As If – Mona May’s New Book Celebrates ‘The Fashion Of Clueless’

“It’s so rare to have a director that’s into fashion,” costume designer Mona May said to me. “I met Amy Heckerling, the director of Clueless, on another project, on a pilot about two girls living in New York City. It didn’t get picked out. But seriously, it was like meeting a soulmate, a fashion soulmate. A creative soulmate. So when she wrote Clueless, she called me. She’s like, you’re the girl; I really want this to be this high fashion.”

The Fashion of Clueless, May’s new book written with Monica Corcoran Harel, published by Simon & Schuster, was written to celebrate the impact of Heckerling’s beloved film 25 years later. I had the very real privilege and pleasure of meeting with May, to talk about the film and her thoughts about the exquisite costumes, looking back, a quarter century later.

“I was trained as a fashion designer,” the costume designer told me. “I come from Europe. I was born in India. I grew up in Poland and Germany. I traveled all over the world. I was really exposed to very different cultures as a kid. And I think it really imprinted something in me. Because I saw more of different women. how people dress in Italy. how people dress in the States. How people dress in England and Poland. Different.”

“The colors that I use in my work are really very much influenced by my eyes opening up in India,” May continued. “Seeing all the saffron yellows and pinks and fuchsias. I dress really brightly. To me, it’s the optimism of color. It’s so important. I think that’s part of the movies and the way that I design. And I think color is my language.”

I asked if she felt like there were other throughlines, not just in Clueless, but across her, rather impressive, body of work.

“When you really think of Clueless, Romy and Michelle, Never Been Kissed, Enchanted, Wedding Singer, House Bunny. I’m lucky to do these films that are very woman-centric. And tell stories about women. I love women. I think I’m very pro-women in a sense. With these films, I can help women kind of find themselves, in a way. Through the character stories. Because there’s always some kind of makeover. There’s some kind of fashion or soul makeover in the end. In Clueless, Tai, even Cher. There’s something about her that kind of changes through the film. And then she becomes a woman. Those stories are about friendship, Clueless is about friendship, it’s about the girls having each other’s back. And there’s always the things that happen in friendship. But they overcome.”

These kinds of archetypal stories, the narratives which tap into the fundamental truths of the human condition, when made well, are the films that stay with us. Movie making has changed a lot over the past few decades, we all know that, but Clueless, when it was released on July 19, 1995, was basically a revolution, and the clothing in the film was absolutely part of the reason. I asked the designer to talk to me about why the movie was so groundbreaking.

“Amy is a very brilliant writer, May told me. “There’s just a lot of the language that was in the film; ‘as if’, ‘Whatever,’ all this stuff, Amy really came up with all of that. She knew that I could deliver. Amy gave all of us artists, the actors as well as myself, Steven Jordan, the production designer and Bill Pope, the director of photography, she gave us a lot of room because we already had this connection. We were in sync, and she allowed me to blossom as an artist, as a costume designer. It was my first feature studio movie. I didn’t even have an agent when I got the job.”

And the wonderful costumes, how did they fit into that?

“I think the clothes themselves were very feminine,” May mused, “and there’s something I think lost now in fashion, it’s fast fashion. I think that in Clueless, I was able to really bring fashion out. Because at the time when we were preparing the movie, everybody was wearing grunge. There was no difference between boys or girls. It was an Emma, Jane-Austen-based script. It was about femininity, about girlyness and who we are, and celebrating that. I think that was really important to Amy, to the story that she wrote. But when she went around the city, in LA to different studios, nobody wanted to make that movie because it was about girls. You know, that movie was picked up by Paramount, they were like, okay, we’ll do this movie. I mean, we’ll just spend 20 million, probably nothing will happen. They left us alone, it was cool.”

“When I started researching,” May continued, “I went to the runways and I looked at London, Paris, and Milan, and New York because I had to go to the future for the cue. There was nothing in the mall that gave me. So that was my blueprint. But then, they had to be 16-year-old girls so it had to be youthful. Amy really, really was adamant about this, that they look like girls.”

Think about the A-line dresses on characters like Amber (Elisa Donovan), the Mary Janes and hightop Converse sneakers. The femininity of a cap sleeve, all the socks pulled up high; these characters are children, they are almost young adults, they might believe themselves to be adults, but they are kids.

“It was the knee-highs,” May explained, “maybe pushing it a little bit, over the knee, but then the empire waist, which was a little nod to Jane Austen. But the necklines were never too low, there was never anything super tight. Everything was age appropriate, maybe the word seems boring, but it was chic, stylish and age-appropriate. The peacoats, the berets, all that stuff to me, that’s what I love to play with. The craft is really layered. It’s very it’s not just putting this yellow suit on someone, there’s so much story and energy and emotion behind it. How is it aged? Is it too big? Is it too tight? Is it cheap? Is it expensive? All of that stuff, it’s information that gets read and quickly. And I mean, if it’s done wrong, it really takes you out of the story.”

When Clueless came out I was about to enter the 6th grade at my Los Angeles school. When I was a kid, my mother was a children’s librarian at the Beverly Hills Public Library (which, btw, is the best children’s department in a library that this writer has ever seen.) And at this point in my life, outside of books, Fashion TV on VHI was my hobby; I would watch waiting for (the lovely, kind, and, in my own experience, exceptionally generous) Christian Lacroix’s runway shows and drool and draw. Those sentences should prove I was the target audience, me and my circle of overly literary tweens. We were probably insufferable. And May was absolutely right, I don’t think anyone had made a movie for us. It felt, and still feels, very personal.

That Lacroix brand of maximalism was very much on my mind when I spoke with the Clueless designer; I’d just had a long conversation with Caroline Vazzana about it; and a question from that conversation seemed equally relevant to this one. My regular leaders will know I’m very interested in thresholds, when one thing stops being what it is and becomes something else entirely. I wanted to know how Mona May made Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and Dionne (Stacey Dash) and their clique feel like real people, not like actors wearing costumes. Especially when so much of what the actors wore was so (literally) large and loud.

“Really, whimsy is crucial,” she told me. “I think when you look at my movies, I have a sweet knack for it, I think. The whimsy, it’s an instinct that I have. You have to really look at it. It’s a composition, like a painter. Composition, but it’s emotional, too. I couldn’t do that without the actor wearing the clothes. It has to happen in the moment when they are already wearing it because they could push the outfit too far in one or the other direction. So they are already creating that energy and that information really. Because when they put it on, I may have to take something off because it’s too sexy or maybe it’s not sexy enough. I didn’t know that information when it was on the hanger.”

This naturally led to me asking about the yellow Jean Paul Gaultier skirt suit, the one I cannot help but see Alicia Silverstone wearing when I think about the film. (Don’t worry, Lovely Reader, I also asked her about Cher’s magical closet.)

“It’s really palatable,” May said with a laugh. “We were talking about what we would share on the first day of school, and I always try to start from something very grounded so there is something to anchor it from. So for the school uniform; Catholic girl, plaid skirt, white shirt, sweater vest, but then, what would Cher do? I’m a huge fan of Vivian Westwood, Jon Galliano, all those tartans and to me, that’s the coolest thing in the world. And why not a plaid tartan tartan suit? Let’s go with something like this, but now let’s elevate it.”

“So, I started looking,” May said, “it’s the first day of school. Cher’s got to look fabulous, she’s the Queen Bee. I started looking, found a blue suit, which was really beautiful. And I thought, wow, that’s going to be great on Alicia with her blonde hair. I found the red plaid, which is always such a smash hit, I think it’s the classic. And then, somewhere at the corner of my eye in Beverly Hills, I found the yellow Jean Paul Gaultier. And I was like, oh my God, it just jumped at me. It was emotional, the yellow on the blonde. I grabbed it because it was too intense.”

So, how did “too intense” not just become so central to the film, but 25 years later, be given a place of pride on the cover of May’s book?

“Alicia strolled into the fitting in her sweatpants with her two dogs,” the designer told me with a grin, and if you did not know, people who do work like this mostly do it out of love. “Because she was already an activist. And we start trying clothes on. She put the blue one on and it was beautiful, but it just didn’t have the energy. It was just pretty, not memorable. The red one was immediately too Christmassy because we had the very specific color palette; fall, Christmas and spring in the movie.

Then, when she put the yellow one on, I have to tell you, we all had goosebumps because it was that moment when just the ray of sunshine entered the room. the energy of that color, how she felt in it. She was the star, she was the sunshine, and we knew that she was going to have a lot crossing in front of her; she’ll be in a lot of environment shots outside in the quad. She’ll be inside of the school. I mean, that’s the number one color. And the cover of my book. I mean, the yellow plaid suit is now Clueless. I mean, people know in the bookstore or library that this has to do something with Clueless.I think it really evokes emotion, costumes and colors and shapes and, and also information. It’s iconic.”

I absolutely agree, and getting to the part about the closet now, I asked May about how the balance was achieved, between the decadent designer clothes and the risk of alienating the audience. When I rewatched the film before the interview, I kept noticing places where the film took active steps, in the periphery, which made certain the tone leaned into inclusive rather than exclusive. This is no small feat, especially given that there did not seem to be any expectation that the film would come to much. At least by anyone who wasn’t directly involved in its making. So I asked, how did a bespoke closet, with running racks like a dry cleaners, but endlessly more posh, and a freaking color touch screen in 1995, turn into something aspirational instead of any other option.

“It was so innovative at the time,” May told me. “I think that was very surprising. I think that may be why it didn’t feel snooty, because nobody has seen it before. So you don’t even have an opinion of what that is, it’s just cool. I think in that scene, Alicia is delightful, she’s playing. And then I go to my closet and it turns. So, there’s this energy that she had. I mean, she was effervescent in the film, I think mesmerizing in a way. I mean, she is so beautiful and it was just delightful, she’s just delightful.”

There’s a party scene in the movie, the one I’m still mad at Elton (Jeremy Sisto) about, though thank God Cher has Christian (Justin Walker). Anyone who adores haute couture knows about the sculptural architectural magic by Azzedine Alaïa (1935-2017) and I had to know all about that red dress.

“The Alaia dress, it’s timeless,” May said. “I was so lucky to get the dress because I couldn’t afford it. There were no PR machines throwing stuff at me. There were a hundred new actors. And I mean, they became movie stars after the movie, but nobody knew about them before. I mean, this was Paul Rudd’s first movie too. Alicia had done things, Stacy had done things, but most of the kids hadn’t. I found this dress and I was like, I just really want to have it.”

“I talked to Amy about it,” May continued, “and we just couldn’t afford it. I mean, I splurged on Jean-Paul Gaultier and a few things in the movie, but I found somebody who speaks French and we called his atelier, like the old way, on the phone. There was no internet. And we went to his atelier in Paris and he agreed to lend us the dress, which was amazing.”

I told the designer it sounded like movie magic.

‘The Fashion of Clueless’, Mona May’s new book written with Monica Corcoran Harel, published by Simon & Schuster, is now available at your favorite booksellers.

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