The Who What Wear Podcast: Clueless Costume Designer Mona May on 30 Years of Fashion Influence and Letting Girls Be Girls

0:10Welcome to the Who What Wear podcast, your direct line to the designers, stylists, beauty experts, editors, and tastemakers who are shaping the ever-evolving world of fashion. I'm Who What Wear Editor-in-Chief Kat Collings, and today, Senior Fashion and Social Editor Tara Gonzalez is chatting with costume designer Mona May. Mona has numerous credits since getting her start as a costume designer in the 90s, but she's best known as the great mind behind the fashion in the movie Clueless. 30 years after the film's release, Mona joins us to look back on how she designed more than 100 different looks on a tight budget.

0:46She recalls how she worked with Clueless writer and director Amy Heckerling to blend thrifted clothes with high fashion. She breaks down how she sourced some of the standout pieces from the girls' wardrobes, like Cher's iconic red Alaya dress and Stacey's dramatic larger-than-life hats. Plus, she tells us about her new book, The Fashion of Clueless, that takes us inside her sketchbook she used when designing the unforgettable looks we see in the movie and features exclusive interviews with the Clueless cast. It's all coming up on Who, What, Where.

1:23Well, thanks Mona for chatting with me. I'm a big fan of your work and just so excited to talk to you and so excited for this book. So I figured maybe we can just start at the beginning and I would love to hear a little bit about how you ended up doing costume design and if that was something that you always wanted to do. Well, you know, I was one of those kids who drew as a little girl. I was drawing princesses and many outfits, many collections already. Lucky my parents really supported it. As a kid, I grew up in different countries. I was actually born in India and I lived at those three and then I moved to Poland and then Germany.

2:01So, you know, I was always surrounded by different cultures. In the first years of my life, I got to see saris and the beautiful colors. And I really, really loved that. So that influence of early childhood, I think, had a really big mark on me. I really wanted to be a fashion designer, really. That was my dream. So that's what I pursued. I went to school in Europe and Paris and Milan and London. And then I really set my eyes on the States. I kind of was very fascinated by different fashions here. So I ended up in New York and then California. I went to fashion school here in LA. And while I was in school, you know, there's you hanging out with all kinds of people, artists.

2:39I had friends at USC film school. And at one point they came up to me and said, hey, we're doing this little film, Sartese's film. You have clothes, right? Being in fashion school and always having fashion parties. I mean, it was the 80s. So we were always dressing up to go to clubs. It was a full on thing. They said, sure. Yeah, absolutely. I have clothes. You know what you need. And they handed me a script, short film. And from that moment, I was hooked. It was so interesting to me to actually create characters, personas to dive into people's psychology, who they are. It was so much more than fashion.

3:13It was really fun. I also really loved the collaboration on movies. You're not just at home drawing a thing. You really are talking to the director. You're connecting with the production designer. You're connecting with the DP. That really suited my personality as well. So that was it. I did that film and then I never stopped. Truly, I was just like in my little van with my kid going to sets at 5 a.m. showing up. And I feel like it's so interesting too, because like you said, originally you thought maybe you'd be a fashion designer and now you're at a place where movies are such an influence for fashion designers and like movie fashion is such a big influence.

3:46So it's just really cool that that ended up being your path. And then obviously Clueless, big moment for you. It was a dream come true in a sense because it was fashion and film. When Amy wrote the script, we actually met on a different project and we just connected creatively. She was like my creative soulmate, truly. And when she wrote Clueless, she called me up. She's like, this is job for you. It has all the elements, you know, it has the colors. I want it to be colorful. I want it to be fun. It has to be fashion forward. You have to come up with new fashions that people are not wearing yet.

4:14So it really was like, oh my God, to work on something that connects two of my loves. And I'd love to know, like, as you were reading the script, did the fashion, the way that it was going to look, did you immediately have this kind of vision? Like what was your initial idea of what it was going to be and then what it ended up being? You have to remember, and your audience have to go back to 1994. You know, I'm truly, that was grunge era. And me and Amy went to high schools for scouting locations. And we looked around and it was just like so sad. We were just like, oh my God, this is so depressing.

4:45So the way that Amy wrote the script, it was really about rich Beverly Hills girls, right? So they had any amount of money to spend on clothes. And they probably went to fashion shows and had their daddy's American Express to show up with. So I didn't really have a blueprint when I read the script. I had to be kind of a detective. I had to go to the runway shows. I had to see what Paris is doing, what Milan is doing, what London is doing. Because number one, I was creating a whole new look that didn't exist. So I had to really find out, okay, what's cool right now? What are the next trends that are going to be happening?

5:18Because everything happens six months later, a year later, when everything finally filters in. But I think the biggest challenge was to take these high fashion concepts, but then translate them into high school. They were 16 year old girls. And as a costume designer, you really have to dive into the character. Who is Cher? Who is Dion? You want the characters to be alive in a sense. You know, there's so many people who are now Cher's or they want to be Dion for Halloween because you're connecting with these characters. In the book, I thought that that was so interesting that you guys were like, okay, we'll go to high school.

5:48And then you saw what everyone was wearing. And it was like, okay, this doesn't exactly fit the narrative. But I think what made Clueless so special too was that you really did strike the perfect balance, as you just said, between high fashion and aspirational fashion that felt new and exciting. But then also there was still like a reality in it. And I feel like you did such a great job grounding it in this universe that you guys made while still making it really fun. It's like a hyper reality. I mean, nobody dressed like this in high school. Maybe now people do, right? But then there was the first movie.

6:17There was no movie about girls, you know, and fashion. And there was Pre-Legally Blonde. We were the forerunners. I mean, we were really breaking the ground for those movies. Totally. Did you have any specific designers or fashion shows of the time that you remember that you felt really inspired by? Well, Chanel was designed by Lagerfeld at the time. And I think that those collections were so fabulous because it was kind of like biker girls in Chanel. So it was kind of like that street, but high end. And that's what really inspired me. Vivian Westwood always inspired me because, I mean, the way that she thinks about fashion, she always breaks it down.

6:51It's something so interesting. People dressed very differently then. People were either punk rock or they were rockabilly or they were like all Versace head to toe. You didn't have the high and low fashion. So that was something very different that I was able to bring to the film, in a sense. I also didn't have a lot of money. It was another big movie. Basically, Amy tried to make this movie for a while. And every studio she went to, they basically said, oh, movie about girls? Forget it. Put some boys in it. We'll do it. Oh, my God. Finally, Paramount, Sherry Lansing and Scott Rudin, they were like, okay, sure, let's do it.

7:23But it's probably going to fail anyway, right? So they just gave us like$25 million. And they didn't really care enough to really supervise us, which was really great. It gave us a lot of freedom, I think, with Amy. Amy had a very, very strong vision about that world. And I think that's why the movie is also very successful. She knew that they had to be high fashion. She wanted to be very feminine, girly, you know, kind of the opposite of what was on the street. The characters were so developed in the film. I mean, like, you love all of them. You remember all of them. And then she cast it so beautifully, too.

7:53I mean, Paul Rudd, Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash. I mean, you can't ever exchange these actors. I mean, there was no another Alicia Silverstone with her beauty and Brittany Murphy. Yeah. It's so funny to think that at a time that they wouldn't have wanted to make this film, considering how it really is one of the most iconic. I mean, for fashion, obviously. And then just in general, it's like an iconic film that I think people watch again and again and again, and it still holds up. It's like people reference it all the time. You know what? I think also at the time, audiences were ready for this.

8:23I think that women were ready for it. I think when the movie came out, it was like, okay, let's take off these baggy clothes and And let's put our little feminine, beautiful Empireways dresses with cap sleeves and A-line skirts and our little twin sets. And the way that I look at fashion, even though I went to the runways and I looked at the high fashion, maybe it's being brought up in different countries. I see things timeless. I really love these clothes that really fit women, that make you feel good. It's that outfit that fits you really well. You come out and you feel so good. It gives you power in a way.

8:54It's really important to me. And I think you see a thread in all my movies. You know, Romy and Michelle, Never Been Kissed, Wedding Singer, Enchanted, House Bunny. I get to do these movies about women and I want to give them this pride and the femininity, things that I think we deny ourselves that the world tells us not to do. Totally. And speaking of the characters, I would love to know when you were kind of honing in on individual personal style, how did you decide what each character's look was going to be and how it was going to be distinct? Like, I'd love to hear a little bit about how did you decide what their personal style was going to be?

9:27Well, it's interesting. Number one, it's in the script, who these characters are, who is Cher. She's the number one in school. You know, she rules. She controls the world and she controls herself. She has to be the mom to the dad and like everybody. So I think for her, we knew that it has to be very preppy, maybe very tailored, put together, you know, so it's a lot of times it's more emotional really than thinking like I'm going to put a jacket on her or what that is. Things had to be very tailored, I think, matchy in the way she says in the movie, how important her shoes are, how everything is in place.

10:00And I think that also tells a story in the film, immediately who she is. So I think why the yellow suit in the beginning? Because it's a suit, it's power, right? Why the Empire little dresses with little cap sleeves and little matchy purse? And always the Mary Janes to be very sweet, a certain kind of length of the dress too. And also nothing was over sex. We always made sure everything is just very proper too, because they were 16 years old, and that was very important to Amy. Now fashion is so different. With Alicia, she would come into the fitting with two dogs in her sweatpants, so teaching her how to wear the clothes, high fashion, really understanding what that is.

10:39Because actors, really, when they come into the fitting, they're kind of like a blank page. And then we start putting the clothing on, and the character comes through. It really is like a laboratory. This is one of my favorite part of my job, really in the fitting. This is when you find out what really is going to work. Like with the yellow suit, I bought a blue suit plaid. It was beautiful. I thought, oh my God, that's going to be amazing. And, you know, I actually picked up the Jean-Paul Gaultier suit in a store and I was like, I don't know, is that going to work? Is it with blonde hair? Like we usually as blondes don't really wear yellow, but there was something so vibrant and I love color.

11:13Color talks to me and I think it's energy. So I'm like, let's get it. And in a fitting, when Alicia put that suit, like, I mean, we all had goosebumps. It was like, this is right. This is the queen bee. This is the ray of sunshine. This is the moment in the movie that you meet her in a quad with all the green outside, with all the people crossing. She's got a pop. It's a Catholic school uniform on steroids in a way, because everything is grounded in reality. Like even this scene when they are in the gym, it starts with the black and white shorts and skirt, but then goes crazy. So that's the process.

11:45And Stacey, she's a little older. She comes from New York. She comes into the fitting and we can put bright colors on her and vinyl and leopard. So all of that just, again, bubbles up. And it was high and low, which was really cool. What was so fresh, I think that specifically with Stacey's character, I was able to kind of really shop thrift stores and rave stores on Melrose Avenue that was really huge at the time and then go a little bit designer and really mix it up. And then Ty, I mean, that was such a beautiful character. Brittany Murphy, she was 17 when she came onto set. I mean, she was just like this magical being, so old for her age in a way.

12:23And it's really understanding the character. She said to me, Mona, don't make me pretty in the beginning. I just really want to have this arc. I want to be the ugly duckling and then become the mini me Cher and then find myself in the end. It's a long winded answer, I think, to your question, kind of how it all comes together. Something that you said that was so interesting to me is that when you were doing the yellow Jean-Paul Gaultier, iconic, obviously, arguably like the most iconic look from Clueless that it almost like didn't happen. And it's now on the cover of my book. It's so funny that sometimes those things that you think are going to work end up being the thing that works the most.

13:01You have to be open, I think, as an artist. I think you have to really just allow the process to happen. I think that if you already know, you don't know. If you think, you don't know. Because there's so many elements, especially in filmmaking. Really, you don't find those things till you really are there in that moment. And then you have to think of the whole movie, like Dion and Cher together and then tie together. So then you have a whole other puzzle of putting the outfits together, make sure they look great in the scenes. Did you have any other moments on Clueless where you were like, that's probably not going to work?

13:33or maybe some kind of look or piece that kind of came together in an unexpected way? I don't know. I think this was really the most pivotal one for me. It was always searching for things. It's like the Alaya dress too. We were like, what are we going to do? It's Christmas. And at that point, I wanted for her to be a little bit more grown up and a little bit sexier. Like, okay, like she's really trying things out. And I didn't want anything to be too tight and too just overdone on her. Again, it's so important to just have that youthful girliness. And I saw this Alaya dress and I love his fabric.

14:05It's just such a perfect material. It's like thick and holds you. And the neckline was so beautiful. It was square and very open, but I didn't have the money at all. I was like, I can't, I can't afford it. So I had to actually find somebody who speaks French. We called the atelier. We said, we're doing this movie with this beautiful ingenue, Alicia Silverstone. Would it be at all possible to maybe get the dress? And they said, yes. So they lent us the dress, which was so incredibly amazing. And we got to put it in a movie and then Amy wrote the line. And then we introduced Alaya to the world in America.

14:42It was so amazing. I think high fashionistas knew Alaya, but not people in smaller towns, maybe New York, LA, people knew about it. It was phenomenal. But I have to tell you, I was so scared when she had to get on the ground in the dress. I mean, we were basically Like there's nothing is going to happen so we can return the dress. Oh my God. I didn't even think about that. And it was so funny because I got to design the jacket. It was the Mona May original with the little peplum and the feather boa collar and the little matching purse. I love that outfit too. You know, it really has a lot of meaning to me to have this prolific designer.

15:14I mean, I think he's one of probably my top 10 designers in the world. His vision was just so incredible. The 80s, 90s when he was in his power, it was just so beautiful, his work. And I feel like it's also what you were saying about the Jean-Paul Gaultier suit, how it just ended up being so emblematic of Clueless. I feel like that Aliyah moment, people quote it all the time. And I don't know if you ever saw that. I think in the last year or so on TikTok, that little soundbite became like a trend where people were doing recreations of like, you don't understand it's an Aliyah. And they would do it with different fashion pieces.

15:44Oh, great. So to your point that that was a magical moment that you created. And I feel like whenever I have something on or something that I'm like, that's really beautiful. I'm like, you don't understand. This isn't a lot. Oh, I love that. Oh, I'm going to tell Amy this. I have to tell Amy Heckling about this. You know, she was so prolific. I love her so much. You know, to have a director like this who loves fashion, who allows you to dig into your soul. You know, I was able to really bring everything out of my heart and kind of my brain onto the screen. and it was allowed, like the crazy hats, everything, the color.

16:16The genie came out of the bottle and she encouraged it, which is very different. Some directors don't like color. They don't want to have any hats because they can't see actors' eyes. And I think also for the actors, how much fun we had. Paul Rudd's first movie, Alicia Silverstone, you know, biggest role. Brittany Murphy, also one of the first roles. We were young and we were like, oh my God, this is just the coolest. It was such a pivotal moment in our lives that we are so connected to this day. I mean, I picked up the phone to Paul Rudd to interview him for the book, and it was just like yesterday.

16:47Something so early in your career that had such a strong impact. You just bonded forever. You were talking about all of the really great hats. You also have a very great hat on right now, might I add. Obviously, I feel like Dion's character had that incredible hat that I think I read in the book was inspired by Chanel. So I'd love to kind of hear a little bit about what you loved about hats as an accessory in Clueless and what were like maybe some of your favorites. I'm a hat maniac. Myself. It's my signature. I'm always in hats and always wore hats very early on, caps. And coming from Europe, I think we wear more hats maybe in Europe.

17:21My dad wore hats. He was a very debonair man. I feel like it brings something to an outfit, something like one more step, something that's so stylish in a way. And I love when you think of the 30s and the 40s and all the different hats. I mean, I don't know. I cry when I see those hats, like when I find them in a thrift store still. And just the beauty that women wore, the gloves and the hats and everything was so put together with the purse, you know. So it's more glamorous to me. So I wanted to bring that little bit of that glam to the film. And Amy was completely open to it. So at every opportunity I had, I was trying to bring a hat.

17:58And especially Dion and Stacey really loved it. She really got into it. I don't think it was so much Cher. She was more the headband girl. So finding a hat like the Chanel hat, I found that I think it was Neiman's. And the hat is made by a designer that still operates and designs hat in New York, KOKIN. K-O-K-I-N. And he actually just recreated the hat for me for this whole 30th anniversary. So we were able to have the hat around. But it was really Stacey when we put the outfit together, her black and white suit to go with Cher's for the first day of school. Because we thought with Amy, oh, they'll probably call each other.

18:32what are you wearing? Oh, I'm wearing my suit. And that hat, when I brought the hat to the fitting and Stacey was like, oh yeah, let's do this. Let's do this. So you have to imagine the hat by itself looks cookie and crazy and so oversized, right? It's like a Halloween hat. But look at Stacey coming out in the first scene of the movie in the hat, in her outfit. I put the vinyl lapel on the suit to kind of add a little matchy moment there. She carries it off, right? I mean, she knows about fashion. So any head that she wore in a movie, she gave it. And that was so cool. And I put heads on almost every extra that I could.

19:06It was just fun. I want people to come out when they watch my movies to be inspired. And I mean, now people wear it for Halloween. And it's so funny because even when you were describing her style and how it was a little bit different than Cher's because she had a little bit more vintage and thrift items thrown in and that sensibility of like high and low and mixing old and new. Once again, you were very ahead of your time with that because I feel like now that's how everybody wants to dress. Everyone's wearing vintage clothing with high fashion and wearing pieces that they thrifted with something very expensive from the runway.

19:39Balenciaga bag or whatever with my flip-flops and ripped jeans. Yeah, exactly. So is it crazy for you to see that something that you guys did on the film now is the way that people are dressing? And obviously the film also inspired the way that people dress right after the movie came out. How is that for you to see that reaction? I mean, it's insane. It's truly insane. And the feeling is so incredible because I am half kind of fashion designer in my heart too, to be able to set trends through the film in a way. I mean, think of the gym outfit for Cher, the white t-shirt with the black tank top on top.

20:14People didn't wear that. I mean, and now it's like you buy it together. You know what I mean? This is like in everybody's wardrobe. That is so amazing to me that the fashions kind of stood a test of time, that there is really still inspiration there. The fashions are still very wearable and timeless. And I think it's something that I have as my point of view. I think that I inject that into all my movies, this kind of timelessness of the Sophia Loren of the 50s and the Breakfast at Tiffany, the black dress, that kind of timeless. the peacoat, the beret, as I said, a line skirt, like those things that just really are go-to pieces and put in a way that I think translated over the years very well in a feminine way.

20:55Yeah. No, it's incredible. And I feel like even when I do a rewatch, I'm like, oh, I should wear an outfit like that. Like, or I should pick up on different styling things that I want to do. And I know that obviously Cher, I think she wore like 56 outfits ultimately. 63. 63 okay wow i was like i was close it's mind-boggling how many changes the girls had and 45 for stacy and then we had amber and then don't forget all the extras were dressed head to toe because they also showed up as grunge in the morning so we had to dress them to fit this world that we've created of high fashion beverly hills so everybody came through the wardrobe in the morning and got the outfit got the hats got the backpacks got accessories because when you look at the scenes in classrooms when you see the scenes in the quad it's all the same kids.

21:39It's from the same world. Do you feel like there was any looks that were your personal favorite? Like, of course, you have the plaid suits, like those, like everybody talks about in the Aliyah moment, really iconic. But are there any other ones that maybe that you don't see people like talk about as much? You know what? There's one that's actually Alicia's Silverstone favorite too. And she's in the mall with Christian. She's wearing a little green empire waist dress with her little matching purse. It was so of the time. And it was a little bit of Emma, Emma, Jane Austen, homage a little bit too in some little way.

22:10It's just so simple, but I think that any girl in a world can put this dress and feel amazing. The cap sleeve is just, I think it's such a perfect cap sleeve is one of my favorite things. Seriously. Like I make everything my cap sleeves. I'm like always like rolling everything up because I just think it shows the perfect little part of your arm. I love that little cute dress and it's such a sweet scene of them shopping together as buddies. And, you know, I love the twins. There's one scene that When she comes to Daddy, she brings him tea, and it's a beautiful leather A-line skirt with a cream twin sweater set.