Thirty years ago today, Quentin Tarantino released his second feature film, Pulp Fiction. While Tarantino has gone on to direct countless other films, 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.
Photo: Courtesy of Miramar Films
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.’”
