Costuming Question

Were they sleeves or stoles?
I wondered about that too. I guess it was to make a point to the audience that they were all of one class, dressed in off-white "uniforms", and Becky was in red to make a contrast between them and her. If that was the reason, it is sort of insulting. I haven't read the book. If their costumes are like that in the book, maybe it's explained there.

Did you mean sashes?

There is an interesting mini-documentary about the costumes on the DVD special features. The costume designer explains that women's clothes of the period tended to be in light pastels and whites, with accents of vivid color in ribbons and such. The designer reversed this aesthetic to fit Mira Nair's vision, so that the principal fabrics were very vivid or deep, and the accents were in the pastels. Maybe in this scene, they have made a conscious decision to portray the more historical color palette in the society women's costumes, while Becky, the outsider, maintains her subversive deep-toned look? In either case, I recall a splendid shot from above, with the women turning on Becky, leaving her in the center of a bunch of cold shoulders, with their ivory white sashes flowing behind them.

I haven't read the book either, but I own a copy with original illustrations by Thackeray, and the clothing is in the Victorian style, with sausage curls and big crinolines and such. I know that Thackeray liked to use deliberate anachronisms in his historical pieces to clarify analogies to contemporary life, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't know if he usually described clothes. Clothing seems to be a secondary concern in a lot of nineteenth century books.

It isn't really meant to show anything except that director Mira Nair wanted to throw in as much reference to Indian culture as humanly possible.

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Dude she was a black sheep amongst the flock. Black dress vs. white dresses. Super obvious.

Check out the Frock Flicks podcast about this movie... it has a really great explanation about this book, the roots of the book, and where the director wanted to take it.

"Religion is the opium of the people" - Groucho Marx

My problem with all the styling, costumes & hair, is that it is so put of character for the time. The uniforms are horribly inaccurate (though those knee boots did look fabulous!). I don't mind when this kind of thing is done well and matches the mood of the whole movie. Like, a Baz Lurhmann movie takes everything to the extreme. But when you've got a script that is relatively true to the time period, the rest of the movie shouldn't be bizarre.