‘Clueless’: the cultural impact of the 1990s’ most iconic coming-of-age movie
It’s autumn of 2023, and girls worldwide are gearing up for Halloween, desperately combing through the rails of charity shops for matching yellow plaid skirts and blazers in Cher Horowitz’s image. It’s been almost 30 years since the release of Amy Heckerling’s pioneering coming-of-age Clueless, but somehow, the film’s grip on fashion and culture remains just as strong as it was back in 1995.
Borrowing from Jane Austen’s Emma, Clueless starred Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd – in his debut – as a group of affluent teens in Beverly Hills. The plot of the movie was fairly simple: it-girl Cher and her best friend Dionne, each of them named after famous singers of the past who now do infomercials, take clueless new student Tai under their wing, guiding her through the trials and tribulations of her teens.
Amidst providing her makeover and matchmaking services to her peers and teachers, our protagonist finds herself looking inward, realising that she, too, just might be totally clueless. Though it’s seemingly simple and superficial, those qualities are precisely where Clueless found its success and cult legacy.
From the film’s opening moments, Heckerling carves a coming-of-age cult classic for the ages. The Muffs’ ‘Kids In America’, fittingly, plays over shots of Cher and Co. taking the mall by storm, catching rays at pool parties, and driving jeeps down streets lined by palm trees. As the montage gives way to Cher’s opening monologue, “So OK, you’re probably going, ‘Is this, like, a Noxzema commercial or what?’ But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl”, it becomes apparent that the director took the time to study her subjects.
Heckerling’s research into the dialect of 1990s Beverly Hills teens infuses the movie dialogue with phrases like “totally buggin’” and the iconic “as if!”. It’s a way of speaking that seems so tied to the time and place that spawned it, so specific and integral to the characters who deliver it, yet still remains endlessly quotable today.
The film’s fashion has proven equally contemporary yet transcendental. Between Cher’s checkered two-piece, her layered athleisure look for physical education, and the striking white date dress which prompts her father to ask, “What the hell is that?”, the movie reinvented 1990s fashion with plaid, collars, sweater vests, and berets.
Each outfit was meticulously curated around each character and moment in the film. When we first meet Tai, she’s wearing a T-shirt with a troll on it and a plaid button-up. Her hair messily pulled up in a ponytail, she provides a stark contrast to the precision and polish of Cher and Dionne’s looks. Still, the plaid hints at her belonging with the it-girls, and soon she’s the mirror image of Cher, in cardigans and checkered skirts galore.
At the height of her disagreements with Cher, which spawns another iconic line with the pouty, way harsh “You’re a virgin who can’t drive”, Tai looks more unlike herself than ever. A pastel pink headband adorns her red ringlets while she dons a full pink tweed suit. She leaves the scene by repeating Cher’s own words, “I’m outie”, leaving the blonde to contemplate her own actions. When the two finally reconcile and attend Travis’ skate event, Tai seems to have found the balance between her old and new selves – pairing plaits and a stripy T-shirt with a heart-shaped necklace.
The fashion choices served the film and remain one of the biggest reference points for 1990s fashion available, up there with the likes of Friends and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It’s an endless vault of 1990s nostalgia, but it also provided the blueprint for the incoming coming-of-age chick flick obsession that came with the new century. With all the warmth of John Hughes’ pioneering work in teen cinema, Clueless further evolved the genre.
From Cher’s rose-tinted opening voice-over monologue to the introduction to the distinctive, archetypal high school characters, Clueless put into place a series of coming-of-age characteristics that would long outlive it. Almost a decade after its release, another teen classic, Mean Girls, was made in its mirror image. Following popular girls who take an unwitting new student from loser to mean girl, with a focus on fashion and female friendships, Tina Fey’s modern classic elevated Clueless into more evil territory.
Clueless was also one of the first commercial chick flicks to take inspiration from classic literature. This became a mainstay in the genre, as 10 Things I Hate About You borrowed from The Taming of the Shrew, Easy A took inspiration from The Scarlet Letter, and She’s The Man parodied Twelfth Night.
Its continuing influence has persisted past the birth and death of the 2000s chick flick into the contemporary cultural zeitgeist. In 2014, Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX lifted from the film’s iconic imagery in the accompanying music video for ‘Fancy’, directed by Director X. The video was essential to the success of the single, as Charli XCX herself acknowledged in an interview with the Grammys, “It’s timeless because it’s already based on a cult classic.”
Between an endlessly iconic screenplay and an equally memorable swathe of 1990s-infused outfits, Clueless became the most influential coming-of-age movie of the decade. But its legacy has persisted long into the new century in almost every element of our culture. From fashion to teen cinema to music, Cher Horowitz lives on.
