‘The Testaments’ costume designer on finding the right shade of plum

Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” first introduced the Plums to its dystopian world in season 5. When Luke (OT Fagbenle) and June (Elisabeth Moss) search for their daughter Hannah, they learn about premarital training school for the first time.

Now older and named Agnes (Chase Infiniti), Hannah attends Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) elite preparatory school, where she and other young girls are trained to become future wives. The young girls are grouped and defined by the color of their garments – ‘The Plums’ are on the edge of femininity, while ‘The Pearls’ are outsiders who have enrolled in the academy.

Costume designer Leslie Kavanagh, who had worked on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” was excited to move from the red imagery to plum and tell a new visual story through costumes.

Here she analyzes the look of Gilead and how she found the right shade of plum and used military-style wool for Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd).

The Plums

The Plums are daughters of Gilead. “They are the biological children of many Handmaids,” Kavanagh explains.

To find the right shade, Kavanagh started from scratch and began by mixing the red of the handmaid’s clothing with the teal of the commanders’ wives. In the beginning, she did a lot of camera tests with different textures and fabrics to make sure everything worked. During the testing process, lighting was important for Kavanagh to see how the lighting played on the fabrics and shades.

She says, “I did a lot of custom dyeing. I bought existing fabric and re-dyed it to create special shades just for the show.” Kavanagh used different shades of purple. Each girl had their own signature colored blouse, dyed to compliment the actors’ skin tones.

The Pearls

In the book, the Pearls are described wearing clothes that are gray and sparkly. Kavanagh liked the idea of ​​sparkle and mentioned it to showrunner Bruce Miller. He hesitated and told her it “might be going too far,” but Kavanagh assured him it wouldn’t.

She found an oyster-colored fabric with a pearly quality, and she couldn’t wait to make the garment. However, when it came time to present the costume to Miller, she realized it didn’t quite work.

She had 36 hours to rebuild the Pearls’ appearance. This time around, Kavanagh leaned towards warmer white tones, such as off-white, winter white and even warmer vanilla tones to offset the cooler environment of ‘The Testaments’.

“Having a little bit of that range helped balance it out. The pearls should grab your attention. They’re almost like the handmaiden of the Testaments,” she says.

With Daisy (Lucy Halliday) on the surface, the character seems to have an interest in adapting to the ways of Gilead, but it is revealed that she was recruited in June to be a Mayday spy and destroy the regime from within. Daisy’s story is revealed through flashbacks.

Kavanagh used vibrant colors and layers for the character in Toronto. When she’s at Gilead, Kavanagh says, “she’s stripped of everything because they’re trying to reform these girls and mold them into what they want. So she’s that blank canvas, if you will. And that’s how I ended up getting there for what you see on camera.”

Aunt Lydia

The original concept for the aunts was brown and had a militant look. Kavanagh found a fabric she ordered from Britain that was made from wool. “It is a wool that you can use in the army, and it has a militant appearance because they have more power than the wives, guardians and handmaids.”

Kavanagh enjoyed reading the script for Episode 6 because it revealed the origins of the aunts’ outfits.

The episode explores the backstory of Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) and the ultimate choice she made to save herself over others. Kavanagh explains, “She chose it as penance and punishment because it’s not the prettiest; there are other substances they use in the sequence where we see her choose, and she chose what she considered the worst, most uncomfortable substance at the time, as penance and punishment for what she was doing.”

The ball

The girls of Gilead have their prom-like prom in episode 5. It’s no ordinary prom though, it’s a show for the commanders looking for their future wives.

Kavanagh knew the girls would be spinning, so she took great care when creating the dresses and skirts for the dance scenes.

As with their Plum outfits, Kavanagh made sure each girl had their own shade of green, and added a caplet to each dress.

Of the commanders, Kavanagh says, “I made them almost GQ-like,” she says. “They are surrounded by all these 14 to 16 year old girls, and it is normal for them to fall in love with a boy – even though it is forbidden.” She continues: “We wanted to make them look long, slim and less bulky. We left out the cargo pants and oversized jackets. Instead, they had long slim lines.”