She’s Just a Teenage Dirtbag, Baby

Costume Design in The Edge of Seventeen

January felt like the time to try a little something new—I’d never seen The Edge of Seventeen, though I’d heard its praises since its 2016 release. But when I popped in the DVD, I was surprised to see an R flash across the screen. R-rated teen movies are, for obvious reasons, few and far between: seemingly meant to arouse or scare adults, not teens. Edge, blessedly, turned out to be the rare film that balances both audiences: relating to teens in all their confusing complications and appealing to adults who still feel tenderness toward those messy younger selves.

Since second grade, Nadine has divided the world into two kinds of people: “the people who radiate confidence and naturally excel at life and the people who hope all those people die in a big explosion.” Her golden-boy older brother, Darian, is the former—guess which one Nadine is?

Nadine hates going to school, where she’s taunted by her classmates. Her mother regularly forces her from the car, while her father takes a softer approach, suggesting that she fart in her bullies’ backpacks. Even at a young age, humor is Nadine’s shared language with her father and first defense mechanism.

The second, naturally, is clothes.

Note the blue-and-purple palette that the bullies share with Darian

The other girls in her grade wear simple shirts, jeans, hoodies—her brother similarly sporty in his blue zip-up. Nadine wears a colorful crocheted sweater, brown skinny pants, and a fur-trimmed olive-green parka—though neither the weather nor the other characters’ clothes suggest such a heavy layer is necessary. No, the coat is Nadine’s security blanket—one she will literally but not figuratively grow out of.

Nadine’s salvation comes in Krista, her first and only friend. Like Nadine, Krista is quirkily dressed: baggy jeans, a plaid shirt, and a grandpa cardigan. As Nadine narrates, not with mocking but wonder, Krista looks like “a small elderly gentleman.”

When Nadine is thirteen, her father dies, and her relationships with her mother and her brother grow even tenser. She leans into her role as the dirtbag younger sister, while her mother builds Darian’s pedestal even higher—expecting him almost to be the second parental figure that their family has lost.

The siblings’ individual styles only become more heightened: Nadine is a sartorial “fish out of water” (Vanity Fair), her outfits a mishmash of pieces that tie her to no particular clique. As costume designer Carla Hetland told Vanity Fair, “we couldn’t dress her like a geek, we couldn’t dress her goth—because if we did dress her in those ways, then there would be a group at that school that she would belong to.”

Her signature pieces are high-tops (a “different pair” for each outfit) and a vintage ski jacket, her teenage equivalent of her olive-green parka. Hetland chose a men’s style because “if it was a girl’s jacket and it was fitted and it was short, it would have been too cute, too trendy” (Vanity Fair).

Darian’s style is still fairly basic—jeans, hoodies—but with the body-consciousness of a teenage boy who works out and wants you to know it. When Nadine sees him wearing a tight Henley at school, she implores Krista to “look at that stupid shirt.”

“Oh, you can see his nipples,” Krista replies.

Krista, it seems, has most changed since their elementary-school days—her wardrobe evolving from “elderly gentleman” to fairly conventional teenage girl. (You have to wonder if her first outfit was not an expression of self but a product of a tumultuous homelife—her parents well on their way to divorce.) Take the outfit above: a cream zip-up sweater, striped green shirt, and skinny jeans. In style, she falls somewhere between Nadine and Darian.

Even after Krista and Darian hook up, Nadine and Krista are connected by complementary animal shirts (a deer for Nadine and birds for Krista).

Which, of course, is the point: After a drunken sleepover, Nadine wakes up to find Krista and Darian hooking up. Betrayed but still loyal to Krista, she reluctantly agrees to third wheel at a house party.

Her ski jacket comes along, slung over a striped T and ripped skinnies. Darian wears another formfitting Henley and jeans, Krista a simple black zip-up, jeans, and a cropped T; she’s even brought a matching cross-body bag. Among Darian’s friends, she instantly connects: complimenting another girl’s outfit, taking up her offer to play beer pong. Krista is obviously more adaptable to social situations than Nadine: her cross-body and cropped T at home among the partygoers in a way Nadine’s ski jacket never will be.

The striped T picks up the orange and red stripes on the ski jacket.

When Krista takes off her zip-up to play beer pong, Nadine follows suit and shucks her ski jacket: showing more skin—and therefore, more vulnerability—than she has yet. Still, Nadine has trouble finding new friends inside the party—and when she goes out on the porch, her jacket back on, she has no better luck. After another partygoer likens Nadine and Darian to Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins—you can guess which is which—Nadine leaves without saying goodbye to Krista.

Krista’s olive jacket calls back to the olive parka Nadine wore when they first met.

The next day, her ski jacket is gone entirely—and with it, any protection it held. When Krista refuses to pick between Nadine and Darian, Nadine declares their friendship over—and is left alone in the school hallway. Her long hooded black sweater is a shroud, her cropped sweatshirt a pop of impulsive red layered over a sliver of leopard print. Unlike Krista, Nadine won’t wear a cropped T without another shirt underneath, a skirt without sheer tights. For Krista, clothes are a chance to connect—with Darian, with the other girls at the party—but for Nadine, they continue to be a way to keep other people at arm’s length, to guard her own body.

Without Krista, Nadine seeks out other connection: with her cranky teacher, Mr. Bruner; her sweet classmate, Erwin; and her sleazy crush, Nick.

Notice how she’s lost her long sweater to talk to Nick.

Nick is the school bad boy, with the usual bad-boy penchant for black and gray. He also happens to work at Petland, where Nadine stumbles after her breakup with Krista. Nick compliments her sneakers, and Nadine lights up: After mocking Krista for complimenting another girl’s outfit, she delights to receive her own, especially about her signature high-tops. In the aisles of Petland, Nadine’s little pop of leopard print is cheekily animalistic, hinting (as leopard print in costume often does) at sexual desire.

Erwin is not quite as slick as Nick: When he and Nadine first talk, he awkwardly compliments her sweatshirt, the most generic and therefore least-interesting part of her outfit. Nadine initially dismisses him as “pathetic adorable”—unlike Nick or Nadine herself, Erwin does not make himself outwardly alternative. He may be artsy, a talented animator, but he dresses a lot like Darian and other boys are her high school, in sporty hoodies and T-shirts. Nadine must get to know Erwin to understand his depths—and Nick to understand his shallowness.

The leopard skirt picks up the orange and blue from Nadine’s jacket.

After a particularly rough day, Nadine accidentally sexts Nick—and is shocked to receive a response from him, asking to meet up. Her skirt calls back to the sliver of leopard print we saw in Petland—now made more overt—and her ski jacket appears for the first time since the house party. Nadine is a chaotic churn of sexual anticipation and awkwardness: flinging potential outfits around the room, shaving and spritzing perfume—yep, down there too.

You’re gonna get such a yeast infection, girl.

She settles on a denim jacket, an orange-and-white ditsy-floral dress, and a red cross-body bag: much more feminine and conventional than her usual clothes, with no sheer tights underneath. Nadine is dressing as she thinks she should for a hookup—perhaps even as she thinks Krista would, considering the cross-body that calls back to Krista’s black version. And yet, the outfit shares the same palette as her ski jacket: blue, orange, white, and red.

The awkward Nadine is still in there, and for all her preparation, she’s not ready to have sex with Nick—especially not in an empty parking lot, parked in front of a giant dumpster. What she really wants is genuine connection, but all he wants is a hookup. “I’m not here to get to know you,” he tells her before she leaves his car in tears.

Another callback to Nadine’s olive parka in Mr. Bruner’s olive jacket

Ultimately, he’s the push Nadine needs back the people who do care for her, who do want to know her: Darian, Krista, Erwin, even Mr. Bruner. He picks her up at a late-night donut shop and takes her back to his house to wait for her mother. There, she’s shocked to find her curmudgeon teacher has a loving wife and an adorable baby: another person who is not quite what she expected from the outside.

Darian and Krista come to pick Nadine up from the Bruner house, and Darian is finally honest about the enormous pressure he’s under as the model sibling—and later, Nadine about her own self-loathing.

The next morning, she runs into Darian and Krista and awkwardly wishes them both a good day—her covert way of finally accepting their relationship. Krista asks if she can call Nadine later, and Nadine agrees, barely hiding her delight. Both girls are wearing star-printed shirts: Nadine’s less noticeable in black, as an underlayer to her sweater, and Krista’s an explosion in purple. They’re coming back to each other in their own way.

Nadine’s outfit also calls out to Erwin. She’s going to see his animated short in the school’s film festival, so of course she is carrying a purse with a cartoon face, wearing a sweater in the same color as the sweatshirt Erwin once complimented.

After the screening, Erwin introduces Nadine to his friends—but unlike at the house party, she doesn’t look so out of place. Her ski jacket is gone, but she’s still wearing a funky pair of sneakers, a playful print, a fun bag. There’s still expression to her clothes, but there’s also openness. You know, I think she’s going to be all right.

[I’ll be back with a very special Valentine’s post on Wednesday, 2/14. Until then, thank you for reading and sharing this newsletter—any feedback is welcome with a reply to the email!]