Let's consider the costumes of Hunger Games, Shadowhunters, Delirium, Divergent, and the rest of ya dystopias -- what do they indicate symbolically and about our culture?

1. Dressing for Dystopia

2. THE SUBVERSIVE PRINCESS

3. Life in the Bubble
• Cassia’s three dresses and oh-so-
significant bubbles reflect her growth
through the trilogy along with the
three colors of pills she carries.
• She lives “in a bubble,” as shown
through many aspects of her life.
She’s a girl who sits on the edge of
the pool, hesitant to dive in.
• Green, blue and white are the colors
of the innocent hero or heroine—
blue is the peacefulness of sea and
sky. Green is spring, life, and
renewal.
• In her world, everyone wears black
and brown. By contrast, Ky’s eyes
look like green and grey and blue—a
multitude of colors in Cassia’s
colorless life. And that’s what she’s
seeking—brightness, color and
growth.

4. Split Picture
• Cassia’s green dress of course is the one
from her Matching ceremony, back
when she follows every rule. She seems
constrained by her bubble, like society
and its endless control, but she isn’t
breaking out of it yet.
• “Green eyes on a green girl,” her
grandfather says, hinting at her
innocence, the other meaning of
“green” (Matched 119).
• Green is the calming pill of
the Matched world, a pacifying drug
Cassia’s rebellious grandfather suggests
she refuse to use.
• Green can represent youth and
newness along with the growing things
Cassia loves. Ky comments that he sees
her in green every day in the wilderness
where she feels alive. She breaks open
her green gown scrap to give him.
• Later a young artist chooses the same
dress and creates her world’s first art
piece. She’s like another young Cassia,
beautifying the world.
Green for New Life

5. Breaking into Action
• Cassia’s favorite color changes from green to
blue out in the wilderness, as she clutches the
blue pills that could take her to Ky. Blue as she
thinks, is the color of action, not obeying
society by calming or forgetting. Long ago, she
gathered her courage and finally leapt into the
“warm blue pool” (Reached 134).
• However, blue can be deadly in pill form.
Cassia’s mission as a villager, the hidden tubes
out in the wilderness, her quest for Ky—none
are what she had suspected. But she’s
breaking from her bubble at last.
• The canyon she travels through is made of
“red, blue, and very little green—” action and
adulthood but not innocence (Crossed 100).
• Of course, blue is more than nature. The
villagers trace blue lines like rivers on their skin
to show interconnectedness.
• Many ancient gods in India, Egypt, and more
were blue to demonstrate their heavenly sky
power.
• Indie says she would’ve chosen a blue dress for
her own Matching banquet. She’s an
adventurous child of the rivers and oceans.

6. Powerful Red
This picture shows a more mature
woman rising from the shattered glass at
last. Cassia’s red gown symbolizes the
romance of adulthood, as she buys the
dress for Ky. She no longer wants childish
obedient green but defiant powerful red.
She also takes the red pill at last.
Red is the color of the plague, with its
blood and immunity marks, but also the
color of rebellion and rebirth. The
plague, though terrible, s the path to
rebellion and a better society in the
future. Cassia gives Ky a red wildflower
and calls it “the color of beginning.”
(Reached 288). It’s also the color of her
red garden day, when she took
responsibility for her own destiny, a path
that leads her to the woman she
becomes.

7. “The sky is now streaked with long filaments of orange and red,
like the tendrils of a massive jellyfish” Lena notes on the eve
of revolution (Requiem 328).
This often comes at the climax or midway point.
Mechanical Flower
The Red of Conflict, Passion and Standing Out

8. In the comic of Uglies, even Shay designs a
lovely gown for herself.
“Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon,” the book Pretties begins
as Tally mindless gropes for semi-formal partywear.
Prettying
up for
Comics

9. Kiera Cass’s The Selection (2012) is a dystopian
Cinderella retelling. It begins with a beauty
contest like The Bachelor, as many young
women compete for the handsome prince.
Among these young women, America Singer
alone yells at the prince and rejects him. She’s
the only lower-class girl, the only one who
doesn’t want to marry him. He’s captivated.

10. Of course, the heroine protests that she
doesn’t want to dress up. Lena confesses, “I
don’t like makeup, have never been interested
in clothes or lip gloss” (Delirium 15). Offered a
universe of pretty clothes, Tally attends a
Pretties dance in her old brown sweater from
the forest. Katniss sees the beauty treatments
as something to endure.
“If Katniss sought to be the center of attention,
if she chose to string along two handsome
young men more than willing to give their lives
for hers, if she wanted to have her every
movement photographed and admired, if she
dreamed of leading the revolution, if she
longed to compete and to win – if she had any
ambition at all – she would be a bad girl by
such a standard.” (Miller) She must prove her
goodness by not really wanting them.
Resisting Greed, Resisting
Beauty

11. Her second movie gown
is more expensive but still
simple for the beginning
of her second journey.
Blue is a calm color of the infinite sea and
sky, suggesting an untested heroine who
hasn’t begun her journey. The placid Virgin
Mary wears blue in art. Long ago, it was a
royal color for its expense, but now we
associate it more with business suits, like
the blue clothing of the Erudite Faction or
everyday jeans, like the people of Amity.
It’s a pleasant, calm color, the “green and
brown and blue” of Cassia’s hometown
(289). Julian’s childhood room is decorated
in green, blue, and white, and those are
the colors of Portland for Lena (66).
Baby Blue

12. From dull beginnings…
Other heroines wear the
dull colors of poverty or
of a journey not yet
begun. Before her pretty
green Matching dress,
Cassia wore lots of
brown.
Brown symbolizes the earth,
humility, and degradation.
Grey suggests dullness, gloom,
an unformed state, or
uncertainty. Dystopian
heroines are often unable to
get pretty gowns.
In the Smoke, Tally buys
a brown sweater,
homemade and real,
unlike her Pretty clothes.
Lena loves grey, the “moment when the
whole sky goes this pale nothing color…it
reminds me of waiting for something good to
happen” (Delirium 35). That’s the untried
heroine.

13. …To dazzling
Mechanical Flower
Snapshots

14. The wedding dress has lots
of Capitol style. “The metal
pieces rising up from the
bodice are meant to signify
fire and flames, while laser-
cut feathers at the waist
and shoulder hint at Katniss
eventual transition into a
Mockingjay.” EW reports. In
it, Katniss resembles a swan
or an angel, feathered,
gorgeous, and alien. Like
the red gown, she doesn’t
actually want to wear it—
she’d rather be the genuine
girl from the forest.
White is the purity of
brides and baptism
gowns but also can mean
sterility and death. It’s a
spiritual color, suggesting
a purification before the
decent into death.

15. At least Katniss doesn’t dress like this…except here
Mechanical Flower
Fashion Don’ts

16. THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS
Being tough in a tough world

17. Black, white, and military (plus a bit of scales)

18. This is not just a pretty banquet dress. The red and black feathered
gown has elements of mockingjay, phoenix, and superheroine, even
as it dresses up the colors of her uniform from the last movie with
exotic elegance. She keeps the tough Greek hair-helmet of braids,
and the red accents look like blood—this is battle gear, even for the
apparently peaceful setting of the party—there’s far more happening
under the surface. Her glowing coal suit has a similar function.

19. White-red-black are goddess colors, signifying the three-part life
stages of maiden-mother-crone and the endless lifecycle.
White like the innocence of childhood or the paleness of spirits and bone, red like
the violence and pain of adult responsibility or the life-giving blood of childbirth,
black like death but also the fertile soil of new life. As such, black is a feminine
color of yin, the color of destruction but also defense against it. The girls may
wear white or pastels in the beginning, until they’re ready to offer a tougher
image, but they graduate to Katniss’s coals and black bow of death.

20. In fact, she won’t be part of them until she dresses like
them…in the third book, she will choose colors for
herself, rather than conforming to the factions.
Divergent—Finding your team and your color coding
Tris is not one of the Dauntless Society—look what she’s wearing!

21. When Tris tries on a knee-length black dress
and literally (and figuratively) lets her hair
down, she’s transformed. Her friend Christina
puts eyeliner on her, and Tris looks “noticeable
for the first time” (Divergent 97). At that
moment, she feels she’s transformed from
proper, quiet Beatrice into Tris. Everyone
comments that she looks good, as she’s
discovering who she was meant to become. Fan art portraying Shailene as Divergent's Tris by tessriel on tumblr
In the second book, she tries on
bits and pieces from the other
factions, as if uncertain who she’s
supposed to be.

22. When Cassia finds the rebels, they’re wearing “slick
black clothes” (Crossed 347).
Finding the Soldiers, All in Black
Tough, black haired Raven is the leader of the group Lena
meets in the Wilds—even her name suggests blackness. By
contrast, her innocent daughter is named Blue.
In Westerfeld’s world,
it’s the scary Specials
who wear “raw silks
in black and grey”
(Uglies 103).
Sneaking out to see Alex at night, Lena wears black
pajamas, black flats, and a black ski hat (Delirium 206).

23. Ordinary world characters
Ordinary world characters
People in our world wear bright colors.
Extraordinary world characters
The Mortal Instruments

24. In City of Bones, Isabelle goes to
Magnus’s party dressed all in silver “like
a moon goddess” (208). To Clary, she’s
all Clary isn’t – she’s taller and dresses
older and much cooler and more
elegantly. Isabelle uses her beauty “like
a whip,” while Clary doesn’t know she’s
beautiful (Bones 324). Isabelle always
makes Clary feel scruffy – wearing
Isabelle’s clothes, at the Institute, Clary
feels her shortness and lack of cleavage
more than ever. In Lost Souls, Clary
wishes she were like Isabelle, “so aware
of your own feminine power you could
wield it as a weapon” (244).
However, as Clary puts on Isabelle’s
borrowed dress, she takes steps toward
becoming a Shadowhunter, dark,
powerful, and dangerous. Isabelle
dresses Clary in a black spaghetti strap
dress with fishnets and boots so that
Clary looks “fairly badass” (Bones 210).
She even offers Clary a thigh sheath.
Isabelle puts Clary’s hair up in an
elegant swirl, and Clary finds herself
remembering her romantic dream of
dancing with Jace and Simon at an Idris
ball. Under Isabelle’s ministrations, Clary
is suddenly grown up and alluring.
Fantasy Characters also change into the tough slim black outfit
Isabelle’s all the heroine aspires to be, and thus a
spur for growth and change.

25. In City of Lost Souls, Clary puts on the dress
her evil brother brings her – vintage black
lace and beads. In it, her eyes are smudged
with “dark shadow” and she has “a certain
toughness” (300). She remembers wearing
Isabelle’s dress in book one and taking her
first steps into the demon world as she
enters an even darker realm this time.
Fantasy Characters also change into the tough slim black outfit
Isabelle’s all the heroine aspires to be, and thus a
spur for growth and change.

26. Photo CornersClary has become part of their world

27. ADULT
DYNAMIC
DIVERGENT
DANGEROUS SOPHISTICATED
POWERFUL

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