The Clueless House, 30 Years Later

Cher's McMansion may have been built on architectural pastiche but we still thought it was totally phat.

Cher says these columns date all the way back to 1972, but this house was actually built in 1993.

Clueless is officially 30 years old.

I can’t understate the impact Clueless had on millennials. To quote from my own book: “Cher Horowitz managed to validate my entire existence. Clueless became my baseline barometer for cool, and my guide to aspirational living.”

When millennials first saw this master reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s Emma, the satire went over our heads. Instead, the film became a fundamental building block for how my generation viewed wealth — it told us that being a moneyed teen could give you adult-like agency in a very “the rules do not apply” world (hello, Cher driving around town in a Jeep on a learner’s permit or wearing a plastic top hat to history class).

In Emma, class isn’t just about how much money you have — it’s about where that money comes from, how long you’ve had it, and how little you need to show it off. For Cher and her Reagan-bred cohort, those nuances have evaporated. Wealth is the whole story, and “classy” means having columns that date all the way back to the ‘70s.

Grecian columns, Italian-esque balustrades, French windows, it’s the Build-a-Bear of movie houses.

Enter the McMansion, a postmodern phenomenon built on architectural pastiche and faux opulence.

According to Virginia McAlester, author of A Field Guide to American Houses and doyenne of domestic architecture, the term McMansion refers to the oversize scale of these homes: “This penchant for size, particularly when interspersed amid small, earlier neighboring houses — or scattered on super-large far-flung rural lots — led to the nickname McMansion, initially used for Millennium Mansions but now referring to any new house deemed to be either oversized in comparison with adjacent homes or disjointed in style.”

Tai saying “and my bottoms, they don’t feel nothing like steel,” is as declassé as working out to Buns of Steel.

Disjointed in style indeed. Cher’s house combines an astonishing array of references that blend into a kind of generalized “European” imitation — one that some Americans at the time deemed to be “elegant.” The exterior is neoclassical, the windows kinda French, and the grand staircase has scrollwork worthy of an Olive Garden.

No American princess can survive without a sweeping staircase.

What made Cher’s house feel so believable — even desirable — to millennial girls wasn’t just the wealth on display, but the geographic context. This was Beverly Hills, the mythical epicenter of American glamour that we didn’t understand as a breeding ground for new money.

We do need to give Clueless props for its technological advances. Does a computerized wardrobe as sophisticated as Cher’s even exist?

So we didn’t clock the tackiness. The marble floors, the overtly lawyerly office, the chandeliers everywhere — it all passed as good taste, simply because of its 90210 zip code.

If Josh decides to go into environmental law, he’ll never own the kind of green marble dining table Mel has.

Cher’s father’s art collection confuses the discussion of taste even more. When Cher has Christian over for a date (or at least what she thinks is a date), he notes that her father “has a well-rounded [art] collection,” as he admires a poolside Claes Oldenburg statue.

Just being able to say “I have a sculpture garden” sounds gauche.

We see glimpses of other sculptures in this scene — works meant to resemble Henry Moore, Giacometti, even Michelangelo. But Cher’s response — “Daddy says it’s a good investment” — pretty much tells us that Mr. Horowitz isn’t buying art for culture; it’s all a money grab. (Then again, can an art “collector” ever portray real integrity when putting all one’s wealth on display is the definition of snobbery?)

Cher Horowitz or Cher Trump?

These backwards ideals of American grandeur seem especially relevant these days now that Trump has reentered the chat. His gilded, Rococo-fueled redecoration of the Oval Office pushes the boundaries of ostentatiousness and comes across as aggressively masculine — power as decor, decor as intimidation.

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(But really, Trump’s White House makeover is all just a bit of movie magic — if we are to believe the above video that identifies the gilded fireplace appliqués as $58 buys from Home Depot.)

We can at least rest easy knowing that Cher’s house had no political agenda — even if it was a symbol of American capitalism, it wasn’t trying to rule the world. It was just offering a fantasy where the fireplaces were remote-controlled and the architecture could get weird.