Pattern Recognition

Josie and the Pussycats Is One of the Greatest Y2K Fashion Movies

Image may contain Human Person Clothing Apparel Rosario Dawson Evening Dress Fashion Gown Robe Tara Reid and Hair
©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

Welcome to Pattern Recognition: a column about fads for the trend-obsessed.

If you watch anything from Josie and the Pussycats, the 2001 film based off of the Archie comic, make it the music video for “Pretend to Be Nice.” The melody will absolutely get stuck in your head (try to avoid bopping along to the “oooh ee oh oohs”) and the early 2000s music video aesthetic is campy, kitschy fun. The fashion is just a perfect time capsule of the era. Each bandmate—front woman Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), guitarist Val (Rosario Dawson), and drummer Melody (Tara Reid)—undergoes a makeover from rocker girl-next-door to early aughts superstars in matching Space Age silver performance looks. Val, who prefers more feminine dresses, is in a cutout gown; Melody is in a bandeau with fringe and low-rise, wide-leg pants that are barely hanging on; and Josie is in a scarf-like halter top and similar flares. It’s the kind of fashion that, five years ago, would make you cringe. But through 2021’s lens? Oh, they look good.

For a movie that bombed initially at the box office (with a budget of $39 million, it grossed a little over $14 million in the U.S.), Josie and the Pussycats has become a cult classic fashion film. All camp, glitz, and flippy hair, the Harry Elfont– and Deborah Kaplan–directed flick is on HBO Max if you want to watch. The plot centers on a girl band that is given a record deal from Mega Records. But there’s a catch: unbeknownst to our heroes, the label’s execs are enacting a plot to put subliminal messages in rock music to influence teens to buy more and more stuff. It has a stacked cast—including Parker Posey as Mega Record’s conniving boss Fiona, Alan Cumming as Fiona’s henchmen, Wyatt, and cameos from everyone from Sally Hershberger to Eugene Levy—bouncy, earworm songs, and more product placement than your average Instagram feed. The themes of the movie really hit you over the head (everyone wants to sell you something, but individuality makes you special), but what really sets this bedazzled satire over the edge are the clothes. Costume designer Leesa Evans told an entire story through the wardrobe, managed to nail early aughts fashion, and examined the psychology of trendiness in a surprisingly nuanced way for such a romp of a movie.

Deborah Kaplan’s personal photos from the set of Josie and the Pussycats. 

Courtesy of Deborah Kaplan

Rewatching the movie for the first time in 15 years this summer, I was struck by just how important the clothing choices were to the plot. They come from Fiona’s lair: a stark, underground facility where frenzied forecasters run around saying things like, “Feathered tank top, matching pants, kind of a Buffy meets chicken run,” and “The new word for cool will be jerking.” As soon as this command center declares a trend, you start to see it in the costuming.

Just one year into the decade, Evans summed up the aesthetic of the early aughts so well. She knew she couldn’t make a movie with up-to-the-minute trends if they would already be old news by the time the movie hit theaters. So she did a bit of forecasting, and realized that fashion was heading in the direction of an opulent ’70s sexy aesthetic and really low-rise pants.

Evans looked at images of Halston and Yves Saint Laurent models and muses, then spiced it up with the band’s signature leopard print and plenty of sparkle. “Before shooting, I met with a couple of different jean companies, and I said, ‘Hey, let’s do these low-rise jeans incredibly low rise.” I kept saying, “Smaller, shorter, shorter.” We had to custom-make a lot of the clothes because there was nothing at the time that was low-rise enough,” Evans said. “Honestly, in the film, I probably custom-designed and made about 95% of the clothes.”

Courtesy of Deborah Kaplan
Courtesy of Deborah Kaplan

Every time I rewatch Josie and the Pussycats, I notice something different in how the clothes signal an internal shift for the characters, or foreshadow a development to come. They almost function like subtitles, adding context to the lavish outrageousness of the plot. There are five main style themes in the film, each centered around a color. The pack moves from pink to orange to blue to purple to animal print. In the beginning, everyone but our heroines are decked out in neon pink to various degrees. There are the obvious fashion victims, like the group of girls who show up at the Pussycat’s gig to mock them. Josie shoots at them,“Hey, did you guys all coordinate before you left the house, or are you wearing the same thing by accident?” (Later, these girls show up at the ‘Cats’ hotel room to fangirl, and are all wearing blue.) By the time the Pussycats arrive at their makeover scene—no 2001 chick flick would be complete without such a montage—the colors have already cycled through orange to blue. The girls exit the John Freida salon wearing purple, which, soon enough, will be the next color du jour.

Most characters in the movie interact with these trends in some way. Even Cumming’s character, Wyatt, changes his glasses lenses to be the new trendy color. “Trend is something that I find that people glom onto in order to feel relevant in that moment,” Evans says. “So I looked at each character and asked the question of, where are they on their confidence level that they feel that they need to be exactly on trend? Or they want a hint of it, or they decide it’s just not for them.”

One of the funniest bits, I think, is during the video for “Pretend to Be Nice,” when Melody is confronted by a screaming fan dressed in a mirror image of Melody’s signature low-rise jeans, scarf top, and cat ears with a bandana attached. Melody reacts by screaming back, then running away. In contrast, when Dawson’s Val is feeling left out of the group, she is shown wearing blue, whereas Melody and Josie have already moved onto purple and animal print. “She gloms onto the trend to feel like she’s included,” Evans says. “It’s a sweet nod to her state of mind in those scenes. Some of those things are so subtle, but clothing is so significant to our mental state.”

Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, and Tara Reid.

©MCA/Courtesy Everett Collection

Of course, Evans couldn’t have predicted how relevant never-ending product placement would feel 20 years later. Instead of subliminal messaging, paid promotions and #spon are the forces subtly and not so subtly altering our shopping habits. The fashion cycle may not spin as quickly as it does in the movie, but it goes pretty damn fast. What has changed is that instead of wide, sweeping trends, they’ve become more niche, specialized. The $490 “strawberry dress” from Lirika Matoshi became a trend among those who understand what “cottagecore” is—so are spiral Paloma Wool slides and checked pants for whimsically inclined Insta girls. The origin of these trends is a bit more nebulous than Fiona’s conspiracy, but it’s always worth teasing out what these status symbols are trying to say and how effectively their message gets across. Trends get kind of a bad rap. They’re often viewed as a lazy way to interact with fashion, to be brainwashed into thinking that orange is Out and leopard print is In! But they can signify a lot more than that, insecurity and group identity among them.

The takeaway from Josie, fashion-wise, is not as simple as Trends Are Bad. Instead, at the end, they’re adapted to the individual, turned down, a nice little accent. Looking at Val, Melody, and Josie in the final number (a bop by the name of “Spin Around”), they’re wearing their signature leopard-print ears, which happen to be in style at the time. They’re the influencers now; what was mocked at the beginning is widely adopted now. Much like real trends, it all comes around again eventually. Yes, even scarf tops and wide-leg flares. Find what you like and hold on tight.

For this new column, I’d like to take a moment and ideate on what far-fetched trends could, potentially, make a comeback in the future. You may scoff now, but I think they have potential. What if…

People took a cue from Melody (and Carrie Bradshaw) and wore low-rise skirts again?

Tara Reid, Alan Cumming, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Rosario Dawson.

Or maybe Josie’s short, flippy haircut should make a comeback? Then the Y2K revival would be fully cemented.