Random Colors Of Your Favorite Movie Costumes Really Mean (16 items)

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  (#13) A Clockwork Orange

  • Malcolm McDowell, Warren Clarke, Steven Berkoff, David Prowse, Adrienne Corri, Aubrey Morris, George Coulouris, Patrick Magee, Pat Roach, Michael Bates, Gaye Brown, John Clive, Margaret Tyzack, Philip Stone, Carol Drinkwater, Miriam Karlin, Anthony Sharp, John Savident, Godfrey Quigley, Peter Burton, Clive Francis, Gillian Hills, Sheila Raynor, Madge Ryan, James Marcus, Virginia Wetherell, Michael Gover, Carl Duering, John J. Carney, Vivienne Chandler, Katya Wyeth, Neil Wilson, Billy Russell, Michael Tarn, Paul Farrell, Robert Bruce, Norman Gay, Katharina Kubrick, Andros Epaminondas, Prudence Drage, Fred Hugh, Helen Ford, Maurice Bush, Alec Wallis, Shirley Jaffe, Barrie Cookson, Olive Mercer, Frankie Abbott, Leslie Nye, Tom Sye, Margaret Heald, Nat Pearn, Sister Watkins, Jeremy Curry, Steadman Clark, Winifred Sabine, Rex Rashley, Craig Hunter, Dr. Gundry, Barbara Scott, Jan Adair, Lee Fox, Richard Connaught, Cheryl Grunwald, Shane Shelton, Lindsay Campbell, Henry Robert, Arthur Tatler, Peter Hannon, Roy Beck, Pauline Taylor, Nicholas Hill, Fred Real, George O'Gorman, David Dawkins

  You wouldn't think white would be the right color to wear if you're planning to partake in "a bit of the old ultraviolence," but that's exactly what Alex DeLarge and company wear in Stanley Kubrick's 1971 adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. It isn't hard to see what he was getting at. White is a clean, pristine color, and the characters are engaged in behavior that's bloody and messy. Irony!

  Beyond that, the use of white is meant to mock high society. The color has long been associated with wealth and privilege, with members of the elite famously believing you shouldn't wear white after Labor Day. Alex's white shirt, pants, codpiece, and suspenders are accentuated with a bowler hat and a cane - two more fashion pieces associated with being old-school rich. Combined, they allow Alex to make fun of a class to which he does not belong. He imitates their fashion sense, then behaves in a manner completely inconsistent with their lifestyle. 

  Writing for the BFI, Elena Lazic was spot-on in saying that "seeing the violent images of Alex's gang framed by and absorbed into a soft aesthetic is unsettling in itself."
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  (#11) Spring Breakers

  • James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine, Gucci Mane, Heather Morris, Jeff Jarrett, Russell Stuart

  Love it or hate it, if you've seen Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, you probably remember the scene at the end where Alien (James Franco), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), and Brit (Ashley Benson) get revenge on Big Arch (Gucci Mane) and his crew. They're decked out in bright neon swimwear and neon masks. The big finale is filmed in blacklight to make them literally glow.

  This is more than just a case of making something look cool. The filmmakers had serious intentions with the use of these colors. Costume designer Heidi Bivins said that she and Korine wanted to visually convey how the characters transition from college girls to crooks while on vacation. Their clothing becomes more colorful as the film goes on, but what they wear at the end represents that they have been fully transformed. "[Korine] had a vision from the beginning," she said. "He always had the idea to use neon colors, with neon being so predominant in a place like Florida."

  In other words, the neon clothing represents the manner in which Candy and Brit, in particular, have been swallowed up by a new, illicit way of life they discover in the Sunshine State. Because the brightness of neon is believed to distort the colors' inherent traits, having the now-distorted characters wear them makes perfect sense. 
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  (#3) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

  • Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, Michael Gambon, Matthew Gray Gubler, Noah Taylor, Noah Baumbach, Seymour Cassel, Bud Cort, Waris Ahluwalia, Eric Chase Anderson, Seu Jorge, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Robert Graham, Isabella Blow, Hal Yamanouchi, Antonio Monda, Stefano Maria Ortolani, Daniel Acon, Pawel Wdowczak, Rudd Simmons, Robyn Cohen, Niccolò Senni, Nazzareno Piana, Anna Orso, Niels Koizumi, Stefano Masciolini, Taiyo Yamanouchi, Pietro Ragusa, Tony Shafrazi, Robert Sommer, Francis Dokyi, Don McKinnon, Henry S. F. Cooper, Guglielmo Casciaro, Thomas Carwgal de la Peña, Levi Mickael de Ramon, Andrea Bertone, Wai Tung Wong, Andrea Guerra, Joseph de los Reyes, Robin Scott, James Hamilton, Honorato Ilao Reyes, Alessandro De Angelis, Alexander Hamilton, Alessio Santini, Muzius Gordon Dietzmann, Begni Bok Dong, Christiano Irrera, Vincenzo Recchia, Andrew Weisell, Robert Wilson, Roberto Salvi, Roderick Magbay, Demetreo Castillo, Andriy Kechur, Conrado Mendoza Dolor, Sylvie Genin, Dennis Rayos Martinez, Leonardo Giovannelli, Gangyuan Xu, Aries Corales, Simeon Maragigak Agelion, Aries Dolor Ilagon, Ettore Conti, Marco Ciarlitto, Walter Cajapao Casapao, Eduardo Bautista Grantuza, Ging Fang Zhu, Melanie Gerren, Leica, Edwarren Bantungon, Paolo Sirignani

  Wes Anderson's movies always make very specific use of a color palette. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is no different. Bill Murray plays an oceanographer making a documentary about his quest for a rare, possibly non-existent "Jaguar Shark." He and the members of his crew wear baby blue shirts and pants, with bright red caps. It's an unusual combo, as these are contrasting colors, with red being "warm" and light blue being "cool."

  A. Vaughn Vreeland of Elon University has written extensively about Anderson's color obsession, and he sees two different meanings for the clashing red hats. On one hand, Zissou is the captain of a mission that may or may not be successful, and he makes everyone else wear them, so it can be read that the caps represent "the overcompensation of his insecurities about filmmaking." Put another way, they project a false sense of confidence.

  Vreeland additionally points out that Anderson has used red in several of his films to signify strife between fathers and sons. During The Life Aquatic, Zissou tells the young man who may be his illegitimate son, "I hate fathers and I never wanted to be one." Putting that into the larger context of the director's filmography, the red cap could also represent the main character's ambivalence about fatherhood. That would also explain why the clashing red hats are paired with baby blue outfits: Baby blue, of course, is widely used for newborn males. 
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  (#6) Kill Bill Volume 1

  • Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino, Daryl Hannah, Vivica A. Fox, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Chiaki Kuriyama, Sonny Chiba, Chia Hui Liu, Michael Parks, Michael Bowen, Julie Dreyfus, Ai Maeda, Jonathan Loughran, Hikaru Midorikawa, James Parks, Jun Kunimura, Christopher Allen Nelson, Akaji Maro, Kazuki Kitamura, Sakichi Satô, Zhang Jingchu, Shun Sugata, Ambrosia Kelley, Naomi Kusumi, Yoshiyuki Morishita, Issei Takahashi, Juri Manase, Shu Lan Tuan, Goro Daimon, Michael Kuroiwa, Yamanaka Soh, Ronnie Yoshiko Fujiyama, Tetsuro Shimaguchi, Stevo Polyi, Yoshiko Yamaguchi, Sachiko Fujii, Xiaohui Hu, Yōji Tanaka

  Uma Thurman played "The Bride" in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill saga, but it's not a wedding dress that comes to mind when you think of her. Instead, it's that yellow jumpsuit, which has gone on to become iconic. Keeping in mind that this character is motivated by a desire for revenge, yellow might seem an unlikely choice, given that it's considered a bright, cheery color.

  It's important to remember, though, that the Bride wants revenge because her happy day was ruined by assassins. She tells Bill that she's pregnant right before he unloads his weapon on her. As the Bride later eliminates her enemies (and their henchmen), her yellow outfit becomes more stained with red blood. We can therefore infer that the yellow represents a single-minded obsession with the anticipated happiness that a marriage and baby would have brought, while the red is the trauma she sustained because it was taken away from her.

  At the same time, it could be argued that the yellow jumpsuit also represents Tarantino's own single-minded obsession. Kill Bill was inspired by his favorite martial arts films, especially those of Bruce Lee, who frequently wore yellow onscreen (including in his final film, Game of Death, in which he dons the original version of the Bride's jumpsuit). Dr. Steven Peacock, head of media at the University of Hertfordshire, points out, "Tarantino is a very accomplished filmmaker in his stylistic choice, and color would be a huge part of that. He's drawing together all those associations of previous movies and character types and costume design and iconography - it’s all there for a reason, folded into the drama on-screen in a way that doesn’t suggest itself as willfully placed."
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  (#7) Clueless

  • Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash, Wallace Shawn, Billy West, Donald Faison, Mike Judge, Amy Heckerling, Breckin Meyer, Dan Hedaya, Jeremy Sisto, Nicole Bilderback, Julie Brown, Carl Gottlieb, Jace Alexander, John Kricfalusi, Elisa Donovan, Twink Caplan, Sam Maccarone, Joseph D. Reitman, Roger Kabler, Micki Duran, Michael Klesic, Gregg Russell, Jermaine Montell, Justin Walker, Aida Linares, Ron Orbach, Sean Holland, Herb Hall, Bobbie Sunday Starr, Josh Lozoff, Christopher E. Cooper, Danielle Eckert, Anthony Beninati, Susan Mohun, Craig Ponder, Sabastian Rashidi

  Alicia Silverstone wears what is arguably the most famous plaid outfit ever in Clueless. She plays Cher Horowitz, and the yellow plaid was designed to be bold so the audience understood something crucial about the character right away. Cher is near the top of her high school's social ladder, so the yellow is a way of setting her apart from everyone else. It implies that she stands out in a crowd - and, in this case, she literally does.

  Clueless costume designer Mona May explained the bold color further to Bustle. "You start with: What would the girls' first day of school outfit be? The quintessential plaid skirt," she says. "Then you want to take that to the next level. So you say a suit would be much better. Then what color? Yellow pops."

  Look closely and you'll see that whenever Cher is wearing this outfit, she's surrounded by people - other than Dionne, naturally - and objects that are more dully colored, just to reinforce the dynamic.
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  (#1) Us

  • Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop

  To understand the meaning of the red jumpsuits in Jordan Peele's Us, you first have to understand the twist ending, so consider this a spoiler alert if you haven't seen it. The whole film is about the "Tethered," who live in subterranean tunnels and are connected to people above the surface. Four of these doppelgangers, led by Red (Lupita Nyong'o), come out to terrorize Adelaide (also Nyong'o) and her family. In the film's final act, it is revealed that Adelaide is actually the Tethered version. She escaped as a child and made the real Adelaide take her place underground. The one we know as Red, in other words, is the one who came from the normal world.

  Red is a bold primary color, often considered "hot" and frequently associated with violence or warfare, which is how it's used here. The now-grown "real Adelaide" is angry about having been forced into a life she was not meant to live. Therefore, she and her cohorts wear the color when they escape and make their way above ground. Kym Barrett, the costume designer for Us, said that was a very deliberate choice meant to reflect the character's rage. “She completely enshrouds her being with this red,” Barrett told The Atlantic. “It’s a symbol of aggression, a screaming mission. You cannot miss it.” 

  Furthermore, the "fake Adelaide" always wears white, and her clothes become more covered in blood as the story advances. According to Barrett in the same interview, this was to connect Red to Adelaide, so that by the end, "she's almost as red as Red."

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