Cinna is Katniss’s intelligent, empathetic stylist and the creator of the iconic “Girl on Fire” look. Of all the people in the Capitol that Katniss meets, Cinna is the only one who shows awareness of the inequality and injustices that the outlying districts are subjected to. When Katniss notices the decadent feasts the Capitol residents eat every night while her own district starves, Cinna reads her thoughts, saying, “how despicable we must seem to you.” He treats Katniss with the humanity she deserves, seeing her as a person rather than an object of entertainment.

When Katniss first wears the flaming outfit Cinna designs for her and Peeta, she humorously comments that “Cinna’s calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman”– but the joke holds a bit of truth. Cinna may be composed and levelheaded, but the fashion he creates – his art – takes risks. His designs expose his real thoughts and feelings. He has a rebellious fire inside him that seeks to shock people out of their conditioned submission to the Capitol. When Katniss first meets him, she assumes that Cinna, a new designer, was assigned to District 12 as a way to pay his dues before moving on to better districts. But this is not the case; Cinna tells her he asked for District 12. Cinna wants the chance to work with the most disenfranchised districts so that he can give them back a small amount of power through his thought-provoking art.

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