Mean Girls Costume Designer Breaks Down Lindsay Lohan's Costumes

Hi I'm Mary Jane Ford and I was the costume designer

on the original 2004 movie, Mean Girls.

I'm going to break down

Cady's transformation through her costumes.

♪ Jingle bell jingle bell ♪

♪ Jingle bell rock ♪

♪ Jingle bells swing ♪

♪ And jingle bells ring ♪

♪ Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun ♪

[smacking]

♪ Now the jingle hop has begun ♪

What I love about film is it's a puzzle

and every little piece is really important

and so what a costume designer does is works

very closely with the actors

to help them become the character.

Well the process for putting together the costumes

for Mean Girls was take what is real.

So we started with looking at yearbooks

and looking at what children and girls in schools

actually did wear and there's a tremendous amount

of research and we sort of allowed ourselves

to go into the version of a candy store.

Everything bright and shiny and sweet and delightful

is what we chose to illustrate plastics with.

At the time it was like Paris Hilton

and that genre of young women that were you know,

sophisticated and spent a lot of money on clothes

and thought a lot about what they would wear.

Cady comes into this American high school world

and so if you'll look at what she actually wears

through, in her transformation,

you know she's a simply dressed teenager

and then she lands in this place that's very foreign

to her with these girls and these personalities

and these cliques that are very foreign

to her and so she gradually changes.

It was such a great script and the dialogue is so amazing

that we all would pretty much follow through

with the guidance of what was written,

and I don't really recall anything drastically changing.

She gets invited to sit down with these girls

and she doesn't really know what she's been invited to do.

So you've actually never been to a real school before?

[bouncy music]

Shut up!

Regina has on her power suit.

[thudding] She has on her high boots

and she's got her collar turned up

and her dark sweater that makes her look

like she's the boss and the one in charge.

Gretchen has her sweater on but it's, you know,

a little softer with the pattern and she forgoes the shirt

because she doesn't wanna be exactly like Regina.

Karen just tries to be a little bit somewhere in between

and she's got her sweater on.

So if you'll look at the two of them, definitely you see

that Regina's got the major costume

and they both just balance her out.

We wanna invite you to have lunch with us

every day for the rest of the week.

[bouncy music]

Oh, it's--

Coolness, so we'll see you tomorrow.

On Wednesdays we wear pink.

What we really wanted to do in this is have her costume

be completely different from what they would wear.

She has on no earrings, no necklace,

her shirt is a little bit, if you'll look,

it's not pressed and it's not pristine, if she was plastic

she would have on a blouse more like that.

Cady has on jeans which is not allowed.

Her shirt is not tucked in,

which again, is not allowed.

And it's just not as form fitting as the other girls.

Oh my god I love your bracelet,

where did you get it?

Oh my mom made it for me.

The bracelet is an African tribal bracelet.

She's using what she has, so that's her jewelry.

Something that's very authentic and wonderful

that she had from her former life.

It's so fetch.

Cady's breaking all sorts of rules

but she doesn't even know it.

You can't wear a tank top two days in a row,

and you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week.

So I guess you picked today.

In this particular scene she has tried to wear pink

on Wednesday and she borrows the shirt from Damian.

Do you have anything pink?

No.

[laughs] Yes.

Hugely oversized as he is a much bigger person

but here would be Cady if she wore something

that actually fit her.

And she's still got the jeans because again

this is sort of all she has.

120 calories and 48 calories from fat,

what percent is that?

So a little bit dramatic.

Within the realm of the time that this was made,

graphic tee shirts were quite the thing

and so we wanted to use them where we could,

and so we were trying to come up with different things

that different girl's shirts could say

and a little bit dramatic just seemed

to fit perfectly for Regina George.

[ominous hip music]

[Cady Voiceover] Unfortunately, no one told

me about the slut rule.

So I showed up like this. [upbeat hip music]

At this point in the story,

Cady's been invited to the Halloween party

and she's really excited.

So she's starting to feel like that they're really

all gonna be great friends. Hey!

♪ Faces in the mirror ♪

So in this particular dress,

actually came from a thrift store

because that's where Cady would get a Halloween costume

and so her mom took it in for her,

so she's, things are fitting her a little bit better now.

Still when you see the other ones completely not there yet

and then she added the blood herself

and did her teeth herself, and you know,

she put her own veil on and I wanted it to look

as different from the others as it possibly could look.

So in Gretchen's costume she's completely covered up

because that is her conservative way

but you finally see her form fitting shape.

This is literally made out of a heavy duty stretch plastic

which gives her that reflection and that shine

and then her tiny little reference

to being a cat are the ears.

And it's the same with Karen as a mouse.

Her only reference to being a mouse

are the mouse ears.

The colors and the textures

with all the different reflections,

they really are utilizing their plastic style.

♪ Jingle bell jingle bell ♪

At this point in the story Cady's there.

She's in the fold and she is dressing like them,

wants to become one of them,

and you can see clearly that her parents

are horrified by the thought.

Both she and Regina have done

the showing the little bit of tummy.

So she's copying.

I really wanted to use plastic.

So again, their skirts are made out of plastic.

Santa Claus would never get away with this.

Also, I wanted it to look like something that they,

in theory, could've put together for themselves.

The top was a tank top, that fringe was added,

and then the skirts we had made.

I have a feeling that the boots and probably the gloves

came from you know, a lot of stuff

comes from stripper stores.

And then the hats I really think

I probably got them at Party City.

[upbeat music]

[Cady Voiceover] Because being with the plastics

was like being famous.

This is Cady's presenting herself as a plastic,

and she's got the shoes, she's got the walk,

she's got the short skirt and she's done it.

Cady is now wearing high heeled patent leather shoes

to look just like all the other girls.

She's not wearing tennis shoes

like the non-plastics.

♪ Pop that, pop that ♪

♪ Jiggle that fat ♪

♪ Don't stop, get it till ya clothes ♪

You know she falls in the trash can.

[yelling]

And so, one of the things always when there's a stunt

involved is how can it look and be the way

that the costume and the character would want it to be,

and then how can it work for the stunt.

So I needed and wanted something

that when she's sticking out of the trash can

almost like tissue paper coming out of a paper bag.

So that's what I was thinking

of when I designed this costume.

We needed layers so that she would be protected.

So you have the underneath layer and then adding the tight

fitting hoodie on top of it and then the skirt

for when it sticks out of the trash can.

It's got this ruffly layer.

I'm sorry, I can explain.

[scoffs] Explain how you forgot

to invite us to your party?

Well she has dissed her real friends

to have this party and she's trying to get Aaron Samuels

and she doesn't go to Janice's art opening

and chooses to do this instead

and she bought this dress on her own.

It was a strapless dress and we decided together,

Lindsay and I that she wanted something more

and so we decided to add the bra.

As, at that point in time it was a fashion statement

and so then we decided to pick up on that to make it look

like Cady's really tried.

You know, she picked up on the earrings

which are the same color as the bra strap.

Oh and the choker.

Yeah, she wanted a necklace, Cady did,

and didn't really have anything

so that's something she had leftover.

It's a leather strap that she pulled off

of one of her bracelets.

She took something from her past life

and adapted it from her African days.

Here, you can have this.

It won a prize.

[dark brooding music]

[car humming]

She's beginning to feel regret

and she's realizing that these were really,

[sighs] these are really her friends.

[gentle happy music]

[Cady Voiceover] I had gone from homeschool jungle freak

to shiny plastic to most hated person in the world

to actual human being.

This is at the end.

So it's the next school year and so she's learned a lot.

Well and for this particular scene she's back into jeans

which were you know, sort of taboo.

Just wanted her in a simple, simple white light,

not patterned, not anything distracting,

just almost a teenage version of ethereal

in jeans and a tee shirt.

And with these jeans, I mean what she wore in the beginning

with her plaid shirt were just basic

and so now she's, she did learn from the plastics

to go shopping and get a few things

and so she's into her form fitting,

slightly flared jeans and she's got boots on.

Not tennis shoes, not flip flops.

She learned and modified them.

This is the real Cady because it shows

what has happened to her in the past year.

It shows her transformation washed away

and she's come back and she's you know,

she's genuine but she has picked up

on a bit and I think she had to learn that to come back

to who she really is.

I'm happy to have contributed to something

that people like to see and I think it was also

Ariana Grande who used the costumes from Mean Girls

and I think we are all delighted that what we contribute

to a story stays and that people still like to see it.

That was notes on the scene from Mean Girls.

Thanks so much for watching.

[audience cheering]