How Juliet Capulet Changed the Way We Dress
What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is wearing Pacsun—at least, she is in Broadway’s current Romeo + Juliet revival. A candy rave in iambic pentameter, the show stars Rachel Zegler as Juliet, who tears across the stage wearing JNCO jeans and a vintage Britney Spears teddy bear keychain, Doc Martens covered in puffy purple hearts, and—during the famous balcony scene—a giant T-shirt and teeny-tiny flannel shorts from Victoria’s Secret Pink.
“We had a lot of Gaultier and Marc Jacobs on the mood board, but Juliet is a teenage girl,” says Enver Chakartash, the show’s Tony-nominated costume designer. Zegler’s Juliet flirts with Romeo in a transparent tank top from Urban Outfitters inspired the one Bella Hadid wore. She traipses through “fair Verona” in Levi’s cutoffs and a long chiffon coat—a nod to FKA Twigs in her “Tears in the Club” video. Her “costume” for the famous masked ball is a super-sparkly cocktail dress with glittery blue eyeshadow. She looks like what she is—a kid sneaking out of the house in a wealthy, boring suburb.
This mall rat take on Juliet has been received with amused praise by theater critics and TikTok rapture by hardcore fans. But before the Shakespearean ingenue was a Panda Express regular, she was a reference for designers like Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood, and Miuccia Prada. “It’s easy to get obsessed with her, visually,” adds Chakartash. “She’s a symbol of something we all want. Something so deeply relatable. Everyone wants to fall in love, and everyone has unrequited love, or love with bad timing. Juliet is a blank slate for us. Fashion helps us make her real.”
Below, a brief history of Juliet’s influence on fashion through the years.
1597
Juliet Capulet made her theatrical debut in 1597. Because women weren’t allowed onstage in Elizabethan England, she was played by a teen boy. (He wore a corset, bodice, skirts, and a wig to exaggerate the character’s near-divine femininity.) Shakespeare never gives us a solid description on Juliet’s style, but Romeo calls her a “bright angel” and “the sun” in rapid succession—the type of girl who can “teach the torches to shine bright.” Lustrous fabrics like silk and velvet would have been used in the production, along with heavily beaded and pearl-encrusted details to help Juliet shine onstage.
According to Swiss writer Thomas Platter, who visited Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theatre in 1599, some of the acting troupe’s gowns were hand-me-downs from wealthy theater patrons, including members of Queen Elizabeth’s court. That means Juliet, the fictional teen aristocrat, likely wore dresses from actual teen aristocrats. (Think of Shakespeare’s costume trunks as the 17th-century version of The RealReal.)
So, when did cool girls start dressing like Juliet Capulet, and not the other way around? There were glimmers in the 19th century, when Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry was photographed as a teen bride by Julia Margaret Cameron. In 1934, a Broadway production starring American heiress Katherine Cornell was so popular that photos of the actress—in vampy dark lipstick and a daringly low-cut red velvet gown, no less—circulated in national newspapers. But it wasn’t until 1968, when Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet hit cinemas starring 16-year-old Olivia Hussey as the lead, that “Renaissance Teen” became part of fashion’s lexicon.
1968
Fifty-five years before Margot Robbie wore all-pink-everything on her Barbie press tour, British teen Olivia Hussey promoted director Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet wearing modern versions of her onscreen looks. Juliet’s famous velvet gown by Danilo Donati became a velvet minidress in a 1968 TV interview. Her swishy white cotton nightgown became a swishy white satin premiere gown on the red carpet at the Paris Theater in New York City, where the movie had its premiere.
By the time Seventeen ran a fashion spread starring Hussey in September 1968, she was modeling the fast fashion equivalents of her own film costumes. As designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Ossie Clark moved further from mod’s teeny hemlines and angular shapes, Juliet’s longer, softer gowns served as a Shakespearean segue into a new fashion era. The Renaissance-style bodices and crushed velvet bell sleeves of legendary ’70s designers like Biba’s Barbara Hulanicki and Marion Donaldson were the aftershocks of that trend. You can still see it today in Dôen’s manor-born nightgowns and Khaite’s tulle bodice dresses with strict but puffy sleeves. In 2021, Taylor Swift referenced the movie in her reclaimed version of “Love Story” by wearing an ivory silk nightgown that recalled Hussey’s own.
But there’s a sour irony here: The 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet featured both Hussey and fellow teen star Leonard Whiting as naked, underage sex symbols—something both actors have decried in recent years, as clearer language around consent and intimacy enters the film industry. The iteration is marred by its nude streak, but the film’s legacy remains in large part because of the clothes.
In the ’80s, Juliet’s vibe took a bow, making room for Working Girl-esque padded power suits and handkerchief-hem skirts worn with sweatshirts à la Denise Huxtable, along with preppy sportswear staples like polos and mom jeans. But it turns out Juliet was waiting in the wings for her next starring role. It wouldn’t take too long before she was back in the spotlight.
1996
When Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet hit screens in 1996, it was a box office smash and a career maker for Claire Danes, then 17, who played the movie’s doomed heroine. Costume designer Kym Barrett made Juliet’s famous party dress out of heavy cotton, and another white silk suit, similar to those made by Giorgio Armani, for her wedding scene. At the film’s premiere in Los Angeles, Hollywood It girls like Reese Witherspoon and Neve Campbell dressed on-theme in puff-sleeves and crushed velvet. Danes sported modest Miu Miu skirts and embroidered coats for her press tour. Thanks to the recent advent of E! and MTV News, millions of kids could watch these fashion trends unfold on TV after school.
“If you were a certain kind of teen who was very obsessed with fashion, you would watch [Romeo + Juliet] as a teenager and go, ‘Oh my God, is there Miu Miu in Shakespeare?!’” says Chakartash with a laugh. “Everyone wanted to dress like that.” By February 1997, Anna Sui had mounted Juliet’s already-iconic angel wings on her runway models and Betsey Johnson had recast Juliet as Alek Wek (in a velvet minidress and giant cross necklace) and Ling Tan (in a crushed velvet maxi dress with “bleeding” red eyeliner).
“We were coming out of this era in the late ’80s and early ’90s of toughness,” explains designer Nicole Miller, whose own Capulesque bodices were fashion week hits at the time. “Everything was so hard. We were moving back into a time of softness, emotion, and femininity. It was time to let your clothes lead from the heart. And of course, we went out to clubs every night. Canal Bar. Nell’s. Limelight. That ‘Juliet’ look—you could see it everywhere in the ’90s, even if you didn’t watch TV or see that movie.”
The 2010s
The 2010s had some notable love letters to Juliet, including a breathtaking Valentino couture collection in 2016, which remade the heroine’s iconic red velvet gown in scarlet silk. Wildfox Couture’s 2011 “Montagues and Capulets” collection turned the Shakespearean tragedy into super-cute baby tees and hoodies, and paved the way for streetwear brands like X Girl and INTL Collective to put their own spin on the aesthetic, including the these incredible pants.
Meanwhile, labels like Simone Rocha and Vivienne Westwood continue to translate Elizabethan romance into romantic pieces on the runway. Asked why Juliet is still a Pinterest reference, designer Anna Shaheen of Cucculelli Shaheen insists it’s about agency. “Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy,” she says. “But Juliet has strength of mind—she’s not simpering or helpless. She refuses to bow to convention.” For fall, she and partner Anthony Cucculelli used opulent Renaissance-style embroidery on sharp, modern blazers to fuse Juliet’s many incarnations into one killer jacket.
2024
This past Fashion Month, Chloé and Collina Strada offered two of the most compelling takes on a modern Juliet, with a controlled silhouette formed by gauzy, girly materials like organza and chiffon. Or you could channel Zegler’s onstage Juliet with a white column dress made from Armani satin, which she wears in the final tragic moments of the show. The costume team built three versions of the dress, says Chakartash, so Zegler could roll around in fake blood, then wear a fresh one during the next show. To clean the dresses between appearances, the costume team soaks them overnight in cold water and Dawn dish soap.
Dressing like Juliet, says Chakartash, is its own kind of cleanse. “Romeo and Juliet is, on the surface, a pretty misogynistic play,” they explained. “But Juliet takes control over everything she can. She makes you root for her. Maybe it doesn’t work out for the character, but it gives us all hope as an audience. And dressing like her, you know, you’re giving yourself that hope. Maybe someday, things can be different. Fashion gives you that chance.”
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