We do have a plan to enable this - unfortunately it did not make 1.8 but we plan to work on it in 1.9. So you should have some additional options soon.
Sean - VS Code Team Member
Is it possible to add for a way for the user to have a custom CSS file? I really like how Atom provides such great visual customization by just giving the user a less file that they can edit.
On the other hand, you can toggle it off by View -> Hide Status Bar.
I never even noticed that it was blue as a branding thing. You can toggle it off with Super-K Z now.
See link for suggestions how to mitigate. I use the tip from the person named sysrpl. VSCode is unusable with that blue color for me.
1: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/1884