When Margaret Atwood first published “The Handmaid’s Tale” in 1985 — which imagines a near-future totalitarian theocracy in America in which women were subjugated through assigned roles to men — she also imagined, in vivid detail, the costumes that her female characters would wear. When thinking about how the show’s wardrobe might translate into the real world, Kavanagh likens June’s style to a “reporter in a war zone,” in which each garment has a purpose—and sometimes even more than one. “She is always in good footwear that she can run in,” says Kavanagh, “she’s layered up a lot.”

First introduced in her novel in the form of “some fairytale figure in a red cloak”, it is a uniform – as Atwood’s heroine Offred explains – designed to be understood in terms of violent oppression and the fertility of the handmaids in a largely infertile world.The most visually arresting part of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, are the uniforms the Handmaids wear: bright-red dresses capped with stark white bonnets. The Handmaid’s Tale does much of the world-building of this near-future dystopia through its costume design. In this new totalitarian theocracy known as Gilead, women are divided into different castes according to their usefulness to the state; the uniforms follow suit. The Handmaids wear long red dresses because they are, quite literally, the reproductive organs of the new country. The costume designer Ane Crabtree calls the color “lifeblood.” Referencing the handmaids’ standard uniform, Crabtree shared, “This is a kind of very modern, sporty, Gortex that we now secretly use to put the inside the capes.” She made the bonnets out of a material close to a linen so that they could play with shadow and light. “It has a beautiful slight opacity when you need it to and slight luminosity for natural light and lit moments,” said Crabtree. “We didn’t want it to be this sort of concrete slab thing on the head. We wanted to do shadows on the faces.”

The Handmaid’s Tale has becomea cultural touchstone in costume design, at once depicting the way fashion has historically been used to control bodies, strip away agencyand reify outdated notions of gender. In the recently concluded fifth season, viewers were treated to an alternate reality—one where main character June Osborne (played by Elisabeth Moss) is empowered to not only escape the dystopian Gilead, but indeed tip the first domino of a long-awaited revolution. And in the real world, as we come to the end of a year that saw great political upheaval and unrest, The Handmaid’s Tale’s themes are more salient than ever. It has been donned by pro-choice protesters during Ireland’s successful referendum to revoke the eighth amendment of its constitution and by abortion rights campaigners in Buenos Aires. Speaking of group costumes, we here at Halloweencostumes.com have some serious dreams for these Handmaids Tale costumes. We'd love to see a group of Handmaids walking around the streets of New England. You could even delegate your most intimidating friend to be an aunt. She could dress up in a brown dress, military style boots, and an extremely stern expression. If you don't get an award for the best group costume for this amazing look, we don't know what would work!Costume designer Ane Crabtree kept working and working at the color, Moss said, until they came up with the perfect blood red. Now, those costumes and the speculative fiction novel are being brought to life through a TV adaptation premiering this week on Hulu — which many have said bears striking parallels to the present. Last week, Atwood and the actress Elisabeth Moss, who plays the novel’s main character, the Handmaid Offred, sat down with NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown and shared more about the meaning behind the costumes.

The handmaid’s costume has been adopted by women in many countries as a symbol of protest about various issues having to do with the requisitioning of women’s bodies by the state,” she told the Guardian. In London, protesters put on the cloak and bonnet to protest against Donald Trump’s visit to the UK and the policies of his administration. Also, red is so impossible usually on film. It can be really ugly," she continued. "It can take all the color and pull it towards itself and you’re not going to look at anything else. Of course you still do that a little bit in our show, but I tried to find what I call an intellectual red. That wasn’t blaring.”

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M’Evie Mead, director of policy and organising for the reproductive rights group Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri, helped organise one of the first Handmaid’s Tale demonstrations last summer, when the state legislature was trying to stop people with Medicaid, the federal health insurance for low-income people, from accessing Planned Parenthood health centres. Crabtree mostly works with her team of designers, but when schedules permit, she and the show’s Emmy winning Director of Photography Colin Watkinson merge their talents.