In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood often uses the clothing and their corresponding colors to identify characters’ status in Gilead. One sad section is when Offred is walking through town reminiscing about her past when she thinks, “I think about Laundromats, What I wore to them: shorts, jeans, jogging pants. What I put into them: My own clothes” (28) This section in particular mainly inspires my work, as it highlights not only the way that the handmaids are barred from choosing their own clothes, but the way that not having that choice removes the handmaids’ sense of ownership they have over themselves. So in response to that thinking, I wanted to portray the handmaid’s new sense of uniformity paralleled by a messier image of a laundromat with strewn-about clothing. In particular, I was intentional about the specifics of both the handmaids’ pose and what the laundromat looked like. For the handmaids, I wanted them to be in their cloaks as well as their hoods so that they were shown to the viewer not as individuals. As for their posture, I wanted to refer to another quote on the same page where Offred states that, “Now we walk along the same street in red pairs” (24). This was not only an inspiration for the parallel, but the reason that the handmaids are positioned in an orderly line. I wanted them to be as contrasting as possible to the pre-Gilead side of the laundromat. I went back and forth a lot on how the laundromat should be portrayed before landing on the current design. The main element I knew I had to include was that no matter how many clothes I put in, there should be no red clothing shown except for the handmaids, and that the space should look messy and disused. When drafting this portion, I referred back to a line that Offred states after she runs into a group of tourists visiting Gilead. She thinks, “Their heads are uncovered, and their hair too is exposed, in all its darkness and sexuality. They wear red lipstick, red, outlining the damp cavities of their mouths - of a time before.” (28) It was really important to me when portraying the loss of choice in clothing to show that the handmaids think about both the way in which they viewed pre-Gilead and their choices as well as how they now see “immodesty” nowadays. I wanted to emphasize the fact that they are not only forced to wear their red uniform, but how they would now view with disapproval their former fashion choices on another person. This perspective was why the clothes are arranged as they are on the floor. I wanted the handmaids to be close to the clothes, all the while not paying attention to them, as a means to show that not only are they being controlled, but the control extends so deep it had left the clothes as perceivably “unwanted,” as they do not meet the standard of forced modesty. Overall, the significance of clothing as a tool to control the handmaids is not only an important aspect of how they are treated under the regime in Gilead, but also a means to better understand the way this control affects the handmaid’s relationships with their bodies and sense of expression.