Raúl Juliá and Anjelica Huston’s costumes from The Addams Family films. (Source)
Every time this photo starts going around, people start wondering when was Morticia’s costume used because they don’t remember her wearing red. It seems to be her dress from the tango scene in The Addams Family Values.
Even though the colour of the dress does not match the dress in the finished scene, it can easily be the same one. We know that one of the reasons the original Addams Family TV show set was mostly pink is because filming in black and white requires extra attention to contrast and a real-life monochrome set might’ve looked bad on film. A similar (and very common) trick is used in the Addams Family films: A black dress might have not looked good on camera, it could have lost all the shape and detailing of the fabric, and so the costume designer had to go for a colour that was more suitable for the lighting and post-production edits of the scene. The rule might still be “Morticia wears only black” but in order to keep true to that, the actual costume sometimes needs to be a different colour than what will eventually appear on screen.
