The Ragged Clothes

The ragged clothes Valerian and Laureline are forced to wear are symbolic of the hardships she faces on the planet. They also represent Laureline’s vanity. She falls in the lake and is dragged up with a bunch of algae, forced to work through horrible conditions, and knocked unconscious by a rock, but being forced to wear the ragged clothes is, in her mind, as horrible as any of those other situations.