Two years before we were given the Hollywood gift that is Clueless, stylist Linda Meltzer was busy launching her fashion line Tease Tees (she has since renamed the label Pretties). The shrunken baby T-shirts became an instant hit with It girls of the time, Drew Barrymore, Sofia Coppola, and Naomi Campbell included. Tease Tees was so big that one of Meltzer’s shirts wound up in Clueless, on one of the movie’s lead characters, Tai Frasier.
Played by the late Brittany Murphy, Tai gets a makeover from her new friends Cher Horowitz and Dionne Davenport, including a makeup tutorial, new hair color, and a wardrobe swap. The style overhaul culminates with Frasier standing in front of a mirror jumping with joy at the sight of herself in a new miniskirt and long-sleeved baby tee with a tie-dye heart.
Meltzer admits that the costume designer from Clueless didn’t source the tee from her directly, but she does believe it was her original design. “I introduced the heart design in 1994,” Meltzer explains. “It was based off of one of my favorite Grateful Dead tees that I acquired at a concert many years before.” She adds, “I took it to a dye house and asked them to tie-dye a small heart version on my baby tee. By the time the movie was being shot, the market was flooded with imitations of my baby tees.”
Today, Meltzer announced that she’s reissuing her original handmade, tie-dye heart design, which is currently available on the Pretties website and in the label’s store in Venice, California. “So fun to have her back,” Meltzer said of the revived design. We couldn’t agree more. As Tai Frasier and the Clueless crew might say, Pretties fans will be “totally buggin’” to get their hands on this little piece of ’90s fashion nostalgia.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
