Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” first introduced the Plums into its dystopian world in Season 5. When Luke (O-T Fagbenle) and June (Elisabeth Moss) search for their daughter Hannah, they first learn about the premarital training school.
Hannah is now older and named Agnes (Chase Infiniti) and attends Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) elite prep 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 verge of womanhood, 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 shift from the red visuals to plum and tell a new visual story through costume.
Here she breaks down the looks of Gilead and how she found the right shade of plum, and used military-like wool for Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd).
The Plums
Disney
The Plums are daughters of Gilead. “They’re the biological children of a lot of the handmaids,” Kavanagh explains.
To find the right shade, Kavanagh started from scratch and began by mixing the red from the handmaid’s garments with the teals of the commanders’ wives. In the beginning, she did a lot of camera testing using different textures and fabrics to make sure everything worked. During the testing process, lighting was important to Kavanagh to see how lighting hit the fabrics and hues.
She says, “I custom-dyed a lot. I bought existing fabric and overdyed it to create special hues just for the show.” Kavanagh used various shades of purple. Each girl had their own signature colored blouse, dyed to compliment the skin tones of the actors.
The Pearls
Disney
In the book, the Pearls are described as wearing garments that are gray and sparkly. Kavanagh loved the idea of sparkle and mentioned it to showrunner Bruce Miller. He was hesitant and told her it “might be going too far,” but Kavanagh assured him it wouldn’t be.
She found an oyster-colored fabric that had a pearl-like quality, and she couldn’t wait to build the garment. However, when it came time to present the costume to Miller, she realized it didn’t quite work.
She was left with 36 hours to rebuild the Pearls’ look. This time around, Kavanagh leaned into warmer tones of white, 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. The pearls are supposed to get your attention. They are almost like the handmaiden of the Testaments,” she says.
With Daisy (Lucy Halliday), on the surface, the character appears to have an interest in adapting to Gilead’s customs, but it’s revealed that she has been recruited by 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 inside Gilead, Kavanagh says, “she’s stripped of everything because they are trying to reform these girls and mold them into what they want. So she’s that blank canvas, if you will. And that’s kind of how I ended up getting there for what you see on camera.”
Aunt Lydia
Disney
The original concept for the aunts was brown and had a militant feel. Kavanagh found a fabric from the U.K. that she ordered and was made from wool. “It’s a wool that you can use in the army, and it has this militant feel because they wield more power than the wives, guardians and the handmaids.”
Kavanagh loved reading the script for Episode 6 because it revealed the origin of the aunts’ outfits.
The episode explores Aunt Lydia’s (Ann Dowd) backstory, and the ultimate choice she made to save herself over others. Kavanagh explains, “She chose it as penance and as punishment because it’s not the nicest; there are other fabrics they use in the sequence where we see her choosing, and she chose what she deemed in that moment as the worst, most uncomfortable fabric, as a penance and punishment for what she was doing.”
The Ball
Disney
The girls of Gilead have their prom-like ball in Episode 5. It’s no ordinary ball, however, it’s a show for the commanders who are searching for their future wives.
Kavanagh knew the girls would be spinning so she paid close attention when building the dresses and skirts for the dance sequences.
As with their Plum outfits, Kavanagh made each girl had their own shade of green, and she added a caplet to each dress.
With the commanders, Kavanagh says, “I made them almost GQ like,” she says. “They’re surrounded by all these 14 to 16 year old girls, and it’s normatl for them to crush on a boy — even though it’s forbidden.” She continues, “We wanted to make them look long and lean and less bulky. We got rid of the cargo pant and oversized jackets. Instead, they had long lean lines.”
