love, serenissima: Firebird

The Girl On Fire

The movie world has been all abuzz about the adaptation of The Hunger Games book series by Suzanne Collins, what with it's best-seller status and cast led by Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence. As a fan of these books, I'm not all that excited about Lawrence's casting as main character Katniss Everdeen (I think she's too old to play the 16-year-old), and I'm not exactly wowed by the rest of the casting either, which expects you to believe that this guy would ever get beaten this guy. Oh, ok. It's hard to build up any sort of excitement for the wardrobes of this.... eccentric cast.

However, this months In Style Magazine invited 11 well-known designers to contribute their own personal take on what Katniss should wear for her first public appearance to the city of Pandem, which is a major focal point of the book series. Her beloved designer, Cinna (inexplicably cast as Lenny Kravitz), outfits Katniss' in an orange and red dress that mimics living flames and earns her the heart of Panem's citizens and the memorable nickname, 'The Girl on Fire.' Each designer supplied a sketch of what they envisioned the outfit to look like, followed by a brief paragraph on why they created it.

My personal favorite was the BCBG dress, pictured below. The other ones, while certainly dramatic enough for film, were way too costume-y for my liking. The simple and sweet pink dress literally engulfed in flames best portrays the dual nature of Katniss Everdeen: a young, naive, and innocent girl who has simultaneously been hardened by war and primed for raw survival- and a battle that will set the world as she knows it aflame.

1. The Blondes