I started at Heritage just a few short weeks ago, but I have already had the opportunity to gush over all the costumes and props from the upcoming auctions. My first week here was a whirlwind as I assisted in alphabetizing the costumes by film. My background is in fashion history, and I was particularly excited to see and touch the Hollywood costumes. One costume during the first week made my jaw drop: Amanda Bynes’ debutante gown from the 2003 teen comedy What a Girl Wants.
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It’s a simple dress, constructed of silk ivory satin with an A-line silhouette and minimal beading on the neckline, but seeing Amanda Bynes walk down a grand staircase in this gown with long matching gloves is seared into my memory. Every girl my age knows this dress, and I immediately had to go home and tell my girlfriends about it. In the film, the dress appears during the climax when Bynes’ character “Daphne” attends her “coming out” ball, signifying her entrance into British high society. “Daphne” is the epitome of the early 2000s “cool girl,” but she is unique and does not fit in with the crowd (or box) her father, the handsome Colin Firth, wants her to join. This scene at the ball is her character finally relenting and giving into the prim and proper image that British society requires of her (spoiler alert: this does not work out well). One other plus from this scene is we get to see the dreamy romantic interest “Ian” sing in a tuxedo.
The ball is disrupted by the scheming of the film’s villains, her evil stepmother and step-grandfather, who lock the poor girl in the closet so that she misses her father-daughter dance (typical, right?). I love this dress and this movie, but also what it represents: the golden age of teen comedy movies (and Amanda Bynes had a lot of great ones). To me, it possesses the essence of that giddy teenage girl feeling that I, admittedly, still chase.
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