The Handmaid’s Tale costume designer on season 3
Image credit: Sophie Giraud/Hulu
With each season, the regimented world of expands, drawing viewers deeper into Margaret Atwood’s dystopia. In season three, airing now, the narrative stakes are even higher as June (Elisabeth Moss) works to disrupt the repressive system of Gilead from within. The costumes are similarly amped up.
Image credit: Elly Dassas/Hulu
“It’s been a massive challenge,” says Natalie Bronfman, the show’s new lead costume designer, filling the shoes of Ane Crabtree whom she’s worked with closely since season one. “It’s rare that you have a show where almost everything is made from scratch. We don’t buy a lot of stuff.” Among the few purchases were over 500 shoes, from Aldo and Steven Madden, which were extensively modified to become handmaid boots. The handmaid cloaks and bonnets, on the other hand, were entirely handmade – hundreds of them, in different sizes and lined for different seasons – using over 900 metres of wool, sourced by Bronfman and dyed to that very specific shade of crimson.
Image credit: Barbara Nitke/Hulu
But one of the biggest changes of the season was dressing Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). After she burns down her house early in the season, thereby destroying her entire wardrobe, Bronfman introduced significant shifts in her look.
Image credit: Elly Dassas/Hulu
“The very last outfit she wears is the brightest blue you’ve ever seen her in,” the costume designer says of the character’s progressively vivid ensembles. “After she loses everything, she makes this decision to fight for what she wants, and through that I took her shapes from that depressed, flowy fabric to an armoured, structured look, tight to the body. Sort of a Jackie Kennedy, Grace Kelly look for her.” Her favourite outfit of Serena’s? “I love the power suit she shows up in to the Putnams’ benediction celebration [in episode four].”
Image credit: Barbara Nitke/Hulu
While June’s handmaid outfits remain consistent with the previous seasons, the Washington handmaids are more oppressed than any we’ve seen before. The women’s mouths are physically clamped shut with ring piercings, their mouths gagged further with a red veil or neckpiece, inspired by the lower half of a nun’s wimple. The result is terrifying.
“The only part of the handmaids that was really exposed was the neckline, which can be quite sensual,” she says. “I wanted to muzzle the handmaids. [The veil] sits under the nose, because that allows for acting in the nose and eyes. On the back I put on these gigantic hooks that have a secondary clasp in case they should fall off – which they can’t. The dichotomy of this lightweight fabric and these heavy hooks is quite creepy.”
Image credit: Barbara Nitke/Hulu
Images from the Washington, D.C. episode (the sixth) leaked during filming, revealing a large group of handmaids lined up in front of the American monument. The photos parallel the real-life women who have been wearing handmaid costumes to protect sexist legislation and policies around the world.
“It’s hard to ignore a sea of red,” Bronfman says of the protests. “It makes you stand up and notice. These women are inspiring and they’re fighting for women’s issues, not just in our own country, but in many countries where things are still not equal. I get emails from women in different parts of the world saying, ‘Thank you for giving us this thing we can wear and feel strong in.’ It’s an army of women. You don’t even need to read or write to understand that.”
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