Molly Ringwald, all grown up, still covets Ralph Lauren boots
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008
LOS ANGELES — It has been 23 years and Molly Ringwald still has a regret about her Breakfast Club days. Her off-screen romance with Anthony Michael Hall ? Hardly. The fact that she originally wanted to play Ally Sheedy’s quirky role ? Over it. She bites her lower lip ruefully and shakes her rusty auburn curls.
“Now, I wish that I kept those boots,” she says. “I loved those boots.”
The lace-up Ralph Lauren equestrian boots that grazed her freckled knees in the film became every teenage girl’s tantrum-inducing must-have in 1985. As did her other unique looks: the fedoras and chunky bangles in Sixteen Candles; the lacy flapper dresses and crimson pout of Pretty in Pink.
Ringwald’s style goosed fashion circles and high school social cliques alike. She was an antidote to ’ 80 s “power dressing” and empowered the eccentric social underdog. Bypassing the mall for a musty Salvation Army certified vintage as cool. Preppies traded their Tretorns for high tops; cheerleaders ratted their bangs.
Even today’s style mavericks — Agyness Deyn and Chloe Sevigny — nod to Ringwald’s onscreen style as inspiration. Entertainment Weekly just named the Picasso-esque prom dress she wore in Pretty in Pink as one of the 50 pop culture moments that “rocked fashion.” Last year, New York magazine announced, “Ellen Page is the new Molly Ringwald.”
“I never thought of myself as a style icon,” Ringwald says. “I wore all that vintage because my parents kept me on an allowance. My style was based on necessity.”
Now — like it or not — the shocking neons and tank dresses and graphic prints of the gogo decade are back. And so is Ringwald, 40, who co-stars as a mother on The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a new ABC Family show. It has been 17 years since she sold her house and high-tailed it to Paris.
“Not to be sappy, but people have been so warm and embracing that I feel like this prodigal daughter,” she says, sipping green tea at a cafe in Venice, Calif., where she has settled with her husband, Panio Gianopoulos, an author and journalist, and their 4-year-old daughter, Mathilda.
In 1986, Ringwald — then 18 with Cheetos-colored hair — beamed on the cover of Time magazine. A reporter trailed her to document her whirlwind retail whims.
Her quiet exodus from Los Angeles came five years later. Though she turned down the lead roles in box-office bonanzas (Ghost and Pretty Woman ), she says she wasn’t thrilled with the material that came her way and wanted to goof off.
“I never felt that I could make mistakes and be ridiculous here,” she says. “I went to Paris to do that.” There, she also learned French, got married to her first husband, Valery Lameignere, and starred in a few not-so-memorable American films and dabbled in French cinema.
She later divorced and moved in 2002 to Manhattan, where she headlined in stage productions of Cabaret and most recently, Sweet Charity.
Ringwald's style icons are the avant-garde artist Cindy Sherman, who directed her in 1997 ’s Office Killer, and Charlotte Rampling.
“My own personal style is pretty eclectic,” she says, namechecking Marni, Mayle, Pucci and edgier New Yorkers including Todd Thomas and Rachel Comey as favorite designers. “I used to wear so much vintage. Now, I am more streamlined with my look.”
Paramount Vantage recently capitalized on the young Ringwald look by marketing its documentary American Teen with a movie poster that mimics The Breakfast Club poster, right down to those Ralph Lauren boots.
And though teen angst may be timeless, Ringwald doesn’t think a modern-day meringue of a movie like Sixteen Candles would resonate today. “The fashion and insecurities aren’t different, but I think that AIDS and Columbine really changed the teen experience,” she says.
Ringwald still favors pink, a color that makes most redheads cower. “Makeup artists always said I shouldn’t wear red lipstick because it would clash with my hair,” she said. “So I wore bright red lipstick all the time.”
For now, the family is renting a small house near the beach.
“I put all my vintage, beaded dresses from the ’ 80 s in a storage space for my daughter,” she says. “Of course, she will probably only want to wear jeans. But she’s going to have these amazing clothes — if she wants them.”
But, alas, not those boots.
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