SCAD FASH to host "The Handmaid's Tale" exhibition

By

Robin Driver

Published
Mar 23, 2018

The Savannah College of Art and Design has announced an exhibition featuring more than 40 costume pieces from award-winning MGM TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale”, ​slated to open in April 2018 at Atlanta's SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film.

SCAD FASH collaborated with designer Ane Crabtree to create the exhibition, which is the museum’s first focused on costume design. Crabtree won the Costume Designers Guild award for “excellence in contemporary television” in 2018 for her work on the “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and has previously been nominated for awards for her contributions to “Westworld”, “Masters of Sex” and “Pan Am”.
 
“Ane Crabtree is someone who can tell stories with clothes, and the impact the show's wardrobe has had in the political conversation around the world has been groundbreaking, but honestly not surprising,” said the series’ creator Bruce Miller in a release. “She's a genius, and fabulous human being, and we're thrilled that SCAD is honoring her work.”

To celebrate the exhibition’s opening, Hulu, the subscription video service on which “The Handmaid’s Tale” aired in the US, will partner with SCADFILM to host a screening of the third episode from the series’ second season at SCADshow in Atlanta on April 30. The session is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a Q+A discussion with cast members and producers from the show.
 
“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a timely adaptation of Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s seminal novel of the same name, which won the Governor General's Award when it was published in 1985 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987.
 
The Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning show, which takes place in a dystopian vision of the future where women are forced into submissive roles, was a runaway success – perhaps because it tapped into current conversations about sexual harassment and gender equality, thrown into focus, now more than ever, by recent post-Weinstein movements such as #MeToo and Times’s Up.
 
Amidst these debates – and as modest fashion increasingly asserts itself as a trend on runways around the world – Crabtree’s iconic interpretation of the red robes and bonnets worn by the titular handmaids of Atwood’s novel has become a popular symbol of women’s oppression, appropriated by a number of movements fighting for gender equality.
 
As the series’ executive producer Warren Littlefield noted, “Throughout America and now even throughout the world, women have chosen to wear the Handmaid's costumes to give voice to their protests for women's rights.”
 
The “The Handmaid’s Tale” exhibition at SCAD FASH will run from April 30 to August 12, 2018.