What inspired the outfits in Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale"

Margaret Atwood, the acclaimed author of "The Handmaid's Tale," has shed light on the real-world inspirations behind the dystopian novel's iconic imagery, particularly the distinctive red cloaks and bonnets worn by the handmaids.

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Women forced to have babies

Atwood explained that her writing adheres to a strict rule: if an event hasn't happened somewhere, at some time, it doesn't make it into her plots. For "The Handmaid's Tale," published in 1985, an inciting incident occurred in 1981 following the election of Ronald Reagan. Atwood noted this period coincided with the organized rise of the religious right as a political force and discussions about returning women to the home, even as more women entered the workforce.

"My question to myself was: now that they're all running around having credit cards and jobs, how are you going to get them back into the home?" Atwood recalled. She also cited George Orwell's "1984" as a significant influence.

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Communists are making women have babies

The now-iconic red cloaks and bonnets, which have become symbols of political resistance, were inspired by a 1940s advertisement for Old Dutch cleaning solution. "The Old Dutch Cleanser box of the 1940s traumatized me as a child," Atwood told 60 Minutes. "So, it shows a woman whose face is covered by this bonnet, holding a stick and chasing something… pretty scary."

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'Persistent non-pregnancy will be considered a crime against the state,'

Explaining the color choices, Atwood stated that "Wives" wore blue, the color of the Virgin Mary, while the handmaids' red symbolized Mary Magdalene and "The Scarlet Letter." Atwood, a student of government and power, wrote much of the novel in West Berlin in 1984, witnessing firsthand the policing, paranoia, and lack of freedom in the Eastern Bloc. She also drew on her experiences as a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1960s, making the university a central location in the novel's dystopian society.

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And this was the moment at which the religious right was getting organized as a political force