Scarlett O’Hara

"There wasn’t a nice dress in Tara or a dress that hadn’t been turned twice and mended.

The moss green velvet curtsains felt prickly and soft beneath her cheek and she rubbed her face against them gratefully, like a cat. And then suddenly she looked at them.

“Scoot up to the attic and get my box of dress patterns, Mammy”, she cried, giving her a slight shove. “I’m going to have a new dress.”" (p.434, Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell)

Scarlett O’Hara knew the score. A lack of materials is never an excuse for a lack of sartorial style, so she did what any wartime woman would do and got cracking on the curtains (this sort of make-do and mend attitude would also be promoted in World War 2 – suggesting that both Margaret Mitchell and her heroine would be way ahead of their time in their thinking).

Dressed to the nines in her mother’s ‘po’teers’ and the rooster’s tail feather, Scarlett went off to flirt outrageouely with an imprisoned Rhett Butler to get the tax money for Tara. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?

Scarlett was always aware of fashion and the effect it could have on folk. At the Twelve Oaks barbeque, Scarlett’s attire brought Mammy’s disapproval and the beaux flocking. Scarlett’s own disapproval would be registered, when, on her husband’s premature death, she would be forced to wear black for the rest of her days, despite being only 18. Yet temptation came in the form of Rhett Butler and his black market goodies – here was a man who knew the way to a woman’s heart was through her wardrobe, and who in turn liked his ladies to look good. But Scarlett always had her own eye on fashion, and lapped up every detail

Gone With The Wind’s conversion onto the big screen would have been nothing without the talents of Walter Plunkett, the man in charge of the movie’s costumes. His interpretations attire, particularly that of the women, was nothing short of spectacular, and the aftrementioned green curtain dress would become the stuff of legend.

One could say that both Margaret Mitchell and Walter Plunkett should be given all the praise, immortalising this fashionista in both page and print, but here at Freaky Styley we like to break with convention, and applaud Scarlett for being a ficiticious heroine with a daring dress sense AND the courage to wear it.