The Most Iconic Fashion Moments In Pretty In Pink
It's fitting that one of the most iconic movies in terms of fashion and personal style opens with the line, "This is a really volcanic ensemble you're wearing, it's really marvelous!" This line is uttered by Duckie Dale (portrayed by Jon Cryer), a fellow lover of volcanic ensembles in the 1986 film "Pretty in Pink." Duckie gave this compliment to his best friend and the film's protagonist, Andie Walsh (portrayed by Molly Ringwald), who was wearing plenty of floral layers, an oversized cardigan, and a fedora hat adorned with a large fabric flower, per Bustle.
Fashion played a pivotal role in showing the class divide present in Andie's high school in "Pretty in Pink." Throughout the film, Andie is plagued by class division as she strikes up a romance with Blane McDonough (portrayed by Andrew McCarthy), one of the "richies" from her high school.
While Andie sported a thrift store chic look that illustrated her lower-class status, the wealthier students, like Blane's friend, Steff, wore suits in neutral colors that appeared expensive. Steff's signature look — a linen suit paired with an unbuttoned shirt to his naval and retro Ray-Bans — was especially iconic. "I dressed all the other kids in kind of beige and light blue," the costume designer for "Pretty in Pink," Marilyn Vance, told HuffPost. "Khakis, whites. I tried to do that, not to make it obvious but to kind of ... to really register in your head what you're seeing, without going 'Oh, they're the rich ones!' You gotta be subtle."
Andie Walsh wasn't the only fashionable character in Pretty in Pink
Though viewers were entranced by protagonist Andie Walsh's style throughout "Pretty in Pink," she did surround herself with a diverse group of characters who also possessed a great fashion sense. Andie's best friend, Duckie Dale, dons an especially thrilling outfit while dancing to "Try a Little Tenderness" by Otis Redding in the record store where Andie works. In the scene, Duckie is wearing a blazer, patterned vest, and one shirt topped over another, paired with white statement shoes. "Duckie will always be my favorite character," costume designer Marilyn Vance told Fast Company. "He was modeled after the Teddy Boys from England, in the '70s, the big haircuts and layered outfits."
Iona, meanwhile, the older woman who owned the record store where Andie worked (played by Annie Potts), was also incredibly fashionable in her own right. During a scene at the beginning of the film, Iona is squeezed into a rubber dress and her hair is pulled up into a series of spikes that evokes the new wave punk style popular during the 1980s, per Fast Company.
Perhaps the most memorable fashion moment comes at the end of the film, though, when Andie is adorned in a prom dress created by combining two dresses supplied by Iona and her father, according to Bustle. The resulting one-of-a-kind dress, which consists of a pink lace collar and fabric with polka dots that adorn the rest of the loose-fitting ensemble, is a chic contrast to the gaudy, voluminous sleeves and sequins that were popular in the 1980s.