Molly Ringwald Reveals How She Really Felt About That 'Pretty in Pink' Prom Dress
Any child of the '80s remembers Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. In the 1986 John Hughes film, Ringwald played high school outcast (and aspiring fashion designer) Andie, who gets asked out by the much more popular Blane (played by Andrew McCarthy). Following some drama, Andie ends up going to the prom alone-in a pink dress she designed using fabric from two others that can only be described as "interesting." Here's a reminder of what the dress looked like:
As it turns out, Ringwald herself wasn't a fan of the prom dress, which her seven-year-old daughter recently asked her about. "I'm still not sure how that dress happened," she wrote in a column for Teen Vogue.
"Although the film's costume designer, Marilyn Vance, did a fantastic job of interpreting my personal style for my character, Andie-I loved the beautiful vintage pieces she sourced as well as the outfits she designed, and kept almost everything after the film was over-there's one piece I didn't keep: the prom dress," Ringwald wrote. "To the best of my knowledge, it's locked away in a wardrobe vault at the studio. At least I hope it is. If I'd had it my way, I would have burned the dress on the Paramount back lot as soon as they yelled the last 'Cut! Print!'"
Ringwald says although she signed off on the design at the time, she might have been swayed by Vance's passion or distracted by an upcoming algebra final.
"Weeks later, when I saw the dress for the first time, I burst into tears. The only thing I liked, and even vaguely remembered from the consultation, was the halter neckline. The puffy sleeves and inverted-triangle, sacklike silhouette confounded me, but it was too late to change it."
Not even a major plot point change could undo the "disaster." After testing the original version of the film, in which Andie ends up with her best friend, Duckie (played by Jon Cryer), producers discovered that audiences wanted Andie to wind up with Blane instead. But alas, the plot change meant only the final scene would be reshot-meaning the dress, which appears in prior scenes, would have to stay.
"If I'd had it my way, I would have burned the dress on the Paramount back lot as soon as they yelled the last 'Cut! Print!'"
For what it's worth, Vance wasn't crazy about it either. "I won't say that I was in love with it," the designer told Huffington Post, "but that's not the character. The character was so original. She had a mind of her own, she marched to a different drummer." Ringwald, as Vance recalls, openly hated the dress and wanted something strapless with a full skirt.
"I said, 'This is Molly! I can't just give her a prom dress,'" Vance continued. "So, anyway, John [Hughes] came in and said, 'It's the character. That's it.' There she was."
But all these years later, Ringwald has come around.
"And yet, though I never thought I'd admit it, I've come to appreciate the dress," she concluded in her Teen Vogue essay. "It's unlike anything else, and memorable in a way that a more conventionally pretty option would not have been. I won't say that Andie had a huge career ahead of her in fashion design, but at least she wasn't afraid to be different, a quality that I like to believe would have served her well in life. So now when my daughter asks if I like the dress, I tell her, 'Yes, I do.' She smiles and says, 'Me too! I love it.'"
(h/t: Teen Vogue)
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