A love letter to Enid Coleslaw, beauty icon of Ghost World. The early 2000s film cultivated a rare, highly individualized beauty aesthetic.
Remember when faces were different and makeup was used as a tool for character definition, exploration and storytelling instead of sanitization and comfortable conformity? Ghost World (2001) is one of the best examples of films with iconic beauty looks from the early 2000s. The dark comedy directed by Terry Zwigoff is based on the comic book Ghost World by Daniel Clowes. Young Scarlett Johansson and Steve Buscemi star in a disconcerting watch that touches on age, social isolation and anxiety. But most captivating is the character Enid Coleslaw, rare beauty icon of Ghost World.
Enid Coleslaw is played by Thora Birch, a child actress who rose to fame as Jane Burnham inĀ American Beauty. She is the beacon of emo goth freak girl chic, with her dark black bob, thick black glasses, skinny eyebrows and rosebud painted lips. Her best beauty looks in Ghost World also include the fleeting moment in time when she dyes her hair green and the scene when she meets Seymour (Steve Buscemi) in his garage. Here, she wears a highly specific cool toned beige lipstick with a stark green undertone. It looks like the color of old school manila folders found in an even older rusty file cabinet. It’s really, really good. With little other makeup, it verges on editorial and solidifies her as outsider with a rare point of view.
The glasses are decidedly part of the beauty vibe, and they dominate. Yet Enid Coleslaw’s hair is also so signature in Ghost World. Her approach to DIY dye in her bedroom bathroom with a stained towel says it all. Also important is the way she accessorized her bob: weird little safety pins with charms, a white marabou headband, clips, that on anyone else, would read as preppy.
Ghost World does a great job at capturing everyday absurdities and wacky, random characters seen in places like the local diner. That’s part of the reason why the beauty narrative in the film is so strong. Enid Coleslaw stands out and can’t be put into one box. She was the weird girl before the concept even existed.
Her personal style is also worth mentioning: she wears graphic t-shirts and funny vintage clothes. If she existed in today’s landscape, she’d be the one mixing antique shawls with vintage Yohji Yamamoto found at Beacon’s Closet. She’d be dying her hair herself. She’d be front row at the Miu Miu show.
It’s worth noting that Enid Coleslaw was really so ahead of her time. She was the budding beauty and style epitome of an aesthetic and point of view that would later come to fruition circa 2005 – 2013. Think: Tavi Gevinson, Rookie Magazine editors who lived by DIY, and especially, beauty writer Arabelle Sicardi, who once documented her highly specific outfits on her fashion blog FashionPirate. Most of these women wore glasses and they were all a little bit alternative.
Today, Enid Coleslaw as a beauty and fashion icon is the perfect manifestation. Her influence lives in some of the everyday icons (randomly walking by on the sidewalk, in a grocery store…) I see from the Gen X era. In watching contemporary teen media today, it’s also impossible not to notice how Ghost World may have served as a reference. Think: Barbie Ferreira in Euphoria, forever serving weird girl sexy.
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