The real stars of “The Tudors” are the costumes. It was no surprise that the show’s costume designer. Joan Bergin (below), walked off with the Emmy Award last year. Her brocades, silks and plush furs give the stately Showtime series a rich, romantic look that adds an elegant veneer to the sometimes diabolical plot. If a king is going to cast the Catholic church out of England and condemn his wife to death, shouldn’t he look fabulous while doing it?

Bergin clearly thinks so. She dresses star Jonathan Rhys Meyers in brocade jerkins, fancy black velvet hats, sleeveless leather vests and extravagant fur capes that would send PETA members into fits.

The designer says Rhys Meyers loves fashion. “One of the really great aspects about ‘The Tudors’ is that Jonathan really understands and appreciates clothes. I’m so lucky,” she says. “Henry VIII had such charisma that when he entered a room people would stop talking.”

Working with a staff of 17 to turn out costumes for 110 cast members in 10 weeks, the Dublin-born Bergin relied upon journals written by members of King Henry’s court and her own knowledge of English history for background. “It’s an old Irish proverb that you serve your enemy well, so every Irish child would know a lot of English history,” she says.

Her vast network of contacts in the costume community came in especially handy. These included John and Vanessa Hopkins, a couple that collects vintage fabrics. They contributed a 150-year-old panel of molten silver silk that forms the bodice of a staggering silver-and-blue shot silk dress worn by Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer). For jewels, Bergin struck gold with a company called Sorelle, run by two sisters, which is what the name means in Italian.

“They sent me six pieces. Then they sent me another 200 pieces,” Bergin says. Another Italian vendor, Autore, sent an “amazing pearl necklace and earrings” worth about $40,000. “I was a bit daunted because I saw it was Art Deco. So I designed the dress to go with the pearls.”

Anne Boleyn will have her head chopped off wearing those pearls, in episode 10.

Bergin was working on the 2006 magician drama “The Prestige” when she was offered the “Tudors” job. “The complexity and the scale of [the show] and how to deliver it so that it’s not another bloody costume drama – that’s why I took the job.”

A veteran of the Irish film industry, Bergin has never studied costume design. The former architecture student, who lives in Dublin with freelance journalist Kevin O’Connor, showed a flair for wardrobe early in her career when she was an actor.

“I was working in a small theater and the costumes were so dreadful that I said, ‘Oh, look, for God’s sake,'” before taking over. She has designed the wardrobes on three Daniel Day-Lewis films – the Oscar-winning “My Left Foot,” “In The Name of The Father,” and “The Boxer” – and also dressed the casts of “Riverdance” and the 2000 TNT miniseries “David Copperfield.”

While many viewers might think more actresses than actors would be interested in costume design, she believes “men are intrinsically more vain than women. In the beginning [of ‘The Tudors’ production], the men were so coy and shy about these clothes. Six weeks in, they were strutting around the set.”

As Bergin prepares for a possible third season, she is surprised that she’s made it this far. “If you had told me two years ago that ‘The Tudors’ would be such a drawstring at the heart…” she says. “It’s [my] vanity.”