Based on the award-winning, best-selling novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale depicts life in the dystopia of Gilead, a modern-day totalitarian society in what was formerly part of the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is run by a twisted fundamentalist regime that treats women as property of the state. As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a Handmaid in the Commander’s household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate a devastated world. In this terrifying society where one wrong word could end her life, Offred navigates between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids—where anyone could be a spy for Gilead—all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken away from her.

The Handmaids are required to wear long, loose red dresses that cover their bodies and indicate their function in Gilead: to have intercourse once a month with the high-ranking Commanders in the hopes of conceiving and giving birth to a child that will be turned over the Commanders’ Wives. The color red indicates the Handmaids’ fertility, echoing the color of menstrual blood. The Wives, by contrast, dress in blue, the color associated with the Virgin Mary. Historically, red has been seen as a symbol of power, worn by kings and religious leaders, yet the Handmaids’ only power is their presumed ability to bear children. Red has also been associated with women who commit sexual sins, most notably Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The Wives refer to the Handmaids as "sluts" and consider them to be little more than animals. Even the narrator’s assigned name, Offred, derived from her Commander’s name, Fred, contains the word red. Vanity Fair Studios asked the series’ creator, cinematographer, and costume designer about the significance of the color red in the telling of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Margaret Atwood, author, The Handmaid’s Tale, Writer, Consulting Producer

The color red appears throughout the “The Handmaid’s Tale,” most strikingly as the color of the handmaids’ dresses. The color can symbolize blood, power, and rebellion—did you have any other interpretations or reasons for making red so prominent?

“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.”