There are few movie looks that are as iconic as Cher Horowitz’s yellow plaid set from the '90s classic “Clueless.”
Horowitz's yellow skirt suit made the biggest impact out of the character's 60 plus outfits in the film, inspiring countless Halloween costumes and pop culture references since the teen comedy was released in 1995.
Alicia Silverstone sat down with Vogue to talk about the story behind the memorable look and even revealed that it almost didn’t happen.
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"'Clueless' almost didn't happen because the studio thought no one was going to see it because it was about a young girl."
But once the movie was greenlighted, Silverstone was also on board.
“At first, you see Cher is wearing a plaid Dolce & Gabbana yellow and black checkered skirt, white Mary Jane shoes, white knee-high socks, and then there’s a white T-shirt and a yellow cardigan,” the 43-year-old actor recalled. “And then on top of it, of course, the suit jacket.”
She continued, “There were three options for this opening scene: a blue version, a red version, and the yellow version.”
It was director Amy Heckerling and costume designer Mona May who made the final decision to go with the yellow option because “they felt that it was most appropriate for the scene,” according to Silverstone.
“It’s a nod to a schoolgirl uniform, but in an elevated, chic, very high fashioned way,” she said. “And it’s so absurd. Immediately, you’re transformed, you know the world you’re in because that’s not how kids dress to go to school. It’s just not. But somehow it just feels right and it works.”
"It sort of had a grunge edge to it because it still was like yellow and black plaid, but putting it on a little girl made it so different."
While the whereabouts of the yellow plaid suit is unknown, Silverstone said "it has a life of its own.”
“You see it every year on the runway,” she said. “And I think it’s so interesting that people are so interested in it and it continues to live.”
From Iggy Azalea’s music video for “Fancy” to Ariana Grande’s tour outfit, the iconic look has been re-created countless times in the 25 years since “Clueless” first hit theaters.
Silverstone herself even re-created her own look over 20 years later on “Lip Sync Battle” where she paid homage to Cher Horowitz by lip-syncing to, of course, Azalea’s smash hit “Fancy.”
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Like many classics, "Clueless" is set to get its own reboot on NBC's streaming service, Peacock. This time around, the show is shifting its focus from Cher to her best friend, Dionne, and has been described as, "'Mean Girls' meets 'Riverdale' meets a Lizzo video, set in a high school that is uniquely 2020 L.A."
“A baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sun-glasses wearing, oat milk latte and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong No. 2 Dionne steps into Cher’s vacant Air Jordans,” Peacock explained as the premise of the show. “How does Dionne deal with the pressures of being the new most popular girl in school, while also unraveling the mystery of what happened to her best friend.”
Peacock is part of our parent company, NBCUniversal.