Thirty years ago today, Quentin Tarantino released his second feature film, Pulp Fiction. While Tarantino has gone on to direct an extensive body of work, his nonlinear crime thriller grips the zeitgeist to this day.
Amidst countless memorable moments and quotable lines, one scene will always stand out from the pack: Jack Rabbit Slim s Twist Contest. The oft-referenced scene features Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), the wife of a notorious gangster, dancing the Twist to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” with her hitman escort, Vincent Vega (John Travolta). The two wear similar outfits: Mia, a white button-up shirt with a nipped waist and oversized cuffs and collars, paired with cropped black kick-flair pants; Vincent wears a black suit and a bolo tie over a white button-down. While the duo’s simple yet recognizable look has become a go-to Halloween costume for couples and people with poor time management skills, it’s far more than a costume you already have in your closet.
With looks like the UC Santa Cruz banana slugs T-shirt and the gimp suit, Pulp Fiction’s costumes occupy their place in the cultural lexicon. But many may not realize that it borrows heavily from Tarantino’s first film Reservoir Dogs, with costume designer Betsy Heimann placing Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent in the same universe as the diamond thieves. “But I think Vincent is kind of a mess, so let’s do something for him out of linen. And Jules is like a preacher, so let’s do something a little more retro ’60s with a very narrow collar,” Heimann told Vogue in 2019 of her early conversations with Tarantino.
Nothing, however, remains as iconic as the film’s simplest look: Mia’s white button-up and black trousers. Heimann also pulled Mia’s costume inspiration from Reservoir Dogs. “So, Mia Wallace: wife of the big boss, tons of money, but inside she’s kind of a bad girl. She wants these guys to like her,” she told Vogue. “She’s totally barred from interacting with any man, so she has a chance to go out one night with Vincent, and she’s like, ‘Well, I’m going to show them I’m a Reservoir Dog like they are.’”
Generally nothing to write home about, Thurman and Heimann made the minimal outfit one of the sexiest onscreen looks in recent memory. It’s in the way her too-short pants show off her ankles, or how the nipped-in shirt accentuates her waist. It’s a little tease in an otherwise modest look. With a classic outfit serving as the base for so many of Pulp Fiction’s central characters, that each of them is able to make the look their own is a testament to the power of the actors. “Part of creating a real character is incorporating who the actor is,” Heimann said. Thurman was so tall that Heimann leaned into the too-short pants, and opted to make the shirt even more exaggerated in its fit.
The white button-up and black trousers are really just that: the perfect canvas to project oneself onto. While Pulp Fiction didn’t invent the classic pairing, it proved that even the simplest outfit can become one of the most iconic looks in film—a lesson that can be transferred to our own closets, and lives. So, in honor of that, kick off your shoes, turn on some Chuck Berry, and do the Twist!
