Remember the McConaissance—back when Matthew McConaughey suddenly became everyone’s favourite actor after Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective dragged him out of endless rom-coms and into a world of award ceremonies and critical acclaim? Well, it feels like right now we’re right in the middle of something similar for his Dazed and Confused co-star Parker Posey.
We’re not sure whether we should call it the Parkerssaince or the Poseyssaince, but her scene-stealing performance as the lorazepam-chomping Southern matriarch Victoria Ratliff in the slowburn third season of The White Lotus has been up there, solidifying her place as not just one of the sharpest comedy actresses of her generation—but perhaps most importantly—a true eyewear icon.
While everyone is discussing her character’s super-specific (and apparently regionally correct) North Carolina accent—in particular her unique pronunciation of the words ‘Buddhism’ and ‘tsunami’—we’re just as interested in her unique style, casually pairing $43,000 Rolex watches with quaint parasols and unattainable eyewear. She might not know whether she’s in Thailand or Taiwan, but she knows a good pair of specs when she sees ‘em.
And as with everything on Mike White’s show—where even the most minute detail is laced with symbolism (as dissected by the amateur detectives on Reddit)—there’s more to Ratliff’s shades than meets the eye.
Custom-made for the show—both the oversized tortoiseshell frames she wears and her only-slightly-more-subtle butterfly frames take inspiration from vintage designs from the 1950s, only adding to the out-of-time feel of her character.
Things get even deeper when you realise the vintage shades that the costume designers referenced weren’t just any old sunglasses either, and were specifically those worn by Ava Gardner—pretty much the poster girl for mid-century Southern belles.
And it turns out that’s just the tip of the eyewear iceberg—her career of off-the-wall roles mirrored in her choice of wild shades, from the rose-tinted spectacles glasses of her recent GAP campaign right back to the beefed up wayfarers she wears as a cynical temp in Clockwatchers.
Described at Sundance festival in ‘95 as ‘the first postmodern actress’, Posey wasn’t called the ‘Queen of the Indies’ for nothing, and a glance through her IMDB is like strolling straight past the huge cardboard cutout of Waterworld-era Mel Gibson in your local video shop back in the mid-90s and heading for the corner where all the weird, left-field stuff is stashed.
She was the original mean girl in Dazed and Confused… she was notorious art dealer Mary Boone in Basquiat… she was even in Coneheads… and then there’s her trilogy of films for cult indie director Hal Hartley and her countless appearances in Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries (often alongside another guest at The White Lotus hotel, Jennifer Coolidge).
As Generation Z rummages through the remnants of Gen X culture, the countless independent films Posey played a big part in are being rediscovered and reappraised with fresh eyes. 1995’s Party Girl is a prime example of this in action. 30 years on from its release, it’s been given a new lease of life in the wake of Posey’s recent attention—praised for both its diverse cast and its light, carefree nature.
Sort of like the reverse of those old films where a dowdy librarian lets her hair down, casts off her prescription frames and is liberated by the bright lights of the city, this gem of ‘90s cinema is the story of Mary, an NYC club kid in the midst of an existential crisis, finally finding a purpose in life when she’s forced to work at a public library and get her head around the Dewey Decimal System.
Dressed in a Pinterest-ready blend of golden-age Hollywood glamour, stolen Gauiter jackets and whatever was on the rails of the thrift stores that day, Posey’s wardrobe here is a true window into New York at a time when rent was just about affordable and Michael Alig and his cohort were still the darlings of the discotheque.
Even when she’s grabbing a street-side falafel (with extra hot sauce, a side of baba ganoush and a seltzer, no less) and heading for her first day as a library clerk, she’s decked out in a leopard print shawl, red gloves and a pair of small, round, scarlet-framed sunglasses that look straight out of the Cutler and Gross workshop.
This was 90s style, via 70s style, via 40s style, as decades merged and meshed to form something new and impossible to pinpoint—which is probably why the outfits and the eyewear resonate so much today in the everything-at-once-era of hyper nostalgia.
Her appearance in Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation is equally iconic—managing to outdo even Rose Mcgowan’s Cobain-esque white plastic cat-eyes in the sunglasses-stakes thanks to a huge pair of heart-shaped frames and a huge Dolly Parton-esque platinum wig.
Echoing film critic Roger Ebert’s famous quote about how no film featuring Harry Dean Stanton can ever be altogether bad, Posey has a habit of making drab films a fair bit more bearable, which means that as this season of The White Lotus drags itself glacially to its finale, at least there’s one reason to keep watching… Victoria Rafliff and her shades.
