The Hunger Games: Catching Fire costume designer, Trish Summerville talked to The New York Times about her inspiration behind Katniss' and Effie's costumes in the movie. She also gives us some insight into how she designed Peeta's looks and, sigh, it's all for love:
Katniss Everdeen as fashion’s It Girl? That’s how the costume designer Trish Summerville imagined the teenage warrior portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: As a previous victor, she must be camera-ready as Panem prepares for the 75th games.
“Considering how the Capitol and Panem ingest and digest capitalism and consumerism, and all the parties and galas they go to, they change fashions more quickly than each season,” she said.
Katniss’s outfits — gowns of feathers, accessories in rough-hewed fibers — indicate her ascent in the Capitol while evoking her home in the impoverished District 12. Her male comrades, Peeta and Finnick, received magnetic, matinee-idol looks. And dressing Effie Trinket required tapping Alexander McQueen and House of Worth for statement pieces, including shoes that forced Trinket literally to stay on her toes.
For her grand entrance to the 75th Hunger Games kickoff, Katniss dons a fantasy wedding dress by the Jakartan designer Tex Saverio — the one she might have worn had her nuptials to Peeta not been quashed by the games.
Illustration by Tex Saverio “I wanted to have a subliminal feel of flames and feathers to keep her the Girl on Fire while also representing the Mockingjay,” Ms. Summerville said. Mr. Saverio’s froth of layered organza features a flame-inspired silver corset and fabric peacock feathers sprouting at the waist. As Katniss twirls, the gown erupts, and an iridescent Mockingjay dress rises from the ash. Using images of a mockingbird, blue jay, pheasant and peacock, Ms. Summerville worked with an illustrator and graphic designer to create patterns of feathers and wings, which she then had printed on chiffon and built into the Mockingjay dress.
Katniss wears a one-shouldered, cowl-neck sweater vest, almost like a shield, over her father’s leather coat. The piece, made by Maria Dora, a Los Angeles knitwear designer, is meant to see Katniss through summer, spring and winter.
“I wanted to bundle her up a bit and give her something that had a feel of the Capitol,” Ms. Summerville said, “but still with keeping in those nubby, big natural fibers — something, say, her mom could have made for her.” Like a security blanket, the piece accompanies Katniss on her hunting expeditions and even to bed on the Victory Tour. “It’s trying to marry both sides of her duality,” Ms. Summerville said, “having her heart at home but also fitting into the Capitol world without selling out.”
“This time around we made Peeta’s character much more masculine,” Ms. Summerville said. She laughed as she recounted meeting Josh Hutcherson, the actor who plays him, and saw how athletic he was.
“I was like, ‘We have to dude you up.' ” Using jackets and more structured pieces that amped up his already muscular physique, she accentuated his rapid maturation between the first and second films, and hinted at the emotional and sexual allure that drew Katniss to him initially. Ms. Summerville used a lot of subdued greens in Peeta’s wardrobe “because Katniss’s favorite color is green,” she said, “so subliminally, he’s always trying to woo her.” (!!!)
When the Capitol escort Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) returns to District 12 for the 75th reaping, she is adorned with monarch butterflies — on her dress, an actual Alexander McQueen couture design; her hair; even her eyelashes.
“In her mind, it’s springtime,” Ms. Summerville said. “Her chrysalis has turned into this butterfly, she gets to come out again, she gets to see the kids.” She wanted Effie to look uncomfortable. “I think it’s her penance to herself,” she said, explaining that Effie loves all the grandeur, but that “she’s also really conflicted about her role in calling the kids up for the reapings.” Effie’s waist is cinched a little too tightly, her heels are a little too high, and her clothes are nearly impossible to sit in.
