Atlanta (CNN) — When Offred appears in her distinctive red dress, cloak and winged, white-lined bonnet, there’s no doubt about her lowly rank as handmaid. Nor do we doubt the higher rank of the wife, Serena Joy, dressed in the teal required of all wives.
In the fictional future of Gilead, Commander Fred Waterford and other men wear clothes that communicate their absolute authority over the women in their orbit, whether they be their wives, handmaids or domestic servants.
That’s thanks to costume designer Ane Crabtree, who’s also the creative powerhouse behind the costumes in the television series “Masters of Sex,” “Westworld” and “Pan Am.”
Tribal colors in a totalitarian society
The color of a woman’s clothing dictates their roles and power.
Courtesy Hulu
Crabtree and her team design the clothing for the characters played by actors Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Samira Wiley, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd and Alexis Bledel.
She’s already won a 2018 Costume Designers Guild award and a 2017 Emmy Award nomination for her designs on the show, as well as Costume Designers Guild nominations for her work on other shows.
Dressed in solidarity
Planned Parenthood supporters protest a healthcare bill outside the US Capitol in 2017.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Evoking restrictions on women’s power, the handmaid costumes have also popped up in real life, with women donning them to protest cuts to women’s healthcare funding outside the US Capitol in Washington and at women’s marches around the country.
“That is a huge honor,” she says. “To know that women are able to express themselves wholly and separately and be inspired is absolutely bigger than me, and bigger than any expectation I would have thought could come of this kind of career and work.”
Although that’s gratifying that these costumes have struck a nerve, her process doesn’t vary from show to show.
“Every time I go about creating something, the process is to begin going crazy with research and looking at classic examples of lines and color, as well as hypothetical uniforms people have used throughout time even if they are not specific uniforms per se,” she says.
“I go at each show, each project, as a visual puzzle … and try to solve emotional, intellectual, psychological problems via the clothing.”
To satisfy herself, she asks, “How do I find the joy or delight or the light and the humor in the clothing so that it’s not just a beautiful, pure dress on a wife? How do I make it long-lasting so that it’s an art piece that I am proud of for the ages?”
A nod to the history of fashion
Crabtree drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including the Japanese obi. The obi-like fabric along the front of the handmaid’s dress can highlight the presence, or absence, of a pregnancy.
Felice Beato/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A flap of fabric seen on the handmaid’s outfit she first spotted in a trip to Milan when she saw a priest’s vestments. Corsets designed to hide the handmaids’ waists were inspired by a Okinawan or Japanese obi (the sash on a kimono), says Crabtree, who is part-Okinawan.
She was also inspired by the German Bauhaus movement and the 1900s industrialism of workwear, “which is my favorite thing,” she says. “All of those elements are in the clothing.”
She wants the clothing to help, not limit, the actor’s work, so she asks herself, “What is the easiest way for the person playing the character to immediately feel that person, so they don’t have to fight the clothing to get there?”
By all accounts, it’s worked.
Cloaked in their characters
Rita, right, portrayed by Amanda Brugel, believes that the suppression her character experiences in the series is also reflected in her costume. “It’s another layer for her to hide behind.”
Courtesy George Kraychyk/Hulu
“It’s only the second time where I have been on (a show) where they make everything to specifically fit me and with my character in mind,” says Ever Carradine, who plays Naomi Putnam, the wife of Commander Warren. “It felt incredible.”
“Ane Crabtree always puts Naomi in these prominent collars, and it’s almost like a peacock with her feathers up,” says Carradine.
“There are so many moments where Ane would add something new or explain something to us and it would extend your entire universe of where you thought the character would go,” says Nina Kiri, who plays the handmaid Ofrobert.
Amanda Brugel, who plays a domestic servant named Rita on the show — a “Martha” in the story’s parlance — wanted her character’s oppression to be evident.
“I am not walking in a world where I am repressed every day, so I wanted her to have a different physicality, and the costume took it to a level that I could not have anticipated,” says Brugel.
“To put on these clunky shoes under this big gown, it is almost like it swallows you whole. Like you disappear even before you walk into a room, it really helped me feel smaller and even more insignificant.”
A visioning board on ‘steroids’
Costume designer Ane Crabtree won a 2018 Costume Designers Guild award for her work on the show.
Courtesy George Kraychyk/Hulu
Robert Curtis Brown, who plays Commander Pryce, says Crabtree created the world of Gilead through her visioning boards.
During his first fitting, “I walked into her office and there was a wall that was easily 10 feet by 15 feet, covered with pictures, fabric swatches, images, objects from nature.”
“She broke down the handmaids and the color that they wear — the white and black of the commanders, the khaki color of the domestics that work in the house,” he says. She created a foundation that “makes your character even stronger and more vivid.”
