“You Are Strapless Red Satin”

Flashbacks and Costume Design on Veronica Mars

Originally published on Letterdrop 9/23/2021

[This post contains discussion of sexual assault.]

Sometimes, you have to go back to move forward: How better to begin a discussion of Veronica Mars’s costume design than with a post on the show’s flashbacks? I touched on a few such scenes in volume one—Gossip Girl used them sparingly, though effectively, to illustrate Serena van der Woodsen’s “wild” former life—but for volume two, I knew I’d have enough to make a whole damn post. After all, Veronica Mars is all about what happens when a devastating event changes the trajectory of your life—and yes, your wardrobe.

Now, Veronica sometimes cuts to previously unseen moments in the current timeline—in season two, for example, we’re shown what happened the summer between seasons one and two—but I’ll be focusing on the flashbacks to the year before the series begins, when Lilly Kane was alive, Keith Mars was sheriff, and Veronica Mars and Duncan Kane were dating.

Before I dive into the flashbacks, let’s talk about how the characters dress in “present day” season one. Veronica, of course, has changed the most since Lilly’s murder: she’s lost her rich 09er friends and boyfriend, her comfy lifestyle and social standing; she was raped at an 09er party. Veronica has learned to be hard, to guard her heart and act alone. To quote costume designer Salvador Perez, “she had armor up” (MTV News).

Present-day Veronica's first look, 1.1

Present-day Veronica’s clothes have a “militaristic vibe” (MTV News): cargo or camo jackets and skirts, olive greens and browns, Western belts and ass-stomping boots. And yet, there are pieces of her old life mixed in: floral blouses, denim minis, camisoles and polos and T-shirts in all shades of pink. Veronica even wears her black leather choker with a silver star pendant: the former is tough, a mark of her new life, while the latter is dainty and sweet—a gift, Perez imagined, from Lilly. (It’s this contrast that reminds me of Jenny Humphrey’s season two wardrobe; Jenny armors herself up after the traumatizing events of season one, but pieces of her old life, of the people she loves, still peep through.)

This mix of old and new pieces also speaks to Veronica’s economic situation: her father runs a small detective agency; they live in a cheap apartment complex. Says Perez: “We were very conscious of what was in her closet before going ‘bad,’ and what was she still using. Because she wouldn’t have had the money for a whole new wardrobe” (MTV News). Not only that, but Veronica repeats items throughout the series—just as a real teenage girl would do.

Present-day Duncan (left) and Logan (right) in their signature colors, 1.1

Other characters’ flashback wardrobes serve to show how little their lives have changed, at least superficially: Veronica’s ex, Duncan, and his best friend, Logan Echolls, dress the same in the present day as they do in flashbacks. Duncan wears a lot of preppy pieces in shades of blue (much like Nate Archibald), while Logan favors more surfer-dude pieces—that puka-shell necklace!—in oranges, browns, and olive greens. (Their distinct color palettes were requested by the creators, who were “afraid [the actors] looked alike” (MTV News). Reader, I screamed!)

Like Veronica, Duncan and Logan are distraught over Lilly’s death, but they still have their popularity, their money. They don’t have to go out and buy new, tough clothes to feel safe at school. Their social standing and wealth already do that for them.

Flashback Duncan and Veronica, 1.1

We first see the old, “good” Veronica in the pilot: a glimpse of her and Duncan walking down the school hallway, happy and in love. She’s wearing a pink-and-white-striped polo, white-belted denim pencil skirt, and flip-flops. On one shoulder is a pink purse, more fashionable and less practical than the canvas messenger bag that present-day Veronica totes to school. Even her hair is different: long and straight instead of short and razored.

Veronica in her blue button-down, 1.5

Old Veronica’s wardrobe is preppy, modest, and stereotypically feminine, the pieces largely white, pink, or pale blue—Duncan’s color. In fact, when she tells her mother that she’s dating Duncan (1.5), Veronica wears a light blue button-down, Lilly’s star pendant around her neck.

Yolanda and Veronica, 1.13

The color, I think, comes to symbolize her loyalty to Duncan, to Lilly, to their 09er friends. In another flashback in episode 1.13, Veronica wears a pale blue sweater and her Lilly necklace when she chooses Lilly and the 09ers over a new friend, Yolanda. The scene foreshadows Veronica’s own rejection by the clique, her own loyalty unrewarded after Lilly’s death. Present-day Veronica only occasionally wears light blue, and if she does, it’s usually hardened by a leather jacket or cord necklace. She rebels against Duncan and his popular friends through her new clothes, but she can’t entirely leave them behind.

Lilly holds up the yellow cotton dress, 1.4

For in other ways, Veronica’s new style is an embracement of Lilly, of who Lilly encouraged Veronica to be: strong, confident, sexy—an individual. In episode 1.4, Lilly admonishes Veronica for buying a homecoming dress without Lilly’s advice. “Why do you insist on suppressing your hotness?” Lilly asks. “The world is ready for you, Veronica Mars. You don’t have to blend in.”

She flips through her friend’s closet, insisting none of the clothes reflect Veronica’s personality. “You are not a yellow cotton dress,” Lilly says as she brandishes the offending item. “You are strapless red satin.”

Lilly in her homecoming dress, 1.4

Veronica in her homecoming dress, 1.4

Lilly, after all, is never afraid to dress as she wants. For homecoming, she chooses a glittery halter-neck gown; when her mother objects to the low neckline, Lilly adjusts it to show more cleavage. Veronica, in contrast, wears the formal equivalent of her preppy, girly wardrobe: a pale pink gown with spaghetti straps, a matching purse and a pair of dangly star earrings.

Veronica on the beach in her red homecoming dress, 1.4

The next year, in the present day, Veronica picks a strapless red-satin dress for homecoming, just as Lilly wanted her to; goes skinny-dipping at the beach, just as Lilly once encouraged her to. Maybe neither of these things will quite be Veronica, either, but she’s trying them out, finding herself in a world without Lilly.

Veronica at Shelly Pomroy's party, 1.1

Still, the most significant flashbacks in the series are to Shelly Pomroy’s party, the night Veronica was raped. The party is first shown in 1.1, but episode 1.21 is a masterful, in-depth exploration of that night: present-day Veronica pieces together the events from various classmates; even if none of them know who raped her, all of them saw something, encouraged something, are complicit in one way or another.

(Spoiler: At the end of 1.21, Veronica learns that she and Duncan slept together at the party when they were both drunk and roofied. In the season two finale, however, she discovers that she was raped by another classmate before her encounter with Duncan. Needless to say, this “twist” feels gross and gratuitous.)

Veronica walking to the sheriff's department the morning after, 1.1

To the party, Veronica wears a white sundress with a bow belt and her Lilly necklace, a black floral choker and a black wrist cuff hinting at the Veronica to come. Her hair is still long, her silver star earrings much like the ones she wore to homecoming with Lilly; the spaghetti straps and neckline of the sundress reminiscent of her homecoming gown. She’s somewhere between Old and New Veronica, ostracized by the 09ers but still attending their party, no longer Duncan’s girlfriend but not ready to forget the sweet memories she had with him and Lilly.

Maybe she wore that white sundress in her old life—white is another color Old Veronica often wears. But through the party, the color takes on its full symbolism: purity, innocence, virginity. “You want to know how I lost my virginity?” Veronica asks in the pilot’s voice-over. “So do I.”  Even her briefs, found on the floor the morning after, are white.

That morning, Veronica walks to the sheriff’s department: bow undone, hair mussed, makeup smeared, shoes in hand. There, the new sheriff, Don Lamb, cruelly dismisses Veronica’s allegation, asks if he should “round up the sons of the most important families in town.” You can almost see the pivot point, the exact moment when Veronica realizes that if there’s any justice to be found for her rape, for Lilly’s murder, it will not be through the sheriff’s department. She’ll cut her hair, buy a leather jacket; maybe she'll stuff that white sundress and floral choker in the back of her closet. She’ll keep what’s important, what she cannot afford to replace. She’ll make everyone pay.

 [I’m going on vacation at the end of this month, so the next issue, on doppelgängers and foils, will drop Thursday, 10/14.]