In the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, women’s assigned colors make Gilead’s social hierarchy visible: Handmaids wear red, while Commanders’ Wives wear blue or teal. The colors also carry attributed associations with fertility, blood, and religious imagery—but they are not a single fixed code shared identically by Margaret Atwood’s novel and the screen adaptation.
What red means for the Handmaids
On screen, the Handmaids’ red makes their assigned role immediately recognizable. Costume designer Ane Crabtree described the intended visual effect: “We wanted the Handmaids, as they are the fertile women’s tribe of the story, to flow down the streets of Gilead, leaving a long line of red in the midst of the gray of Gilead.” She also described the color as a kind of visual lifeblood and as the color of a womb. These are design interpretations for the adaptation, not a complete symbolic key for every use of red.
Atwood offered a separate, novel-related association in a 2017 Vanity Fair interview: “Traditional Renaissance color scheme: blue = Virgin Mary. Red = Mary Magdalene + blood + also – used for prisoners of war in WW II Canada as red shows up well against snow! Econowives = stripes (obvious): they have to do all functions. The TV series uses vaguely Nazi brown for the Aunts.” The historical and religious references are Atwood’s explanation of traditional associations she had in mind; they should not be mistaken for an exhaustive rule governing every version or scene.
Why the Wives wear blue or teal
The Wives’ blue or teal sets them apart from the Handmaids, and Atwood’s cited Marian association gives blue a religious resonance. The screen palette also uses blue-green as a visual counterpoint to red. Crabtree explained that the two colors were selected to work both together and independently in the frame: “From that photo was birthed the genesis of the Handmaids’ clothing as well as that of the Commanders’ Wives. [The colors were] two opposites that would look beautiful together and stand alone, opposing each other in the frame.” That is a cinematic design choice, not proof that blue always means purity or has only one meaning.
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Other women’s colors in the adaptation
The screen palette distinguishes other roles as well. ABC News reported wives in robin’s-egg blue, Aunts in dark brown, and Handmaids in dark red. Atwood’s description of the Aunts’ brown as “vaguely Nazi brown” is her pointed observation about the television series, not a universal interpretation of brown.
Crabtree summarized the role-based logic in an ABC News interview: “I call them tribal uniforms because each tribe does exactly what they are deemed to do.” The costumes thus do more than differentiate characters aesthetically: they help show how Gilead classifies women by their imposed social function.
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How the television palette differs from the novel’s associations
The distinction is between Atwood’s comments about color associations and the adaptation’s coordinated visual system. The novel gives readers language and context; the television production can make status legible at a glance through color, costume, and composition. Crabtree described designing the red and teal as opposing colors that could hold their own separately and together, while cinematographer Colin Watkinson discussed the palette in the same 2017 Vanity Fair interview.
Showrunner Bruce Miller said the production considered the palette deliberately: “We had more discussions about the color red than you ever want to have in your life.” In a Channel 4 interview, he described colors being assigned to characters and carried beyond clothing into objects such as umbrellas, gloves, and sweaters. This repetition helps maintain a coherent visual world rather than limiting color to a single costume.
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What the color symbolism can—and cannot—tell you
- It can show hierarchy: the adaptation uses different colors to make assigned roles recognizable on screen.
- It can suggest several associations: interviewees connect red with fertility, blood, the womb, and visibility; Atwood cites a Marian association for blue.
- It is not a universal dictionary: these are attributed readings and production choices, not evidence that each color has one fixed meaning in every scene or version.
- It is qualitative design commentary: the cited interviews explain choices and intentions; they do not establish a published statistic about numbers of shades, palette counts, or costume percentages.
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