resisting the lure of the office siren
the delightful normalcy of Bridget Jones's wardrobe
I notice a lot of When Harry Met Sally references and moodboards online each fall, but I have to confess, I’ve never felt particularly drawn to or sartorially inspired by that movie—maybe because I didn’t watch it until well into adulthood? My favorite fall movie (though it’s technically more of a Holiday Movie) is Bridget Jones’s Diary. Spoilers abound, so beware—but you’ve had a couple decades to watch it!
There are several aspects of this movie that would hopefully be addressed quite differently had it been made today as opposed to 2001. Having a gay best friend doesn’t give you license to refer to him using a slur (it’s not the one you’re thinking, but it’s not great). Bridget’s mom refers to someone’s ex as being from a “cruel race,” and it’s not clear that this is intended to demonstrate her mother being out of touch. Bridget is briefly pictured in a qipao during a karaoke flashback—reflective of the moment in fashion, but still… not great! Bridget’s weight is also a frequent plot point—and while it’s clear that much of her dissatisfaction with her appearance is amplified by the constant unsolicited commentary from everyone around her, ‘fat’ is not a morally neutral word in this universe.
However. I still think there’s so much to learn from and love about this movie (besides the fact that it is also very funny!)—what it means to exist as a woman in a workplace and industry dominated by powerful men, how corrosive self-doubt can be, and how vulnerability can sometimes make you stronger. And of course… the clothes.
We first see Bridget as she trudges through a snowstorm on the way to her childhood home for a holiday party, in her trademark black wool coat and berry-colored scarf. Her mom presents her with an outfit to change into that feels utterly demeaning (a frilly red blouse and a patterned vest), but she obliges. She’s subject to a quick grope from creepy Uncle Geoffrey, and multiple remarks on her weight, appearance, age, and relationship status from various guests. The frilly blouse and vest reflect the vibe of the party—artificially bright and happy; in reality, stifling and a bit out of Bridget’s comfort zone. However, when she’s reintroduced to an old family friend, she’s quick to judge him for the reindeer sweater he’s wearing, an obvious mirror of the gesture she’s made for her own mom. This old family friend is Mark Darcy.
As soon as Bridget gets home, she changes into a matching red patterned pajama set—an unconscious acknowledgment that while her family might drive her crazy, she does miss their company now that she’s alone. The next morning, feeling like she’s reached rock bottom, she changes into a white robe for a fresh start and starts a self-improvement diary. (Yes, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that the weight she is so unhappy about is 136 lbs.)
Our introduction to Bridget’s job doesn’t start with her but rather with her boss, Daniel Cleaver, played by a floppy-haired Hugh Grant in his prime. Daniel, emerging smugly from an elevator, is a perfect foil to Mark Darcy’s reserved, buttoned-up appearance—top buttons undone, that iconic hair, he’s smoking in the office (apparently this was legal in the United Kingdom until 2007?!)
Perpetua, Bridget’s open-plan office mate, has weaponized the invisibility of middle age with the uniform of a pearl necklace, an ivory blouse, and a velvet headband. I’d bet that Perpetua has dealt with hundreds of Daniel Cleavers.
Bridget is Perpetua’s inverse—she wears her heart on her sleeve, she’s emotional, she’s easily flustered. Bridget provides the color in the office, both figuratively and literally (her wardrobe is primarily reds, pinks, and purples). And Daniel Cleaver’s noticed—this is when he sends her an inappropriate message about the size of her skirt (over company email… this man).
The next morning, we return to a shot of Bridget commuting in the gray London winter, the same berry-colored scarf peeking out from the top of her coat. Once at the office, she sheds the coat to reveal a sheer nude shirt over a black bra and another short skirt. And on the day that Daniel Cleaver gropes her in the elevator then asks her out, Bridget’s added what becomes her signature necklace—the Elsa Peretti sterling silver heart.
This sheer t-shirt look is truly perfect and I have tried to recreate it for over a decade.
Whatever you can say about the fashion at the turn of the century, it was blessedly free of athleisure (this was even pre-Juicy Couture! the Juicy tracksuit came out in 2001!) So when we see Bridget at home, she is at home. The only matching set she owns is a printed pair of pajamas. If she’s not wearing those, she’s in a mismatched tank top and underwear. These are some of my favorite moments of the movie, when Bridget is trying to do it all—she’s curling her hair, cleaning her apartment, and brushing up on foreign affairs and talking points for the evening, all before squeezing herself into shapewear.
Anyway, she’s off to the launch party for this T.C. Boyle lookalike who’s written by all accounts what seems to be a terrible book (Kafka’s Motorbike), and she’s dressed to impress Daniel in a leather bustier dress and her silver heart necklace. Mark Darcy’s there, because of course he is, and we meet his colleague (and potential love interest) Natasha, who is everything Bridget feels she is not… understated, elegant, intellectual. (Perpetua knows Natasha, and pulls her aside to talk about how cute Mark is. Perpetua can spot a good man. Bridget should have taken Perpetua out for drinks!)
Bridget absolutely blows the intro, and ends up going home with Daniel, where he discovers her “absolutely enormous panties”. This moment is a sartorial reminder, both for the viewer and for Bridget, that she cannot escape this feeling of being too much. She’s always trying to rein herself in, to regain control, whether that’s swearing off drinking or smoking after a night of excess, contorting her body to fit into shapewear, or continuing to talk after she’s misspoken or overshared.
Seduced by a vision of herself as Grace Kelly, Bridget dresses the part for a “mini-break” with Daniel—denim jacket, sunglasses, scarf tied around her hair, only to have her glamorous fantasy dashed by the reality of a long drive in a convertible with the top down. She arrives at the hotel looking… well, you’ll see below, only to run into Mark and Natasha. Mark’s sole concession to being on a mini-break himself is unbuttoning the top button of his shirt and continuing to work, but on a rowboat. Natasha looks pulled together, as per usual, this time in an oversized striped sweater. To Bridget, it looks like Natasha’s got it all. But as the two pairs meet again on the pond, you can see a trace of jealousy from Natasha and some yearning from Mark as they watch Bridget and Daniel laughing and falling into the water. That’s one thing you can say for Daniel—he’s fun. (Perhaps you could tell by his suede jacket.)
The mini-break ends early when Daniel says he has to get back to London for work. When she presses him, he denigrates her office outfits, uttering the unforgettable line: “You swan in, in your short skirt and your sexy see-through blouse, and fanny about with press releases.” Daniel’s insinuating that the only value she provides at the office is eye candy, that the work she does is meaningless. Bridget heads to the ‘tarts and vicars’ dress-up party at her parents’ on her own—then finds out upon arriving that they’ve scrapped the costume element and everyone else is in normal clothes.
Again, Bridget’s tried to dress the part, and again, it hasn’t turned out the way she expected. Her bunny tail is like a scarlet letter. Mark Darcy is there (because why not) as well as Natasha, who’s dressed appropriately for a spring party, her only gesture toward the season a salmon-colored neck scarf. Bridget’s dad also didn’t get the memo—he’s in a clerical collar—and the two of them smoke a cigarette together in companionable silence. Bridget and her dad have such a sweet relationship, and we get these shots of them throughout the movie, an “us against the world” vibe. No matter how much they feel like outsiders, they’re comfortable being their full selves around each other.
Bridget decides to stop by Daniel’s house on her way home. He apologizes for his curt behavior earlier, and he’s almost gotten her out the door when she sees a lavender cardigan on the coat rack that definitely does not belong to him. Hiding in the bathroom is another tall, lithe, short-haired brunette—not Natasha, but Lara, “from the American office.”
The next day, Bridget’s outfit serves as a pointed repellent. If Daniel wants to be with Lara, he’s going to get the version of Bridget who wears long skirts and sneakers to the office. She’s communicating that she doesn’t even care what he thinks about her anymore, and willing that to be true. She starts looking for another job immediately.
We’re subjected to a self-improvement montage of frantic cycling on a stationary bike (clichéd, but I still appreciate the realistic workout outfit…baggy sweats and a mismatched shirt) interspersed with various job interviews, where we see her wearing a blazer for the first time, trying to dress the part. Ultimately, it’s not the blazer that lands her a new position, it’s her honesty about why she’s looking for work—“I've got to leave my job because I shagged my boss.”
She quits her job the next day in a bright pink shirt, a couple shades louder than her usual palette—both a premonition of and fortitude for the bold move she’s about to make. And Perpetua, in the same dependable outfit as always, transcends her identity as office grump and surprises Bridget by standing up for her.
This triumph doesn’t last long, however, as Bridget cannot escape the humiliation of having a body. She may not be working for Daniel Cleaver anymore, but her first major on-air gig makes her a national laughingstock as her body and her clumsiness become a punchline.
It’s in the aftermath of this incident that she heads to a dinner party with a particularly nauseating group of people, all in couples (of course Mark and Natasha are there). As Bridget is forced to answer for all single, childless women in their thirties, we cut to Natasha, severe and sophisticated in her sleeveless black turtleneck sweater. Bridget’s had enough and prepares to leave, but as she’s putting her coat back on, Mark comes downstairs to confess his feelings for her. Bridget didn’t come dressed to impress—she’s in an oversized burgundy crewneck sweater, nothing tight or sheer—but Mark doesn’t care.
As she’s prepping to host her birthday dinner, Mark shows up, sees that she’s in over her head, and offers to help. Bridget’s in the same shirt she wore for her job interview, a plain but sophisticated lavender boatneck. Daniel crashes the party in the middle of dinner, and the mood shifts. His floppy hair reads as disheveled rather than insouciant, he’s read the room wrong, he assumed she’d be alone. Mark Darcy’s buttoned-up demeanor starts to look more respectful by contrast. You’ll have to watch the movie itself to see the fight scene, which ends with a broken glass window. Mark Darcy even keeps his tie on for the fight! He still can’t completely let go, still hasn’t told Bridget the entire story, even though it would fully exonerate him.
We’ve now spent a year with Bridget, and it’s Christmastime again. Bridget’s moping around her parents’ house, again in patterned pajamas, when her mom inadvertently corrects a misconception Bridget has about Mark Darcy and Bridget realizes she’s been judging him for a mistake he never made. She’s dressed and ready for the Darcys’ holiday party minutes later, and the simple black dress she’s chosen reads almost like an apology, or maybe a self-conscious attempt at a more Natasha-like outfit. Mark’s abandoned the reindeer sweater this year, but he’s wearing a brightly colored tie emblazoned with snowmen, and you can sense Bridget’s evolved generosity when she clocks it, how differently she sees him this year as opposed to last year. But she’s too late—Mark’s leaving for a new job in New York, and Natasha’s going with him.
Mark Darcy literally flies to New York, says “Nope,” and gets right back on a plane to London after realizing Bridget is more important to him than Natasha or this new job. He does take the time to change into a turtleneck sweater before he goes to her apartment, though—finally! No tie!
When Mark walks out of Bridget’s apartment, we’re led to believe (as Bridget does) that he’s been so offended by what he’s seen in her diary that he’s changed his mind. Bridget’s not even fully dressed, but she throws on a pair of sneakers and runs out into the snow to find him and explain herself.
This outfit is a triumph. Bridget’s only priority in that moment is to rectify a misunderstanding, to apologize, to make things right—what’s at stake is so much more important to her than how she presents herself to the outside world. The last time she was wearing (the equivalent of) underwear in public was at the tarts and vicars party, in a costume intended to be sexy and revealing. This is the first time we see her truly forget to care about how she’s perceived in public. Zebra print undies, house cardigan, and running shoes will have to do.
It would be easy to ignore the clothes in this movie, but I think that’s the point. This was the same era as Sex and the City (Bridget and season one Carrie are the exact same age!), but their wardrobes couldn’t be more different. Everyone wanted to be Carrie, but Carrie’s life was a fantasy—I would wager that many of us can actually see ourselves more easily in Bridget.1
You didn’t have to relate to the specifics of Bridget’s life to recognize something in her vulnerability. “Bridget Jones’ Diary is definitely the first place where I understood that women didn’t have to be perfect,” said Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie, in the recent BBC documentary. “I was someone who made a lot of mistakes and I wasn’t very together. As a Black woman I was like okay, I should also be strong, but then I felt this affinity to this white woman who was also getting into messy situations.”
- “The Complicated Legacy of Bridget Jones” by Clare Thorp
Can you imagine Carrie Bradshaw owning only one winter coat, and getting it in black? Or digging through the racks at Century 21, trying to find a Theory blazer in her size? Because Bridget is so much closer to reality, it’s easier to empathize with her when she envisions everyone else as having it all together, easier to feel that envy and insecurity on her behalf when she compares herself to the two lanky brunettes with sharp cheekbones, these career women who also seem to have cracked the code on appearing pulled-together and sophisticated in public.
This specific era of media jobs has been romanticized in the office siren trend of the last year or two, but I don’t see Bridget Jones as the proto-office siren, or inspiration for the trend.2 I actually think she’s a refreshing antidote to its sleek, corporate glamour. Bridget isn’t cosplaying, she’s not trying out a new ‘-core.’ She’s just a woman getting dressed for work.
For those interested in dressing like Bridget Jones, an abundance of secondhand items await you below!
Many, but certainly not all of us—and again, just in comparison to Carrie. There are no main characters in Bridget Jones’s Diary that are not white, which feels like more of a reflection on Bridget’s family and social circle than what London actually looks like.
This movie is one of my favourite movies of all time and I’ve probably watched it over a hundred times yet I still hadn’t clocked all of the meaningful wardrobe cues you’ve detailed here. It makes me want to watch it again with fresh eyes! You’re so right about Perpétua, Bridget’s SAME AGE foil, ie late 30s 😵😵😵😵.
What a thoughtful take on Bridget Jones! It really made me fall in love with the movie. Also I totally relate, I still don't get the When Harry Met Sally hype.