Complementary Pairs

I’ve watched many a movie where a protagonist gifts the object of their affection or obsession something ridiculous. First editions of books that would likely cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars as well as ones that simply don’t exist. Cavernous libraries with shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling. Publishing companies. It’s a common trope and one that, with the exception of that library from my childhood, usually leaves me rolling my eyes in response. I am a Taurus in most of the classic ways, but one trait rises above them all.  I love pretty things. Shiny things. I would drape myself in cottons of the highest thread count and the softest of silks at all times if possible. And yet the idea of receiving a glamorous gift from a lover makes me scoff. Who knows my tastes better than I? Besides, I am perfectly capable of buying my own presents. And I frequently do. Dresses and fancy flats and piles of books. But in Notting Hill when Anna Scott leaves that Marc Chagall painting in William Thacker’s bookshop, I forget all about my qualms and nod my head in agreement at the rightness of it. 

The painting is always the first thing to pop into my mind when the movie is mentioned, but after long moments of considering that image, of how "it feels like how love should be, floating through a dark blue sky," my thoughts move on to a more expected realm, Anna’s clothing. I think of iconic costuming moments often, of green dresses and angel wings, but I also feel personally removed from many of them somewhat. This is understandable. The places they inhabit and the people they clothe live in worlds far flung in time or space, and I'm often not looking for surface-level relatability when it comes to the stories that I consume. Besides my ability to appreciate their beauty and their function in aiding the tale being told is not tempered by that distance. Not that the world of a movie star as seen in Notting Hill resides within any proximity to the life that I live. Not even here in my corner of Los Angeles where in The Before I sometimes saw them pondering orders at coffee shops and grabbing popcorn before movies. That world existed even further away in distance and experience 21 years ago when the movie premiered. I was 16 then and married to the fashion trends of the era (no matter how poorly they worked on my body or how little they aligned with the person I thought I was at the moment) as well as the fantasy of a future life centered on the east coast. The costumes that most often caught my attention in those years were those that filled the many teen movies and television shows I was consuming, and those looks were as dedicated to fleeting trends as the items that were hanging in my bedroom closet. 

It wasn’t until my 30s, a decade of my life that feels as if it has only just begun but which I somehow find myself over seven years into, that I began to look at Anna’s clothing more closely. Knowing the movie’s every beat helped as it allowed me the freedom to shift my gaze away from the plot. It’s not as if the looks are timeless, but then timelessness when it comes to fashion is often bullshit. You cannot divorce most looks from the eras in which they were crafted and worn, and the costumes of Notting Hill are firmly situated within the style narrative of the late 1990s. Everyone’s pants are roomier. Anna wears two anklets during the movie’s final moments as Elvis Costello sings us home. And every formal look we see her in is accompanied by a matching shawl. 

Anna and William on their wedding day

A certain writer about to attend her junior prom almost exactly a year after the movie's release

On top of not being "timeless," her wardrobe is neither remarkable nor groundbreaking. There is a normality to many of her looks that borders on quaintness. At times certain pieces, like her boxy, oversized leather jacket or her questionable sunglasses, make me chuckle in remembrance. What were we doing? 

No really, what were we doing?

Others make me long for a put-together ease of dressing that I've never truly mastered. After their orange juice-fueled meet-cute, she changes into a black crop top with a jeweled neckline and a black, sparkling midi skirt. Unassuming for a night out but as she walks into the afternoon light of Notting Hill, it takes on a different feel even when dressed down with the Vans she had been wearing for her somewhat anonymous jaunt. She is a movie star and it is in the small details here when she suddenly looks like one as if to remind the audience and William whom exactly we are dealing with.

It's two other looks that represent the biggest shift in thinking from the Samantha who existed as a teenager to the one who now worries about her taxes and number of viable eggs. They are a pair, two suits worn when dealing with the press in an official capacity. How I learned to stop worrying and embrace suiting is a tale that I've already told, but here was an instance that, if I had been paying attention, could have pushed me in that direction far sooner. Why do I love these suits so much? They are simple when compared to the vast range of ready-to-wear and couture women's suiting that we thankfully have now. But I love a piece that is well-fitted and classic. The first is a business-like gray that she pairs with a purple, patterned tie and a sleek ponytail. The second, worn at a press conference, is softer by design. No tie and hair down. A light blue that calls to mind the many blues she wore in the scene in which she made her declaration of love. The pair shows some of the range of what suits can be aesthetically. They are not all one thing. They can instead be many. 

And what were they here in that time? Well here they gave proof to the lie that rested beneath the movie's most iconic line (after William saying whoopsie-daisy twice after failing rather spectacularly to climb over a fence). 

Calling it a lie is unkind of me. We all have many selves and while sometimes they can clash in opposition often they merge to form the complete story of whom we are. "I know she's an actress and all that, so she can deliver a line," William says when telling his friends of her sudden appearance and the Chagall she has left with him. Maybe that's more what I mean here. In the relationship that she imagines for them, she is "just a girl," but she'll never be just that. She is a public persona, a star. Someone with enough clout to open a previously private park for all of her new neighborhood to enjoy. In the time in which the story takes place, the suits worn speak to the power of that piece of her. And that power can't truly be divorced from the rest.

The Times They Are (Not) a-Changin'

On the first of many trips to Washington D.C. that we see Phyllis Schlafly make in the FX limited series Mrs. America, her clothing comes up almost immediately. “Oh, libbers don’t wear dresses?”, she trills at conservative congressman Phil Crane. “Not pink ones,” he offers in return only to be swiftly and sweetly corrected. “Well actually, it’s dusty rose.”

Schlafly visiting Washington D.C. in episode one

That exchange is far from the last time that the clothing of the characters is referenced, applauded, or derided by those around them. Set against the backdrop of the 1970s and centered on the fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, Mrs. America wrestles with the question of what it meant to be an American woman at a time when, for certain segments of society, the answer was in flux. Costume designer Bina Daigeler, who has worked on projects ranging from Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver to the Netflix film Dumplin', was tasked with taking that question and its many answers and forming them into a pivotal piece of the visual story being told. “It’s very rare that [women don't] use the way we dress as a moment of expression," Daigeler stated during an interview. It's a simple truth but one that some are quick to overlook or toss aside. And it is through the costuming work of Daigeler that we begin to see this form of expression take shape.

Even now an unfair assumption persists that clothing is frivolous and unimportant especially as it concerns women, but movements on both ends of the political spectrum and composed of people of all genders have used fashion to promote their stances and broadcast solidarity for centuries. How does one dress when at the forefront of a revolution? How does one dress when fighting to maintain the seemingly comfortable status quo? These are not new questions but they are very much a piece of the history of second wave feminism.

In her suits, which Daigeler described as "mostly stiff" but also "very feminine," the audience can see Schlafly admitting to a fact that she is loathe to give voice to throughout the series, the precarious and often unsafe position in which women found themselves. In Daigeler's mind, Schlafly used those wools and tweeds as protection because "she knew about her vulnerability as a woman in a man’s world." The women on the other side, and even some within her own group of supporters, state it plainly. "Let me tell you something about 'those kind of women,' Phyllis. They could be me. They could be you. They're just trying to get a fair shake. They want to go to work, get paid, go home. They're not asking to be harassed, manhandled, degraded, assaulted," ERA supporter and fellow Republican Jill Ruckelshaus says after Schlafly suggests that certain women are asking for it. And one does not put the kind of suiting armor that Schlafly does unless there is something to fear and something to fight, but this is only one of the ways in which her clothing points to her hypocrisy.

Schlafly and Ruckelhaus' dueling suits in episode six

For the many supporters who surround the central, public figures of the series, Daigeler used the fashions of the 1970s in general, which at the beginning of the decade saw a stark divide between these two sides of the ERA debate, as a guide. “I think in the 70s at the beginning, the conservative women were wearing pastel colors and the little A-line skirts with the blouse with the little jacket. And the feminists, they have a little bit of the hippie vibe and flowers and prints. But then at the end of the 70s [and] beginning of the 80s, fashion changed. It wasn’t so separate. Our two worlds started to merge a lot.”

A group of feminists highlighting their concerns to the McGovern campaign in episode two

Schlafly and her supporters in episodes two and eight as well as in the finale

Schlafly wears that housewife uniform of A-line skirts and silk blouses, often adorned with a pussy bow at her neck, and a cardigan or little jacket draped on her shoulders when she's not in those suits. But by the end of the decade and the series as The Age of Reagan comes into view, Daigeler keeps her solidly in this uniform even as many of her closest followers move closer and closer to the general style mood for women of the era. It is obvious through her words and actions how little Schlafly changes but keeping her in that stylistic space gives the viewer an immediate understanding of where she stands even when she is silent.

Schlafly and her pussy bow haunting Alice's dreams in episode eight

Schlafly isn’t the only woman in the series who relies on a uniform of sorts. Nearly all of the main players have a stylistic root from which many aspects of their identities, both the internal and external, spring. Activist, lawyer, and congresswoman Bella Abzug has her many hats. "When I graduated from law school, my mother always said to me, 'Wear a hat and gloves. That way they won't mistake you for a secretary,'" Abzug says to fellow congresswoman Shirley Chisolm in one of the latter episodes. "Oh, and when did the gloves come off?", Chisolm shoots back. It's through her ever present topper, and the absence of that other half of the equation, that the audience can tell the type of woman Abzug strives to be, serious, determined, and constantly fighting against the stereotypes that block her way in a world that was, and still often is, dominated by men. And it's through the few times that we see her without it that a fuller picture of her comes into view.

Abzug in a variety of hats throughout the series

Chisolm relies on her statement jewelry and what Daigeler described as her “amazing elegant style" befitting a trailblazer whom the audience sees refuse to acquiesce to the many around her who view her historic run for President of the United States as merely symbolic. When dressing Steinem at the beginning of the story, Daigeler had her all miniskirts and legs. There are assumptions about what a woman in politics should look like, about what a woman who wants to do serious work should put on her body and through Steinem in those early years of the story Daigeler was able to show how some women were pushing against those boundaries, that this woman wasn't simply "a dilettante who wanted to play politics" as Abzug describes an early Steinem during a heated exchange between the two. But as she became more deeply engaged in politics, she too changed and adopted a uniform albeit one far more casual than that of Schlafly, Abzug, and Chisolm. Hers instead centered on jeans, which for Daigeler was not about rejecting the seeming frivolity of those earlier looks but about utility as she traveled frequently the deeper she got pulled into the political realm.

Chisolm in her statement jewelry at the 1972 Democratic National Convention in episode three

Steinem tap dancing away her restlessness in episode two

Steinem donning one of Abzug's hats in the finale

But even as The Age of Reagan came into view and the two sides of the ERA debate began to merge stylistically, Daigeler kept Schlafly solidly in her dual uniforms. In the static nature of Schlafly's housewife costume, and it is truly a costume, we can see the hypocrisy and falsehoods upon which she has built her platform. People adhere to a consistent style for any number of reasons that aren't full of deceit, an understanding of what feels most comfortable on their body for one, and in those foundations they can discover and revel in the truest parts of their selves. That, however, is not what is happening with this particular woman in this particular tale.

The Schlafly family Christmas portrait in episode seven

Schlafly meeting a pair of now infamous Republican operatives in the finale

Still Daigeler held off on putting Schlafly in aprons, the marker of the mid-20th century housewife that the audience might expect her to don, for most of the series. "She had people who did that [typical housewife work] for her," Daigeler noted, and we see them at that work, preparing dinner and putting their lives on hold when asked to pick up children from school. It isn't until the final moments of the series when wallowing in her personal defeat that Schlafly puts on that last piece of the costume. She hadn't failed at what her supporters and her foes were led to believe was her primary objective. The clock ran out on the ERA even with the extension on ratification granted to it by Congress. It wasn't until 2019, three years after Schlafly's death, that Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment. And there is no certainty that the legislation needed to enshrine it in the Constitution will come to pass.

Schlafly baking a pie in the finale

But in those final moments in her kitchen, stripped of the power that the audience could see had always been her actual goal, the type of power that she claimed throughout was the real intention of the ERA, there was nothing left for her to do but fully commit to the part that she, with her A-line skirts, pussy bow-adorned, silk blouses and cardigans draped delicately on her shoulders, had created for herself.