For me, there’s one main question hovering over the upcoming movie adaptation of The Hunger Games: What are they going to do with the “Girl on Fire” dress? That’s the outfit that Katniss Everdeen famously wears during her big public debut, which her fashion guru Cinna somehow designs (using an intriguing array of futuristic technology) to actually make it appear as if Katniss is literally on fire. It’s a potent metaphor. It also strikes me as an especially difficult visual to pull off. We still don’t know what the official dress will look like — although the Games trailer seemed to feature an extremely brief shot of part of the dress — but InStyle has gotten together a gang of fashion designers to each create their version of the Girl on Fire. The people involved include Christian Siriano, Tommy Hilfiger, Rachel Roy, and Charlotte Ronson: You can check out the sketches here.
My personal favorite is the design by Christian Cota, whose gives the Girl on Fire dress a distinctively Dark Phoenix-esque flare: The fire appears to be part of Katniss’ hair. The weirdest — in a good way — is the outfit designed by The Blonds, which looks a little bit like the uniform that the Wasp wore in The Avengers for a very brief period in the 1990s. Yes, everything I know about fashion I learned from comic books.
