Did you spot it?
Words by Jadie Troy-Pryde
Of all the characters in Game of Thrones, Sansa Stark seems to have had the biggest transformation. When you look at all the other female leads - Cersei Lannister, Arya Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Margaery Tyrell, Brienne of Tarth - they've all been pretty fierce from the start. Okay, Daenerys took a few episodes to warm up but she quickly became the definition of a Westerosi girl boss if ever there was one.
Sansa, on the other hand, started off as a delicate and sensitive flower, and has been one pretty consistently since. It's fair to say that the red-headed Stark has had it pretty tough - she saw her father decapitated, suffered at the hands of Joffrey, was tormented by Cersei, married off to Tyrion, kidnapped by Littlefinger and married off again to psychopathic Ramsay Bolton before she decided to ditch the naivety in favour of something darker and more calculating.
Now, in season 7, she has decided to allow all of the horrendous things that have happened to shape her as a straight-talking, no bullshit woman of Westeros. From the moment she cut Littlefinger's counsel short with: 'No need to cease the last word, Lord Baelish. I'll assume it was something clever,' we knew that Sansa was on her way to joining the show's legion of female badasses.
It's therefore fitting that Sansa's costumes reflect this new, strong Lady of Winterfell. As well as padding out with fur from IKEA rugs like her half-brother (ahem, cousin) Jon Snow, costume designer Michele Clapton revealed that Sansa's latest outfits have a dark meaning. The use of blacks and dark greys are used to show how she was repressed by the men in her life following her father's death, first at the hands of Joffrey, then Littlefinger, then Ramsay, and it serves as a warning to any man who wants to come near her.
One interesting detail is her belt. Clapton said: 'This is her taking back control of her body. I designed it to wrap around over her side-laced dress to represent the absolute removal of any possible physical touch.
'Her dresses are also tightly-laced on, incredibly difficult to remove; it's a message to Littlefinger.'
The one positive to come out of her sartorial transformation, Clapton says, is her cape which is a nod to her father, Ned.
'Sansa's cape, for instance, represents Ned and her desire to take on more of a leadership role at Winterfell,' she says.
Talk about Medieval power dressing.
