How Moxie Dressed Hadley Robinson For A Riot Grrrl Revolution

By Gina Marinelli


As far as transformative fashion moments in teen-movie history go, few compare to the image of Sandy emerging from an audience of Rydell High students in the final scene of Grease. Even before delivering her iconic line — “Tell me about it, stud” — it’s obvious she’s damaged from her otherwise squeaky-clean reputation. It’s the big hair, the lit cigarette, and where Sandy’s demure cardigan sweater once sat, it’s the black leather moto jacket. The garment acts as a symbol of rebellion, just as it has on numerous other film and TV characters for decades, even as definitions of and motives for resistance have changed. Take, as an example, the timely flick, Moxie.


Netflix’s new original movie stars Hadley Robinson as Vivian Carter, a quiet high school student who anonymously begins a feminist revolution among her peers. Her actions are ignited by her school’s toxic culture — including double-standard dress codes, transphobic casting for the school musical, and also a sexist, hot-or-not-style list compiled by male athletes. Although her protest process of choice comes straight from ’90s punk culture and, by association, her mother.


Played by Amy Poehler, who also directed Moxie, Vivian’s mom Lisa is a former member of Riot Grrrl, the underground punk-rock feminist movement that led to the formation of bands like Swim suit Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Heavens to Betsey, and Le Tigre. As soon as Vivian comes across her mother’s assortment of old zines, photographs, and also a worn-in leather jacket covered in pins (both safety and musical group memorabilia), it sparks something within herself as she finds a way to take a stand for her community. Thus, the Moxie zine is place on Earth, her own unabashed response to sexism and call to action among her classmates, compiled in a collage-style pamphlet.


“The leather jacket is fully symbolic, and while she chooses to wear it, she’s going into battle in armor,” says Robinson of her character, though it is also a keen description of the garment’s genesis. Its earliest use was in military wear at the begin of the 20th century, including flight jackets for the U.S. Army. It wasn’t up until 1928 that raincoat maker Irving Schott used leather to prepare the wide-collar, multi-zipper, belted-at-the-bottom moto fashion as we know it today. While the look circulated because the uniform of rebels in the decades following, made well known on figures like James Dean or The Ramones, it became mainstream in the ’90s as a style trend seen on models, actors, and teens everywhere. “You visualize a lot of gentlemen in different movies wear leather jackets — Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones — and it’s really cool to be able to see a young girl put on this symbol of armor, and going into battle in her own way.”


needless to say, other characters besides Vivian (often also white, blonde, and high-school-age girls) have gone through a transformative life experience whilst wearing clothing with an edgy, tough, or cool reputation. Additionally to Grease, there was 2020’s horror film Freaky in which Kathryn Newton’s Millie dons a red leather jacket right after Vince Vaughn’s gruesome slasher, The Butcher, has occupied her physical body in an eccentric swap. Back in 1992’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the lead character played by Kristy Swanson dons a prom dress and biker jacket as she switches from slow dancing to staking the undead. Even Tayor Momsen’s Jenny Humphrey in Gossip Girl adopted leather jackets into her wardrobe in later seasons as she embraced the rebellious side of Little J. Moxie noticeably takes a nuanced, more gradual approach to this wardrobe addition during the film.


Vivian’s personality doesn’t flip like a switch any time discovering her mother’s old jacket; she only wears it “when she begins to feel her feminine power,” explains costume designer Kirston Leigh Mann. We visualize Vivian first trying it on at house as Swim suit Kill’s “Rebel Girl” plays in the background. She later wears it to a football game following a sweet, although also steamy, backseat date with her love interest, Seth, played by Nico Hiraga. Any time Vivian learns of a fellow student’s sexual assault, she sneaks to the school at night in her leather jacket to deface its front steps with red paint. And any time if she organizes a student walkout the very next day, she reveals herself to be Moxie with the right now paint-stained jacket on her back. “It’s so much her mother’s [jacket] and by the end, with the little bit of red on the sleeves, she’s made it her own via actions she’s taken,” says Robinson.


In several ways, Moxie advances in back of teen-movie clichés of the ’90s or ’00s. The star jock (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is the obvious and unlikable antagonist. The student body is diverse. Ladies aren’t pitted against each other although actively musical group with each other with a regular interest. Then why does the leather jacket stay? “It still holds that power,” says Mann, who looked to punk icons like Courtney Love, Kim Gordon, and Patti Smith for fashion inspiration for this project. “It breaks you free from a certain norm. Although there really are right now slick leather jackets, and business-lady leather jackets, and rich-lady leather jackets, does it still hold the same sort of power as it did for Sandy in Grease? I don’t know. It’s how you wear it and why you feel in it. Vivian felt empowered in it.”


Mann also shares that Moxie’s costumes are a car to move the story forward, not a sweeping use of symbolism to capture an entire social justice movement. Right considering that, while Vivian may be the story’s lead, there really are other characters who stand more firmly in their power from the begin. Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Peña) is a newly transferred student who becomes companions with Vivian. “If you keep your head down, he’ll move on and bother somebody else,” Vivian says to Lucy, supplying what she thinks is cooperative guidance once Schwarzenegger’s character Mitchell harasses her. “Thanks for the suggestions, nevertheless I’m going to keep my head up. High,” Lucy confidently replies.


“She symbolizes so much because she is empowered while in the movie,” says Mann, who styles Lucy in ripped jeans and tights, layers of thick chain necklaces, and bomber jackets — though, for the record, not made of leather. “She’s the driving force in some ways. She was her own person, she wasn’t referencing anyone else.”


Maybe this mentions why the power of a leather moto jacket keeps it up and continues to flourish in stories like this one, in stories of teen ladies themselves. It’s a loaded garment that encompasses the past — be it Riot Grrrl or rockabilly — and it's a tool for the character to find their truest self, alternatively opposed to suggesting they’ve reached a final destination. “It’s not showing who she is,” says Robinson of her character. “By the end, it’s still a work in progress. It takes a long time to identify who you really are nevertheless, in the method of wearing this jacket, it’s an exploration.”