolf family sigil emblazoned on the chest. She’s nowhere to be found in this trailer, but if she was it would be a stark (sorry) reminder that now it’s truly the girls who run Westeros. Speaking of which…
Daenerys Targaryen
Next up is Dany, dressed in the kind of dark tones we hardly ever see her wearing. For years, we saw the Mother of Dragons in blue, because it was a Dothraki color. But then last season, as she began her liberation of Slaver’s Bay (now the Bay of Dragons), she started wearing more whites and neutral tones. The white, as costume designer Michele Clapton told BuzzFeed last year, "signifies her mental removal from some of the scenes that she has to be in—like in the fight pit. … She was visually removing herself from the things that she disagreed with." Now that she’s taking her throne in (what we assume is) Dragonstone, she’s dressed in a charcoal-colored outfit with a burgundy cloak. The fact that she’s incorporating a red-adjacent color might be the most telling thing of all—she hasn’t dressed in that color since she was with her brother Viserys (aka Literal Goldilocks). Could it be signaling her status as the rightful heir to the Iron Throne—or at least her return to her ancestral home? (Also, speaking of dragons, that brooch is ?.)
Cersei Lannister
After Tommen's suicide, Cersei now holds the Iron Throne, and her look is suitably regal. At the end of Season 6 she started wearing the kind of leather gear her father, Tywin (RIP), had preferred; the Rhythm Nation 1814 aesthetic continues in Season 7, and now she’s added a neckpiece with the Lannisters' lion sigil and some serious medieval-football-player shoulder pads. Cersei is another character who used to wear a lot of red (the Lannister's signature color), but as her multigenerational mourning continues, she’s been sticking to black. She’s also going to be, as indicated in this Season 7 teaser, incorporating a lot more silver flair into her look—as costume designer Clapton notes, it's her "new color." Winter is here, y'all; time to get monochromatic.
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