Alicia Silverstone Tried Wearing Cher’s Clueless Outfits In Real Life

Clueless star Alicia Silverstone reveals that she tried to wear her character’s outfits in real life, but it didn’t work out so well. Clueless is an iconic teen film from 1995 that set plenty of trends in the genre for the years to come. The film was directed by Amy Heckerling, who also wrote the script based on Jane Austen’s Emma, updating the classic to a modern high school setting. Clueless starred Silverstone as Queen Bee valley girl Cher Horowitz alongside Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Donald Faison, Jeremy Sisto, Breckin Meyer, Wallace Shawn, and 2021’s Sexiest Man Alive: Paul Rudd.

Perhaps the most iconic element of Clueless is Cher Horowitz’s fashion. The most well-known image of the character shows her wearing the checkered yellow jacket that anyone putting together a Cher Halloween costume is sure to attempt to track down. However, the character has more than her fair share of outfits to choose from, and indeed Silverstone says she wore a shocking 64 total ensembles in the film. In fact, her character even makes use of a cutting-edge computer program to help her pick out her clothes for the day. Cher’s costumes speak volumes about the character and her place in the hierarchy of her school, but they are also the peak of mid-90s teen high fashion.

In a special video for Glamour, Silverstone broke down the costumes she wore in her iconic films across her career. When she got to Clueless and its array of iconic outfits, the star admitted that she “ran home with a lot of the clothes.” However, when she attempted to wear them in her regular life she “realized [she’s] not Cher” and ended up giving most of the clothes away. Although she has upgraded her fashion since those days when she preferred to wear “jeans and a T-shirt and tennis shoes,” those clothes just weren’t a realistic prospect for Silverstone in the day-to-day. Read the full quote below:

“After the movie… I ran home with a lot of the clothes and I tried to wear them in real life but then I realized I’m not Cher, so this doesn’t make any sense. I still wanna just put on some jeans and a T-shirt and my tennis shoes, so… I didn’t find a way to use those in my real life and I gave them all away. But, over time I have grown to really appreciate fashion and the art of it, and as long as it’s done responsibly.”

There are a lot of parts of Clueless that viewers believe haven’t aged well. The criticism is mostly focussed on the somewhat strange romance between Cher and her former step-brother (Rudd). While this is a holdover from the original Austen-era source material, many fans found the relationship uncomfortable. However, the movie’s story isn’t the only element that has come under fire. Some of Cher’s iconic outfits are often berated, but many of the looks also hold up just as well in today’s 90s-throwback fashion era.

There are many people out there who probably wish they had known Silverstone at the time she was giving away those Clueless outfits. However, its likely that they would have faced the same challenge as Silverstone herself, as many of the ensembles simply don’t translate to daily life. Unless one has a Hollywood glamour team dressing them and making everything perfect, like Silverstone did, the sheer amount of time it would take to get such pristine outfits together is a huge cost to whoever is donning them. For the most part, it’s best to appreciate Cher’s bold fashion from a distance in the iconic teen movie.

Source: Glamour

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