The Handmaid’s Tale : How to Dress a Patriarchal Dystopia
What does it take to object when you are treated as an object? That line could be a mantra for women in our current political climes. Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale creates a world in which child-bearing women are raped to populate the world. The uniformity imposed on them is visible in their clothes. Costume designer extraordinaire Ane Crabtree, walks us through her dramatic creations:
“The first sketch was one of the first for the overall feeling of The Handmaids. I wanted to create a walking womb, a red cell, a woman enclosed within herself. Quiet, but glaring in her red color. The color red evokes hostility, caution, lust, it is a siren call for some. My overall goal for the The Handmaid’s Tale was one of modernity, reality, a kind of red warning that this time is now. A sense of urgency in the clothing, while disguising it as pious silence. I did not want to distance the audience. I wanted them to feel as though they were looking into the mirror the day after America, as we once knew it, had vanished overnight, and in its place stood a kind of simplified, unnerving solid wall of colors. All patterns were removed, erased, women were reduced to religious-based moral ideals in their clothing, and men became either militaristic official enforcers and/or walls of suits, black as night.“
The Paley Center is featuring The Handmaid’s Tale costumes. May 4 – 14 from 12 – 3 pm, 465 North Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.