03. The Fabric of Film - Growing Out of Old Clothes: Molly Gunn’s Wardrobe in Uptown Girls
‘You want this Molly. Now close your eyes, and repeat after me.’ ‘I want this’
Ingrid and Molly Gunn in Uptown Girls (Boaz Yakin, 2003)
Uptown Girls epitomises what fashion can mean to lost girls. As Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy) watches her clothes stripped from her, piece by Spring/Summer 02 Blumarine piece, she begins to simultaneously understand both the evanescence of the superficial and the core of sentimentality.
Molly is left destitute after years of exuberant living due to the inheritance she has received from her musician father. The ceilings of her apartment are swept with sheer netting, her pet pig from Thailand scrambles about her apartment and her Egyptian cotton sheets ooze with opulence - before Molly even emerges from her canopied bed there is no doubt her wardrobe is equally impressive. The notorious Blumarine gown she immediately dons confirms this, embedded with flowers and illustrations that feel somewhat enchanted when worn by Murphy. The lampshade that she fashions into a hair-pin physically connects her to the space she lives in and through her style she becomes an extension of the almost oxymoronic luxury bohemian apartment she resides in.
Yet in this scene, set on her twenty-second birthday, Molly retreats to the bathroom to stare into the mirror and contort her face, straining to see where any wrinkles may have begun to form. It is at this point that Ray (Dakota Fanning) emerges from a toilet cubicle and insults Molly’s - now much coveted - rhinestone embellished Manolo Blahnik heels that the illusion created by her effortless ensemble begins to crumble. The dress, the shoes and DIY clip begin to seem as much indicative of her personal style as they are her crippling fear of growing up.
To Molly growing up, moving from adolescence to adulthood, represents a forced confrontation with the past she has continued to run from by staying still - the death of her parents, her financial issues and her relationships with men are among the issues that she refuses to face. Her financial liberty has allowed her relationship with reality to become increasingly discordant, sleeping through the day existing in waking life only when she chooses to - and her relationship with fashion exhibits this escape through her mystical collection of clothes.
As Molly is evicted from her apartment she wears a Spring Summer 2002 Moschino ‘Cheap and Chic’ dress depicting three girls in 1950s circle skirt silhouettes. As she runs from person to person attempting to stop them from buying her own clothes that she has put up for sale, her best friend Ingrid (Marley Shelton) tells her that she must remember that she ‘wants this’, implying that she should stop resisting that which is inevitable and embrace the delusion that selling essentially the entire contents of her wardrobe and the memories that she has collected alongside these items is to her benefit. Her dress is particularly fitting of the scene as the three girls act as a reminder of Molly’s love for fashion and the gravity of her loss in this moment.
Perhaps Molly's most overlooked outfit is the one she wears when she stops Ray from beating up another girl at her school and ultimately ends up beating up the other girl’s au pair for slut-shaming her. She wears a salmon pink broderie top and a white Juicy Couture ‘rara’ skirt with heels, but the appeal of the outfit is less so in its individuality and more so its connection to Ray. Here Molly and Ray are arguably seen at their most similar - in their inadequate fighting garb they are both uninhibited by the limitations of a skirt and fight for their honour. Molly’s borrowed jacket from her unreliable boyfriend Neal (Jesse Spencer) is even placed conveniently underneath her knees to protect them as she pummels her opponent, manipulating her wardrobe to fit the unconventional occasion.
This jacket is the most consistently depicted item of clothing in the film despite not technically being from Molly’s own wardrobe. Despairing over the fact Neal has not called her, Molly consistently wears the jacket throughout the film and it sees many transfigurations before reaching its final form. Initially the jacket is a standard brown leather jacket, kept by Molly in the hopes of maintaining some semblance of connection with him in his absence. However as Molly’s circumstances change so does the jacket; she falls over in a sea of detergent inflicting the first wound to the coat, she then sets it on fire and finally in an effort to return it to its former state she dyes it black and adorns it with prints and eyelets. The continuous modification of the jacket parallels Molly’s move further and further from the person that she is when it comes to Neal; the final iteration of the jacket is a statement that she has unconsciously been able to mould and create something of herself without the influence of Neal.
Molly's journey to her final version of herself is finalised in the scenes where she and Ray are seen spinning, a motif that occurs twice in the film and is assisted by the fashion of the duo. In the first instance Molly spins Ray around and in her careless manner they both fall down - here Molly wears a floral slip dress by Grazia ‘Lliani and a grey sheer dress on top and Ray wears a floral white summer dress. Towards the end of the film the two are spun once again, this time on the spinning teacup ride at Coney Island. Here Molly and Ray’s style is unrecognisable from the previous spinning scene - Molly wears a black lace ensemble and Ray her school uniform.
Their darker wardrobe reflects a raw reality for both Molly and Ray; they will have to confront their own losses and cannot hide behind the bright florals of their exterior any longer. In the final scene of the film where Ray performs her ballet for Molly, Molly wears a pink Rebecca Taylor lace dress and Ray a pink ballet tutu made for her by Molly. They show a return to florals but this time with authenticity - they rather symbolise new birth and spring where Molly and Ray begin a new chapter of growth.
Molly’s style begins as a lament to the loss of the girl she once was, and morphs into a reclamation of fact that adulthood is not uniform, and it does not have to be synonymous with the loss of the child. Although her style does not drastically transform, it follows her journey with a subtle realism.
Uptown Girls is simultaneously a statement on value, ageing, fashion and girlhood and a necessary reminder that life does not have to lose its vigour past your twenties.
Written by Maaya Karuppiah, Column Writer
Edited by Daisy Packwood, Fashion Editor
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