Question

How do Blanche's costumes in A Streetcar Named Desire demonstrate a different persona that effects her own tragedy?

Accepted Answer

The opening scene of A Streetcar Named Desire presents a dainty and beautifully dressed woman in a white suit with a fluffy bodice, pearls, and white gloves and hat, an appearance that leads the audience to expect quite a different character to emerge than the vulnerable and shaky woman who begins to display her neuroses and obsessions during the course of the following acts. 
Clearly, Blanche is a delusional woman who wishes to disguise her past.  She covers the light bulbs with paper lanterns in order to create the illusion that she is younger; in fact, Blanche does everything to delude both herself and others.  In the stage production, Blanche is always over-dressed, signifying her efforts of overcompensation for her poverty and shame.  It is obvious that Blanche plays the role of the Southern Belle when in truth she is a soiled woman, one who should not be dressed in white.  It is, of course, only a matter of time before the truth about Blanche is revealed as Stanley does a background check on her and informs his wife Stella of her sister's tainted past. 
As an indication that her illusions are crumbling, the stage directions state that Blanche goes in and out of her closet frantically in Scene 5.  She pulls odd things from it as symbolic of her haggard and fragile persona that grasps desperately for happiness. Shortly thereafter, Stanley's brutal attack precipitates Blanche's tragedy.

Answer

Soon after the opening of Scene One of A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams and first performed on Broadway in New York City in December 1947, Blanche du Bois enters the stage looking for the house where her sister, Stella, lives with her husband, Stanley Kowalksi. Blanche is carrying a valise, and she's searching for a house number that matches the address on the slip of paper in her hand.
In the stage directions, Williams describes Blanche's appearance as "incongruous" with the poor, working-class neighborhood in which she finds herself. She's dressed in a white suite with a fluffy bodice, and she's wearing a pearl necklace and earrings and a white hat and white gloves, "looking as if she were arriving at a summer tea or cocktail party in the garden district."
Williams makes an important remark in the stage directions that foretells Blanche's tragic fate:

There is something about her uncertain manner, as well as her white clothes, that suggests a moth.

In scene 2, after Blanche settles into her accommodations in Blanch and Stanley's flat, Blanche is taking a bath, and Stanley is going through her clothes:

STANLEY. Look at these feathers and furs that she come here to preen herself in! What's this here? A solid gold dress, I believe! And this one! What is these here? Fox-pieces! Genuine fox fur-pieces, a half a mile long!

Stanley can't tell the difference between real "fox fur-pieces" and Blanche's imitation furs, nor can he distinguish real jewelry from Blanche's costume jewelry:

STANLEY. And what have we here? The treasure chest of a pirate!...Pearls! Ropes of them!...Bracelets of solid gold, too!...And diamonds! A crown for an empress!

Stanley hasn't realized yet that everything that Blanche wears is not at all what it seems, much like Blanche's character. The fancy knock-off dresses and the dazzling costume jewelry are purely for appearances.
Blanche comes out of the bath wearing a red satin robe, and she changes into a floral print dress, her "pretty new dress," for her evening out with Blanche while Stanley and his friends play poker. "Clothes are my passion!" Blanche says to Stanley. For Blanche, everything is about appearances.
In time, Blanche, the moth, is drawn to fire that is Stanley, and all of her personal pretense and faux-fancy clothes are torn away, quite literally, and Blanche is exposed for who and what she is.
As a result of her encounter with Stanley, Blanche has an emotional breakdown, but as the Doctor leads Blanche away to the sanatorium, Blanche reverts to her familiar, fragile, helpless "Southern Belle" persona:

BLANCHE. [holding tight to his arm] Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Answer

In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience first meets Blanche DuBois when she arrives on the streetcar looking for her sister Stella's house. She is dressed "daintily in white" and even wears gloves and a hat. Her outward appearance is that of the Southern Belle who she pretends to be. Her outward appearance in the first scene of the play contrasts with Blanche's real personality and that is her tragedy. Beneath the ladylike white dress, Blanche is a disturbed, sexually driven woman who has lost her home, her profession, and has depended on "the kindness of strangers."
However, by scene 9, a differently costumed Blanche appears. She is dressed in a "scarlet satin robe" with a bottle of liquor and a glass beside her. This costume reveals the sexuality that she has attempted to hide as well as the prop unveiling her drinking problem. This could be read as foreshadowing of Stanley's rape. In scene 10, Blanche's destruction and final tragedy is portrayed through her costume. Her white satin gown is "soiled and crumpled." Her demise is apparent as she can no longer put on the outward appearance of civility; she is a tarnished woman headed for destruction.

A Streetcar Named Desire

How do Blanche's costumes in A Streetcar Named Desire demonstrate a different persona that effects her own tragedy?

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