Did you ever suspect that one of 2017’s key fashion references would be “dispossessed 1842 Upper Canadian housemaid”? How about “enslaved walking womb in a dystopian future”? Perhaps not. But in an unsettling year the TV shows that had the biggest impact on our wardrobes centred on two such protagonists.
In case you missed the references, I’m talking about Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale. Both were based on books by Margaret Atwood and both featured women whose lives were ruled and ruined by the patriarchy. Both characters’ clothes were symbols of their repression: their dresses covered them up; their bonnets restricted their view.
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| Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss in The Handmaid's Tale |
It’s all a long way from Sex and the City, the most archetypal of TV fashion references
These dramas reflected more than the news agenda with eerie prescience. Not only was the Handmaid’s Tale cloak the definitive Halloween costume of 2017 (and a garment worn in anti-Trump protests), but it was echoed – consciously or otherwise – in a number of looks on the high street and from designers. Was it a coincidence that red was the undisputed colour of the autumn/winter season? That “modest dressing” was the macro-trend of the year? At Uniqlo, a long red dress that could not have felt more Offred was one of the season’s sellout items. In September, Preen showed a collection that was officially inspired by The Scarlet Letter but felt straight from the Republic of Gilead, comprising bright red-and-white dresses teamed with little bonnets.
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