Pale Pink Trend: Style & Inspiration

Handmaids, the enslaved women forced to bear children for Gilead’s elite, wear red. Elite wives wear blues and teal. Aunts, the disciplinarian women who train handmaids, dress in brown. The servant class, Marthas, wear green. The rest of Gilead’s female population, from girls (pink before puberty, purple thereafter) to widows (black), is similarly delineated. Not so much a who’s who as a who’s hue.

This prescription is essential to the fictional world but, after four seasons, it was starting to feel like a restriction on the creativity of the drama’s costume department. In a TV landscape where novelty is highly prized, there’s a law of diminishing returns with every season a drama clocks up, and uniformity can start to look a lot like sameness – however striking it once was. To bastardise Dorothy Parker, every season’s the season before in a duller dress.

When Leslie Kavanagh became the costume designer on The Handmaid’s Tale in time for its fifth season, she had questions, as much for herself as anyone else. “When you’re in seasons five and six of a show, how do you keep advancing the storyline, surprising the audience and telling a compelling story through costume?” she says, talking to Radio Times from her studio in Toronto, Canada, where The Handmaid’s Tale is made. “And how do you keep fresh a drama that has used every colour to really mean something?”

The answer that Kavanagh came up with was inspired as much by “the trajectory of the story” as “the nourishing and collaborative” relationship that she has with production designer Elisabeth Williams, who has won three Emmys for her work on the programme. It also got the backing of Moss who, as well as the lead actor, is also an executive producer on the show and has directed some ten episodes.

Sometimes you look in the dye bath and think: what the hell…

And Kavanagh’s answer to the questions she posed herself? A pale pink pantsuit. As improbable as it sounds – perhaps even as ridiculous as it may sound – a pale pink pantsuit (or trouser suit) was a revolution in wool in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. Worn by Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy Waterford – an archnemesis of Elisabeth Moss’s handmaid turned freedom fighter June Osborne – the suit was a symbol of the evolution of that character and of the drama, as well as the subject of feverish speculation across the internet. While it may never attain the iconic status of the maid’s red cloak and white bonnet – which, when the first series aired in 2017, influenced catwalk collections as well as protesters in the streets – Serena’s suit nevertheless is quite the showstopper.

“The Gileadian look takes its inspiration from the book and is the work of the incredible original costume designer Ane Crabtree,” Kavanagh explains. “I was blessed in that I got to take that and push the envelope for season five. Then the trajectory of the story presented the opportunity to do something different with Serena.”

One of the architects of Gilead who was stripped of so much of her power by the implementation of its misogynist ideology, Serena Joy Waterford is not a straightforward villain. In season five, she is a widow and having lost the source of her power and status – her husband, the high-ranking commander – she is at a crossroads. She can’t wear blue or teal, but she’s nowhere near ready to don widow’s weeds and retreat to black.

“In my original sketch, it’s a minty tealy colour but Serena would want something soft but impactful, so I went for a pink inspired by the inside of seashells,” says Kavanagh. It’s a pink you won’t see anywhere else on TV or film because, like the majority of the costumes on The Handmaid’s Taleit is custom-dyed by Kavanagh. “I dye about 80 to 85 per cent of the fabric on the show, because I want the colours to be unique. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes you look into the dye bath at the samples and think, ‘What the hell…’ ”

Even more radical than the choice of colour was the decision to put Serena in trousers. This would have been impossible in Gilead proper – women are forbidden from wearing them – but much of the action in seasons five and six takes place in Canada, Gilead’s neighbour to the north, and in New Bethlehem, a liberalised enclave within Gilead akin to Hong Kong in China.

“It was a bit of a wild card,” Kavanagh admits. “I made sure I stayed within the boundaries of Gilead’s rule. It’s bending those rules, sure. But it’s not breaking them. I showed the sketches to Elisabeth and said, ‘Do you think this is crazy?’ And she loved it and thought it was new and fresh. Then we just had to convince everyone else. I did some concept art and everyone wasn’t closed off to it, but they were a bit ‘Oh. Pants…’ I was like, ‘Just let me build it.’ And they did.”

Serena’s pale pink pantsuit made its debut as The Handmaid’s Tale buried her husband at a state funeral. As he exited, Serena made quite the entrance, reinvigorated her character and added yet more depth and energy to the complex dynamic between Serena and June.

Kavanagh couldn’t be happier with her creation. Often, three or four versions of the same costume are made in the event of accident or wear and tear. With Serena’s suit, there is only one. It is unique in the world. With the series concluding this week, where is it now?

“Yvonne has it,” Kavanagh says proudly. “It was one of her favourite pieces and the one thing she asked for at the end of the show. As a designer, that’s incredibly special. When a piece you’ve made impacts someone so positively that they want to keep it. That’s so rewarding.” Clothes maketh the woman.

TOP TV TRENDS

Fashion and lifestyle editor Laura Craik on the shows that changed what’s In vogue …

MIAMI VICE 1985

Launched in the UK in 1985 during MTV’s heyday, this cop show immediately proved itself as a different breed. There were no dowdy suits 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 tough cops could wear pink, maybe male viewers could try it, too. Which they did, in huge numbers.

TWIN PEAKS 1990

David Lynch’s cult 1990s masterpiece may be 35 years old, but many fashion designers claim to have been influenced by the show, which was ahead of its time in using clothes to semaphore hidden facets of its characters. The style of Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) in particular played with contrasts such as conformity and subversion, preppy and sexy, vintage and modern.

SEX AND THE CITY 1998

It’s hard to convey how much fashion was regarded as a niche interest before Satc came along in the late 90s. Newspapers were reluctant to cover it, the consensus being that if you liked shoes, you were a frivolous person. Yes, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda launched a thousand trends (corsages, tutus, granny pants, culottes, Fendi baguettes, Manolo sandals), but they also catapulted fashion into the mainstream, allowing it to be critiqued with the same rigour as politics or sport.

BRIDGERTON 2020

“The Bridgerton effect” led to an extraordinary high-street rush to sell “Regencycore” corsets, puff sleeves and empire-waisted dresses that catered to viewers’ interest in dressing like modern-day inhabitants of the Ton.