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Molly Ringwald | Behind The Looks | Who What Wear
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Jul 2, 2025
Join the incomparable Molly Ringwald (Pretty in Pink, Riverdale, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Dahmer, Feud) in this captivating episode of Behind the Looks. Step into a world where fashion meets entertainment as Molly takes us through a retrospective of her most iconic film and TV character costumes. From the unforgettable styles of the '80s to her contemporary on-screen looks, get an insider's view of the fashion stories that defined her career.
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Hi, I'm Molly Ringwald, and you're going Behind the Looks with Who, What, Where
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Okay, well, my character, this was in the 70s, I believe, or maybe early 80s
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But she was supposed to be a real feminist, so all of my characters, you know, I had like the suspenders
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I think I wore a tie. Yeah, I was supposed to be just sort of like a spunky little feminist
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This was, of course, Sixteen Candles. This was supposed to be the bridesmaids dress that was supposed to be pretty unattractive
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I actually thought it was kind of pretty. It cracks me up, though, that we're doing the scene over, like, that I'm leaning over a cake with candles on it
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I mean that dress, like I'm surprised that it didn't go up in flames
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The overall look was just the costume designer and I went to like Melrose Boulevard
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which is where I like to shop at that time. And, you know, I just picked out stuff and tried them on
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And, you know, I have always really liked to wear hats. So that's why, you know, and at the time, you know, sort of those like fedoras or pork pie hats were really in
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I was really into like madness and, you know, those bands. And so, you know, I feel like the clothes that I wore were everything was like something that I would have worn except for the dress
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The dress was supposed to be this one was one that I wasn't really supposed to like
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Ah, the Breakfast Club. Yeah, so there was a costume designer on that film, Marilyn Vance, who I later worked with on Pretty in Pink
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We had had conversations about my costume in Los Angeles and the ideas around it
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But then when it arrived in Chicago, it wasn't really like what I imagined
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It wasn't really very flattering, and I wasn't really happy with the costume
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So John Hughes just we went out shopping and I picked out
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everything that I wearing pretty much most of it came from Ralph Lauren the boots the belt the skirt the top that was all Ralph Lauren I think the leather jacket that I wear in the beginning I think is
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from somewhere else but yeah that that whole thing is Ralph Lauren. I feel like she was really
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an aspirational swan if you will you know she she really cared about clothes there was a scene
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where everyone, I think just about everyone says why they got in detention
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And my character ditched school to go shopping. So I mean, shopping was really important to her
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And and I felt like she would be into Ralph Lauren. That was the kind of look that that I think Claire went for
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The original outfit was a lot more 80s. And I feel like the film would have looked a lot more dated had I not been
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wearing this costume. Okay, pretty in pink. The dress on the right was something that we had discussed
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Marilyn and I, and again, it was not exactly what I had
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envisioned, and I wasn't really happy with the dress. Now I think it's sort of iconic and it's certainly
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different and very much of that time, but at the time I was
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sort of miserable and I took a lot of my clothes from Pretty in Pink but I left the prom dress
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because I hated it so much but now I really wish I had it
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The character had been written for me, the script had been written for me by John Hughes
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so there were a lot of, I would say of all the characters that I played, I was the most
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like that. He took a lot of things from my life, her love of vintage, her love of fashion and all of
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that was really just directly for me and also my obsession with the color pink because I was really
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into pink at the time. So yeah, I worked with Marilyn and she chose so many great vintage pieces
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and then other things that maybe we couldn't use vintage because we needed to have multiple
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outfits. If it was like an important or a long scene, they always have to have doubles or triples
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So everything if it was either vintage or it was made to specifically to look vintage Pickup Artist Yeah this was designed by my good friend Colleen Atwood who I had known since I was I think
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14 years old. And now, of course, she's an amazing Academy Award-winning designer
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But this was, I think, the second film that we had done together
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I think this is pretty much what I wear during the whole film. This was my one outfit
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So luckily I liked it and it wasn't too hard to be in it for two months straight
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The only other thing I wear, I think, in this movie is I wear an Aliyah dress in the first scene that you see
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And I love that and I think I still have it somewhere. Okay, yeah, so I think that was towards the end when we went into a time warp and ended up in the 50s, which was really fun
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Most of my clothes, you know, most of the seasons were in clothes of today
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And, you know, Mary was a lawyer, so she, you know, had some money
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And, you know, my clothes were always like pretty classic. Started out with more pale colors
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and then Roberto, the showrunner, creator of the show, decided that he only wanted Mary to wear really bright colors
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Really liked blue for some reason. He really adored blue. But this was towards the end when we were in the 50s and that was really fun
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I really loved working with KJ Apa who played my son. We really got along really well
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I would say that almost all of my scenes were with KJ and towards the end Charlie Melton
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But, and in the beginning with Luke, of course. But I really loved, I loved watching these kids grow up, you know
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It was really kind of like a long run and they were, they started out as kids and it was really
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by the end, you know, KJ had had his own kid and, you know, it was really nice watching these kids grow up
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Ah, Dahmer. Yeah, this I'm playing Sherry Dahmer. I think as you can see, anybody who has seen the show
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it you know everything is very yellow They wanted the sets and the costumes to be sort of like urine yellow is what I heard So you know there were a lot of colors that I wouldn necessarily wear
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I think I, I can't tell, but I think I'm wearing the cross, you know, she's always wearing like a
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little tasteful cross just to sort of, you know, show that she's a, she's a, she's a religious woman
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They both are. I was really happy to be asked to be in a Ryan Murphy show
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You know, I think that he has fantastic taste in his cast
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I mean, all of my scenes, just about all of my scenes in this were with Richard Jenkins
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who is just a phenomenal actor. And we really immediately hit it off
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And I feel like when you're working with actors of that caliber, it just kind of makes your job a lot easier
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so I had a really good experience doing that and then when I was asked to do
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Feud of course I was you know really excited about that and of course you
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know excited because it was going to be shooting in New York but all of my scenes
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were pretty much in Los Angeles yeah there she is Joanne Carson they really
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wanted my character to be sort of like an anecdote to all of these you know
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sort of uptight, very fashionable, chic women like Babe Paley and CZ Guest and Slim Keith
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and Lee Radiswell. Joanne was really, she wasn't really an official swan, she was really more his last friend
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So they really wanted my clothing to be more colorful and kind of a bit more bohemian
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which is why I have this kind of like, almost like caftan on
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But I really liked that caftan, and I would totally wear that. All the clothes that I would want to wear
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were really worn by all of the women in New York. That's really much more my style, I would say
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than Joanne's style, but I really, I had a lot of fondness for my character
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Thanks for watching. Let me know your favorite look in the comments below
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