The looks in The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, had to live up to the most indelible fashion image from the original series: Katniss Everdeen’s wedding dress in Catching Fire which burned off to reveal a black, birdlike gown beneath. But costume designer Trish Summerville was up to the task, namely because she was also the woman behind the original outfit.
The prequel – which takes place 64 years prior to the start of The Hunger Games trilogy, though still in the far-off future – exists in a Panem completely unrecognisable to fans of the original series. The film, which is out on 17 November, follows a young Coriolanus Snow (the villain of the original series) prior to his dictatorial days, as he mentors the District 12 tribute, the vaudevillian Lucy Gray Baird, in the 10th annual Hunger Games. But that stark difference gave Summerville the freedom to create a totally different, retro-futuristic world with the characters’ clothing.
When it came to the Capitol, she and director Francis Lawrence decided to pull from the postwar 1940s and ’50s for inspiration. “They still have the nicest clothing, the nicest jewellery, everyone’s hair is done, and they all have make-up, but it’s a much more classic Americana look,” she says. Still, Summerville uses the clothing to broadcast the characters’ various challenges. Hunter Schafer, who plays Snow’s cousin Tigris, became a representative of the Capitol. “She makes her clothes, but she’s keeping them alive because they’re running out of money,” she says. In a pink, Balenciaga-inspired skirt suit with a structural pointed shoulder, “we saw the seams all outside and I frayed all the edges so it looks like they’re coming apart.”
But for the more insular Academy (a school for the wealthy Capitol residents), Summerville got to lean more into genderless fashion, designing a pleated red skirt over trousers with a matching blazer. For the task of designing a school uniform, she wanted to avoid cliches. “I didn’t want girls in skirts, and boys in pants,” she says. “I wanted everybody to be uniformed in the same way. With the Capitol, when they have you in a group setting – bootcamp or the Peacekeepers – you work for them. They look at you as one of a million. It’s a bit communistic and regimented.”
One of Summerville’s most daunting tasks was bringing the female lead, Lucy Gray Baird – a scrappy, street-smart performer – to life. The District 12 tribute, played by Rachel Zegler, is written with a hyper-specific costume. “It has to be this rainbow ruffle dress, which is repeated over and over in the book and in the script,” she says. The dress not only had to match this description, but also had to be functional for the movie’s many action sequences. “On a page, a rainbow ruffle dress with pockets sounds very whimsical, but for me, integrally, I have to design something that I am proud of,” she says. The dress, which went through many iterations before Summerville was content with the final product, was made of tulle, netting and fabric with plenty of stretch, that enabled Zegler and her stunt doubles to move freely.
Lucy’s granny boots were also a key part of the look. “What can I put her in, that’s going to allow her to crawl through these tunnels and scurry up walls and, and get around?” she wondered. “I wanted to give her something that was really attractive, and had a little bit of sex appeal and glamour to it. She’s a bit of a cancan girl, but then also give her ankle support.”
Just as important to the structural integrity – if not more so – was creating a look that holds deep significance to the series’ dedicated fanbase. “I have a red in my head, but that’s a totally different red than what’s in your head,” she says. Summerville felt this pressure when she joined the original trilogy. “I dealt with the same thing on Catching Fire. There was already this world built before me, and that’s not how I saw my new world, but I have to recognise some of the things that the authors, the scriptwriter, and the director have [already established].”
When it came to Lucy’s rainbow dress, fans had some strong opinions, even going as far as to reach out to Summerville well before the costume was revealed. “I do get a lot of direct messages and information from the fans,” she says. Summerville wanted to keep the dress true to Suzanne Collins’s book, while still creating an engaging recreation. She ultimately drew from vaudeville, ending in a peasant top with a corset and a skirt with four layers of tulle. And, for eagle-eyed fans, Summerville also included an Easter egg on the corset: “We had a beautiful patina department that did hand-paint these corsets, and the flowers on the corset are inspirations from Katniss flowers and Primrose flowers.”
While Lucy could not fill Katniss’s shoes – nor should she – the homage created a sense of camaraderie between the women who canonically never meet, and a cohesion between A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and The Hunger Games. “I wanted to have something for Rachel and also for the fan base, that gives them this kind of kinship,” Summerville says.
