Arwen Undomiel

'Requiem' Dress

"Some things are certain. If I leave him now, I will regret it forever."

Photography by @d.blarg354

The sleeve fabric is a purple crepe chiffon, as described by people who have seen the dress in person. The lower part of the sleeves are a white silk brocade with woven silver flowers, which I matched as closely as possible to sketches from The Costumer’s Guide, an excellent reference for this costume not only for the fabrics but also for the patterning and embroidery.

The outer dress fabric is 100% silk velvet in a gorgeous dusty blue. Ideally I would have liked it to be slightly lighter, as it can appear rather dark in certain lighting. However, it matches the film beautifully in daylight, and in darker lighting it actually looks quite close to the display references, so I’m very happy with the choice.

I sourced the fabrics both online and from Goldhawk Road, while the trim was sourced from Etsy. I spent quite a bit of time searching for trim that resembled the original as closely as possible.

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien is, in my opinion, the best literature ever written. Tolkien is often considered the father of fantasy, which I wholeheartedly agree with. I don’t think we would have much of the media we enjoy today without him, and thanks to his work a big part of what is now my career stems from my love of fantasy costumes. That love began with reading, and later watching, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings for the first time and utterly falling in love with the costumes and how characters might look in a fantasy setting, thus a costumer was born.

You’ll be pleased to know I’ll now stop yapping about how much of a nerd I am and instead tell you a little about the process of making this dress. This is Arwen’s “Requiem” dress, which she wears in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

It’s actually quite debated online what colour the dress truly is, as it appears very different on screen compared to photographs of the exhibition display from 2001. I spent months analysing images, video, and eyewitness descriptions before looking at fabric samples and deciding how I wanted to approach it. In the end, I chose to go as screen-accurate as possible, which is where my colour palette came from.

The sleeve embroidery was done by hand. I used washable embroidery stabiliser, first referencing the embroidery pattern from the website and then creating a stencil in Procreate, which I transferred onto the stabiliser. The outline was stitched with a small zigzag stitch, while the finer details were done with a simple straight stitch. I also used bugle beads and seed beads for additional detailing.

I would love to remake this costume in the future with fully screen-accurate embroidery and trim, but for now I’m incredibly happy with how it turned out. Thank you for @d.blarg354 for the incredible photos, taken at The Old Lace Factory in London.