Handmaids, the enslaved girls pressured to bear kids for Gilead’s elite, put on crimson. Elite wives put on blues and teal. Aunts, the disciplinarian girls who prepare handmaids, costume in brown. The servant class, Marthas, put on inexperienced. The remainder of Gilead’s feminine inhabitants, from ladies (pink earlier than puberty, purple thereafter) to widows (black), is equally delineated. Not a lot a who’s who as a who’s hue.
This prescription is crucial to the fictional world however, after 4 seasons, it was beginning to really feel like a restriction on the creativity of the drama’s costume division. In a TV panorama the place novelty is extremely prized, there’s a legislation of diminishing returns with each season a drama clocks up, and uniformity can begin to look quite a bit like sameness – nevertheless placing it as soon as was. To bastardise Dorothy Parker, each season’s the season earlier than in a duller costume.
When Leslie Kavanagh turned the costume designer on The Handmaid’s Story in time for its fifth season, she had questions, as a lot for herself as anybody else. “If you’re in seasons 5 and 6 of a present, how do you retain advancing the storyline, shocking the viewers and telling a compelling story by means of costume?” she says, speaking to Radio Instances from her studio in Toronto, Canada, the place The Handmaid’s Story is made. “And the way do you retain contemporary a drama that has used each color to essentially imply one thing?”
The reply that Kavanagh got here up with was impressed as a lot by “the trajectory of the story” as “the nourishing and collaborative” relationship that she has with manufacturing designer Elisabeth Williams, who has gained three Emmys for her work on the programme. It additionally bought the backing of Moss who, in addition to the lead actor, can also be an govt producer on the present and has directed some ten episodes.
Typically you look in the dye tub and assume: what the hell…
And Kavanagh’s reply to the questions she posed herself? A pale pink pantsuit. As inconceivable because it sounds – even perhaps as ridiculous as it could sound – a pale pink pantsuit (or trouser swimsuit) was a revolution in wool in the world of The Handmaid’s Story. Worn by Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Pleasure Waterford – an archnemesis of Elisabeth Moss’s handmaid turned freedom fighter June Osborne – the swimsuit was a logo of the evolution of that character and of the drama, in addition to the topic of feverish hypothesis throughout the web. Whereas it could by no means attain the long-lasting standing of the maid’s crimson cloak and white bonnet – which, when the primary collection aired in 2017, influenced catwalk collections in addition to protesters in the streets – Serena’s swimsuit however is sort of the showstopper.
“The Gileadian look takes its inspiration from the e-book and is the work of the unimaginable authentic costume designer Ane Crabtree,” Kavanagh explains. “I used to be blessed in that I bought to take that and push the envelope for season 5. Then the trajectory of the story introduced the chance to do one thing completely different with Serena.”
One of many architects of Gilead who was stripped of a lot of her energy by the implementation of its misogynist ideology, Serena Pleasure Waterford shouldn’t be a simple villain. In season 5, she is a widow and having misplaced the supply of her energy and standing – her husband, the high-ranking commander – she is at a crossroads. She will be able to’t put on blue or teal, however she’s nowhere close to able to don widow’s weeds and retreat to black.
“In my authentic sketch, it’s a minty tealy color however Serena would need one thing delicate however impactful, so I went for a pink impressed by the within of seashells,” says Kavanagh. It’s a pink you gained’t see wherever else on TV or movie as a result of, like nearly all of the costumes on The Handmaid’s Story, it’s custom-dyed by Kavanagh. “I dye about 80 to 85 per cent of the material on the present, as a result of I need the colors to be distinctive. More often than not it really works out, however typically you look into the dye tub on the samples and assume, ‘What the hell…’ ”
Much more radical than the selection of color was the choice to place Serena in trousers. This is able to have been unattainable in Gilead correct – girls are forbidden from carrying them – however a lot of the motion in seasons 5 and 6 takes place in Canada, Gilead’s neighbour to the north, and in New Bethlehem, a liberalised enclave inside Gilead akin to Hong Kong in China.
“It was a little bit of a wild card,” Kavanagh admits. “I made positive I stayed throughout the boundaries of Gilead’s rule. It’s bending these guidelines, positive. However it’s not breaking them. I confirmed the sketches to Elisabeth and mentioned, ‘Do you assume that is loopy?’ And he or she beloved it and thought it was new and contemporary. Then we simply needed to persuade everybody else. I did some idea artwork and everybody wasn’t closed off to it, however they had been a bit ‘Oh. Pants…’ I used to be like, ‘Simply let me construct it.’ They usually did.”
Serena’s pale pink pantsuit made its debut as The Handmaid’s Story buried her husband at a state funeral. As he exited, Serena made fairly the doorway, reinvigorated her character and added but extra depth and power to the advanced dynamic between Serena and June.
Kavanagh couldn’t be happier together with her creation. Usually, three or 4 variations of the identical costume are made in the occasion of accident or put on and tear. With Serena’s swimsuit, there is just one. It’s distinctive in the world. With the collection concluding this week, the place is it now?
“Yvonne has it,” Kavanagh says proudly. “It was certainly one of her favorite items and the one factor she requested for on the finish of the present. As a designer, that’s extremely particular. When a chunk you’ve made impacts somebody so positively that they wish to preserve it. That’s so rewarding.” Garments maketh the girl.
TOP TV TRENDS
Style and way of life editor Laura Craik on the exhibits that modified what’s en vogue…
MIAMI VICE 1985
Launched in the UK in 1985 throughout MTV’s heyday, this cop present instantly proved itself as a special breed. There have been no dowdy fits for Crockett and Tubbs: they fought crime in pastel pink and lemon hues offset with white vests (for Don Johnson as Crockett) and designer shades (for Philip Michael Thomas as Tubbs). This electrified the menswear market: if two robust cops may put on pink, possibly male viewers may attempt it, too. Which they did, in large numbers.
TWIN PEAKS 1990
David Lynch’s cult Nineties masterpiece could also be 35 years previous, however many style designers declare to have been influenced by the present, which was forward of its time in utilizing garments to semaphore hidden sides of its characters. The model of Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) in explicit performed with contrasts akin to conformity and subversion, preppy and attractive, classic and fashionable.
SEX AND THE CITY 1998
It’s arduous to convey how a lot style was thought to be a distinct segment curiosity earlier than SATC got here alongside in the late 90s. Newspapers had been reluctant to cowl it, the consensus being that for those who preferred sneakers, you had been a frivolous individual. Sure, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda launched a thousand tendencies (corsages, tutus, granny pants, culottes, Fendi baguettes, Manolo sandals), however additionally they catapulted style into the mainstream, permitting it to be critiqued with the identical rigour as politics or sport.
BRIDGERTON 2020
“The Bridgerton impact” led to a rare high-street rush to promote “Regencycore” corsets, puff sleeves and empire-waisted clothes that catered to viewers’ curiosity in dressing like modern-day inhabitants of the Ton.
