Getting the Pretty Back

by Molly Ringwald

  In our neighborhood, in every direction out of our cul-de-sac, there was a home that housed a set of siblings: Joanie and Jennifer to the left of us; Lorie and Lisa to the right; and Karen and Krista in the middle, across the street. (Not one of which, incidentally, had anything short of shoulder-length hair.) Our games mostly consisted of freeze tag and cartoon tag, and I occasionally could corral them into taking part in a backyard vaudeville show. I had copied out scenes from classic Abbott and Costello sketches from a local show that my brother and sister and I performed in on the weekends. I would direct them into the proper timing and sometimes have to explain the joke. “Yeah, you see his name is Who…and see, the other guy doesn’t get it!” This would keep us occupied until the ice cream truck or another distraction came along. And then home for dinner.

  Then one day while playing inside the house, rummaging through my mother’s things, I came across a long ponytail curled up in a hatbox that I was pretty sure wasn’t real, but nevertheless intrigued me almost as though it were a living, breathing thing. Treating it with reverence, I carefully presented it to my mother for explanation. (I don’t even think that it matched my mother’s hair color.)

  “Oh, it’s a fall,” she said. “We used to wear those all the time a few years ago. Nobody wears them anymore.”

  This information I accepted gladly, since it basically gave me free rein to claim the thing as my own. I would attach it to my head, and no one would be able to pry it loose. Unfortunately, there was precious little to attach it to. Every time I thought I had it fixed, the second I attempted to copy my sister’s hair swing (that I’m sure she copied from Susan Dey), the flick from one shoulder to the other, the hairpiece would fly off my head and sail across the room. (Apparently this unhappy event actually happened to a famous singer/dancer on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, which my mother remembers helped to deter her from wearing the elaborate updo. “And they were really going out of style anyway…”) This did little to deter me until I had to face the fact that as much as I loved this piece of hair and wanted it attached to me, the thing had no interest in me, preferring to hibernate indefinitely in the hatbox.

  I reasoned that the real problem was the weight of the hairpiece, and if I could just find a less weighty version…unfortunately, my mother had not invested much in her hair accoutrements. There were only two that I could find, and one of them I figured was a Halloween wig and of little interest, since it was a short curly do that looked like it belonged to Bewitched’s Samantha’s frisky cousin Serena. But I did happen upon a pair of stockings—one for each leg. While panty hose were becoming more commonplace, my mother still owned the old-fashioned singular nylons, which along with the “fall,” I never saw her wear. The thought occurred to me that it was about the same length as the fall and a much better color match. Two bobbies later, I was in business. I flicked my head around and admired my handiwork. Then I ventured out into the neighborhood.

  My friends made no mention of my new hairdo. If they even noticed, they didn’t let on. I was filled with a combination of relief and disappointment. Relief that I wasn’t about to be made fun of mercilessly (I still can’t quite believe it. I don’t know if it was the age or the place or the fact that I had exceptionally kind friends) and disappointment because…couldn’t they see I had LONG hair? Then a couple of days later I noticed Jennifer sporting a black stocking in her hair. Soon, all the girls tried it out, even pinning their own hair up in order to show the stocking hanging down. Joanie went so far as to put panty hose on her head, but we all agreed that was ridiculous.

  It was at that time when I realized that I had set a trend. I had an idea that was different; I executed it; and I watched it catch on. It was magical the way we all entered into a tacit understanding that stockings on our heads was cool, even when the evidence should have clearly showed us otherwise. I think I discovered at that moment that fashion was fun and ridiculous, but most important, that as long as I set the trend, instead of following it, I’d be OK.

  FASHION FAUX PAS THAT WORK

  I’ve offered up a few fashion rules in this chapter, but as I’ve also said, fashion shouldn’t be taken too seriously. So as important as it is to know the rules, it’s also important to know how to break them. I asked my friend Todd Thomas, a designer and stylist who has dressed such formidably fashionable women as Debbie Harry and Cindy Sherman, for ten classic fashion faux pas that work.

  WHITE PANTS IN WINTER

  DIRTY HAIR

  SILVER AND GOLD

  NIGHT FOR DAY

  MIXING SEASONS

  ROOTS

  BLUE EYE SHADOW

  NAVY AND BLACK

  CHEAP PERFUME

  TIGHTS WITH OPEN-TOED SHOES

  CHIPPED NAIL POLISH (YES, NUMBER ELEVEN-TRUE FASHION ALWAYS BREAKS RULES)

  This attitude served me especially well as a teenager. My parents kept me on a pretty strict allowance, well past the time I was making more money than any teenager would know what to do with. This was a time before designer cell phones and Juicy Couture. The “rich” kids still dressed like they were slaves to The Official Preppy Handbook, that enormously successful guidebook from the early eighties, while other kids tried to spice it up a little by cutting the collars out of their T-shirts à la Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. Since I had a limited amount of money to shop with and a lasting fascination with all things nostalgic (especially from the twenties), I started scouring the local vintage stores. I was amazed at the riches to be found. I loved that everything had a story. I would throw on a beaded dress and imagine that I was a flapper in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story; I found a delicate lace dress sheath that actually belonged to Eleanor Roosevelt when she was a debutante. There were men’s suits, vests, patterned ties, old seamed silk stockings, dusty dance shoes, lace-up Victorian boots, cut velvet flowers, straw hats. It was all so thrilling.

  I especially loved it when I would find a note or a piece of jewelry with an engraving. For years I used to wear an opal ring that my mother bought for me when we were traveling in Australia. It was inscribed For DL from AJ 1792 in delicate script. I spent a lot of time imagining the love story between DL—Davinia Lovejoy? Dominique Lumiere?—and her ardent lover, Armand Joie—or was it Abraham Jeeves? I pictured them in their final meetings as Abraham was boarding the boat back to England. Abraham scraped up all of his money to buy Davinia this ring and promised that he would be coming back for her. Of course, he never did, and years later, Davinia was forced to sell her ring. There were endless stories such as these—remember, I was a teenager.

  Even as my style evolved, it never occurred to me to buy clothing based on what was in magazines (Teen Vogue didn’t even exist then anyway). I dressed from my imagination, not because of what was or wasn’t in fashion. Of course, sometimes in my excitement, I couldn’t just choose one thing—so I layered. And layered and layered. Around this time, I discovered that I needed glasses. I was, and still am, very nearsighted. I was fond of the kind of glasses worn around the turn of the century; I first saw them worn by the character of Annie Sullivan in a theater production of The Miracle Worker, later by Stacey Tendeter in Francois Truffaut’s Two English Girls. That was the look I went for: simple, round metal frames. The critic Rex Reed wrote somewhere that I dressed like an eighty-year-old bird-watcher in the film Pretty in Pink. I was very insulted at the time, but now I think it’s kind of cool, and actually kind of sexy. It seems so hard to explain to a teenager how much sexier you are when it doesn’t look like you are trying. It makes me proud of my teenage self.

  Although the films I made had a costume designer, my personal style heavily influenced the characters I played. I take responsibility for the choices and still stand by them. Well, except maybe the prom dress. (I think I was tired that day.) I would, of course, love to have it now, but I was so unhappy with it at the time; it is the one article of clothing that I didn’t keep from my wardrobe in Pretty in Pink. Same goes for my clothes from The Breakfast Club. What I wouldn’
t give for those knee-high riding boots now!

  LETTING GO

  One of the hardest things now is looking at this incredible wardrobe that I have accumulated over the years and realizing that most of it doesn’t fit. It isn’t just that I’m merely heavier, though truthfully, I am; it’s the fact that my body has just changed, as bodies are wont to do. Pregnancy tends to do that to us. Even if we lose all the baby weight and then some, our bodies morph into something else. Not necessarily bad, just different. Eventually we have to be brutal with ourselves and look at what we have in our wardrobes, what doesn’t belong there anymore, what to keep, etc. This is something I do on a semiregular basis. I have three categories:

  KEEP. IT’S A STAPLE.

  DONATE.

  SAVE FOR MY DAUGHTERS.

  This last category, of course, is questionable. I have no idea whether or not they will be even remotely interested in my old clothes when they are teenagers, but I figure if they aren’t, one of their friends will be…and I’m going to need some ammunition to figure out where they are sneaking off to on Saturday night.

  * * *

  BAG THIS

  ALTHOUGH I MENTION THE TOP-TIER DESIGNERS, THERE ARE WAYS TO ACHIEVE THE SAME LOOK WITHOUT HAVING TO FORK OVER THE DOWN PAYMENT ON YOUR CAR. LOOK AT WHAT THE DESIGNERS ARE SHOWING THIS YEAR ON STYLE.COM, THEN CHECK OUT WHAT IS BEING SOLD AT MORE REASONABLE MIDRANGE STORES SUCH AS ZARA OR CLUB MONACO. ALSO A FAVORITE OF MINE IS TOPSHOP. EVEN TARGET HAS VERY FASHIONABLE OPTIONS THAT OFFER AN EXTRA BONUS OF ENCOURAGING YOU TO TAKE A FEW FASHION RISKS, SINCE YOU AREN’T INVESTING YOUR 401(K) ON A CUTE LITTLE PATENT LEATHER CLUTCH.

  * * *

  Recently I became my own little reality TV show (minus the television) and took a brutal look at my wardrobe to figure out exactly what needed to go in each category. It is truly surprising, and a little disheartening, when you actually look at what you have, what you have been hoarding, what you have never even worn but you keep there so that you won’t have to face the fact that it was a stupid purchase or you must have had horrible PMS that day. Or that skirt you can just zip up, but if you wear it, you will have those little horizontal creases and will spend the entire night pulling it down. There is little that makes you look less confident than pulling down your skirt all night. That and chain-smoking are pretty much neck and neck. If you do both, you may as well just give up and call it a night.

  If you really want to go the whole nine yards when confronting your wardrobe, I recommend enlisting a friend. There are also services, of course, that offer this sort of thing, but I’m all for recruiting your friends. You can make it a friend date, but be sure that you offer something in return for all her help. Relationship advice, chocolate, a bottle of wine, dinner afterward: it’s only fair that your friend be rewarded for slogging through decades of fashion faux pas. As for which friend to pick, choose the one who has the style that you most admire. Lure her (or him) over. In fact, if you have a stylish gay friend, skip the girl and go for him. Odds are he’ll have a more discerning eye and will also be tougher on you. Trust me, that’s what you need. You don’t need to be pussyfooted around. You need tough love here.

  Sometimes it’s hard for us to get beyond what we paid for a certain item and just accept that it has no place in our wardrobe. If you come across a really amazing dress that is just hopelessly out of style, or is made from a fabric that hasn’t kept as well as you would like, try to remember all of the great times when you wore the dress. Did you wear it the first time you went away for a weekend with your boyfriend? Great. Did you wear it that time you ran into your ex-boyfriend at that party and was thrilled knowing for a fact that you looked hot? Savor the memories. Maybe someone took a photograph. Either way, let it go, and forget that you paid full price and half your paycheck for it. Look at it like a really fantastic rental, a sweet convertible Porsche you splurged on for a weekend. Or if that doesn’t excite you, choose another car, or an entirely different analogy altogether. The point is—move on.

  YOU ARE NOT A BILLBOARD

  While we’re on the subject of what to get rid of, I’d like to make an initial suggestion without having seen your wardrobe. My personal pet peeve: T-shirts with logos or advertisements on them. There is nothing that looks quite as sloppy and, well, unfashionable as wearing a T-shirt that announces someplace that you’ve been, a restaurant that you’ve eaten at, or worst of all, a phrase that you think is really funny (I’M HOME CAN I GO DRUNK NOW?). I don’t mean to stand in judgment of anyone here, and as a former T-shirt hoarder, I speak from experience. Not so long ago I had to clear out drawers and drawers full of such T-shirts—some of them given to me by friends but most of them embarrassingly purchased by me. While on vacation, I often succumbed to that inexplicable desire to return home with a medium-size all-cotton memento. To add insult to injury, these shirts rarely fit well, so on top of having BARBADOS! emblazoned across your chest, you’re also wearing the style equivalent of a pillowcase. Oh, and I know what you’re thinking: I don’t have to get rid of it. I just won’t wear it out of the house. I’ll only sleep in it! Let’s examine this strategy a little further. Is this really what you want your significant other to see before lights out? You, in an oversize T-shirt hanging to your knees that says BIG BOY MAKES YOU SAY OHHH BOY!

  And just because it’s a gift doesn’t mean that you have to keep it either. (You didn’t eat that fruitcake, did you?) When someone close to you brings back a T-shirt to show you that they were thinking of you while they were away (or more likely, they were thinking of you at the airport in the last-minute scramble not to return empty-handed), smile gratefully and then head straight to Goodwill the next day. At times, this sartorial editing must also extend to your kids. Every couple of months, my in-laws like to send a little something for their eldest granddaughter, a little gift to let us know that they are thinking of her. Since Mathilda had been going through a cat phase for quite some time, my mother-in-law picked up a T-shirt that I’m sure she thought was just perfect for her little agape mou. CATS OF GREECE it read in big cartoony letters at the top, with colorful drawings of nine cats below.

  “Oh, it’s so sweet,” my husband and I cooed at first glance, reading the titles of the different cats featured. ROMANTIC CAT, SHY CAT. SILLY CAT.

  “Aw, she’s going to love this,” I said—just as my eye happened upon cat number four: STONED CAT. Followed by SERIOUSLY PISSED-OFF CAT. And the clincher: HORNY CAT. In my mother-in-law’s defense, her spoken English is far superior to her written English.

  A week later, we got a call from her. “Did little Erinoula get the T-shirt?” she chirped.

  “Oh, yes,” my husband assured her, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

  I held up the T-shirt and pointed at Horny Cat.

  “I’m not going to tell her,” he said, after he hung up the phone. “What’s the point?” Besides, as he aptly pointed out, her broken English isn’t really at fault here. Who was the weirdo who decided to make a T-shirt featuring “horny cats” in kids’ sizes?

  OK, my last word on T-shirts. If you still have any of those baby T-shirts with the character drawing and the words LITTLE MISS GRUMPY, or LITTLE MISS HAPPY, or LITTLE MISS CRANKY…get rid of them. The expiration date on these shirts is pretty much the day you graduated from high school. I don’t care if they still fit you. You may as well be wearing a shirt that says LITTLE MISS I NEED ATTENTION or LITTLE MISS I’M NOT READY TO BE A GROWN-UP. Maybe you aren’t, but it happens whether you want it to or not. Trying to look an age that you aren’t only makes you look older. It’s important to remember that there is a difference between being “youthful” and “youth obsessed.”

  So how do you dress now? The way I see it, there are few hard, steady rules. The most important thing is to know your strengths. If your legs are the feature that are still kicking, then by all means, go for the miniskirt. If your décolletage is still flawless, then make sure that you invest in wonderful low-cut sweaters and a kick-ass demi-cup push-up bra. Whatever
you do, though, stay away from trendy. (In fact, it’s a good idea to stay away from trendy at any age.) Trendy is a waste of money and takes up valuable closet real estate, as opposed to pieces of real quality that can be worn season after season. It is better to stick with neutrals. It is much easier to mix and match and also makes traveling easier! If you need to, add a flash of color with a fantastic Pucci or Missoni scarf (the Italians are great for accessories).

  A GOOD TAILOR IS NOT HARD TO FIND

  I still look to the past for inspiration, just as I did when I was younger. As far as I’m concerned, nothing can beat Catherine Deneuve’s winter elegance in Belle de Jour or the Bouvier sisters’ breezy sophistication on the Amalfi coast in summer. But rather than copy these icons outright I like to be inspired by them and figure out ways to reinterpret their style and make it my own. I’m not alone in this approach. I can’t say how many times I have found wonderful vintage pieces at antique fairs in NYC, only to learn that extremely well-known designers had already placed a hold on them. Very often they take the pieces back to their studio and literally make patterns off them, mass-producing them as their own creation. And you know what? If they can do it, so can you! Find a fantastic tailor in your area and bring in a dress or jacket that you would like to have remade—perhaps in a more flattering color, or maybe just without the moth holes. While you’re at it, bring in your beloved clothing for tweaks before you let it go—the really good stuff. Anything that contains the word polyester you can safely toss. Same goes if it has an elastic waist and you aren’t pregnant. I don’t think that a single article of clothing I wear on my current TV show is “off the rack.” Everything needs a little tuck here and there. The very best thing that you can do for yourself is to buy clothes that actually fit you. Not fit the you that you want to be, or the you that you were, but the you that you are now.