Eighty-five years on, Stel­la Dal­las remains a style icon

Stel­la Dal­las opens with a brief series of shots in which the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter (née Mar­tin) exits her front door at the sight of work­ers return­ing home, tidies the ruf­fled col­lar of her blouse, smooths her hair, and pos­es while read­ing a care­ful­ly select­ed col­lec­tion of poet­ry on her front lawn.

Though sev­er­al men car­ry­ing lunch box­es greet Stel­la, she pays them no atten­tion; the object of her affec­tions is Stephen Dal­las (John Boles), a wealthy exec­u­tive of the town mill. When he approach­es her fence to light a cig­a­rette, she feigns dis­in­ter­est, but her façade is instant­ly dropped when she low­ers the book to intent­ly observe him as he con­tin­ues strolling. This cal­cu­lat­ed exchange, involv­ing the strate­gic pre­sen­ta­tion of her body, sets in motion her plan to become upward­ly mobile.

Even­tu­al­ly, Stel­la seduces Stephen with a staged encounter that posi­tions her as a desir­able domes­tic part­ner, enters a mar­riage with the mon­eyed man, and gives birth to their daugh­ter Lau­rel. How­ev­er, Stella’s class dif­fer­ences become appar­ent through her increas­ing­ly flam­boy­ant out­fits and their rela­tion­ship dis­solves as quick­ly as it began, with Lau­rel caught in the mid­dle. Real­is­ing that her trans­gres­sions have caused Lau­rel to become a sub­ject of ridicule, Stel­la offi­cial­ly sev­ers ties to her fam­i­ly and relin­quish­es a rela­tion­ship with her daugh­ter in order to secure Laurel’s suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion into high society.

Released in 1937, King Vidor’s Stel­la Dal­las was a remake of the 1925 silent film also pro­duced by Samuel Gold­wyn and adapt­ed from Olive Hig­gins Prouty’s nov­el of the same name. Bar­bara Stan­wyck and Anne Shirley – who played Lau­rel – earned Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tions for Best Actress and Best Sup­port­ing Actress for their endur­ing per­for­mances, firm­ly cement­ing the film as a mater­nal melo­dra­ma. Giv­en its dev­as­tat­ing con­clu­sion – Stel­la tear­ful­ly watch­es her daughter’s wed­ding through a win­dow in the rain while a police offi­cer escorts her away – it’s no sur­prise that the film is fre­quent­ly cit­ed as an exam­ple of a ​“weepie” that exem­pli­fies the help­less, sac­ri­fi­cial mother.

For­tu­nate­ly, not all is lost for our sar­to­ri­al­ly adven­tur­ous pro­tag­o­nist. When Stella’s resource­ful­ness is fore­ground­ed, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a resis­tant read­ing emerges, and her fail­ure to assim­i­late into her husband’s life becomes a refusal. She duti­ful­ly per­forms as a refined woman who is eager to please until her wealth is firm­ly secured with a mar­riage con­tract and a child, and sub­se­quent­ly casts the role aside to fur­nish a max­i­mal­ist wardrobe filled with prints and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments through her new­found resources. Along a line of think­ing that grants agency to Stel­la, her fla­grant dis­re­gard for dress codes works to desta­bilise both tra­di­tion­al look­ing rela­tions and the social strat­i­fi­ca­tion main­tained by fashion.

One explic­it instance of her refusal takes place after attend­ing a ball, where Stel­la returns home wear­ing jew­ellery that she seem­ing­ly removed at Stephen’s request. When he dis­plays con­tempt for ​“those ear­rings, that cheap imi­ta­tion neck­lace,” she snaps back to assert her own author­i­ty over the realm of fash­ion: ​“I’ve always been known to have stacks of style.” Cou­pled with the open­ing scene, this ear­ly dis­play of defi­ance exem­pli­fy­ing her unyield­ing nature estab­lish­es Stel­la as a woman who is devot­ed to the expres­sion of per­son­al style above companionship.

Of course, Stephen’s descrip­tor ​“cheap” is also sat­u­rat­ed with clas­sism. As an instru­ment of the upper class, where man­ner­isms and unwrit­ten rules of taste are passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, he’s invest­ed in enforc­ing social hier­ar­chy in addi­tion to patri­archy. There’s an expec­ta­tion for Stel­la to aban­don her work­ing-class pat­terns of con­sump­tion and adorn­ment, to dress in a man­ner that sub­tly alludes to their wealth through a restrained approach that is free of visu­al excess.

It’s an aes­thet­ic that calls to mind archi­tect Adolf Loos’ ​“Orna­ment and Crime,” which argued against orna­men­ta­tion in all cre­ative arts for its imprac­ti­cal­i­ty and waste­ful­ness. Pub­lished in 1918, the essay chal­lenged the pop­u­lar­i­ty of dec­o­ra­tion at the end of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly Art Nou­veau, and sim­i­lar­ly grounds his crit­i­cism in class politics.

For Loos, orna­men­ta­tion was the sole man­ner of achiev­ing pur­pose and hap­pi­ness for the work­ing class, where­as the rul­ing class, with its sophis­ti­cat­ed taste and oth­er joys, had no need for friv­o­li­ty or dis­plays of pow­er. Extend­ing his util­i­tar­i­an beliefs to fash­ion, he cites silk, satin, lace and vel­vet – all fab­rics cher­ished by Stel­la – as belong­ing to indi­vid­u­als who were uncul­ti­vat­ed and primitive.

Against the dis­missal of orna­men­ta­tion in the 20^th cen­tu­ry, Stella’s unabashed love of frills and rib­bons assaults the sen­si­bil­i­ties of Stephen and his peers. She pos­es as a threat who must be neu­tralised through ostracism so that she acqui­esces to their unin­spired tastes or removes her­self from high soci­ety. Faith­ful to her con­vic­tions, Stel­la ulti­mate­ly choos­es the lat­ter, pre­fer­ring to wield fash­ion as a mech­a­nism to pur­sue plea­sure above rep­u­ta­tion or shal­low approval. After all, a long plaid jack­et will pro­vide more warmth than her hus­band, and a pol­ka-dot­ted dress with bows and tiered ruf­fles is des­tined to out­live their marriage.

Though the end­ing remains gut-wrench­ing for Stel­la as a moth­er, she stands vic­to­ri­ous as a style icon who defied dress codes and con­test­ed the goal of min­imis­ing one’s pres­ence through clothes that flat­ter, cinch and restrict the body. Her enor­mous gowns that occu­py space with­in the frame com­pel us to look, but are unmoved by our judgements.

Wrapped in a fox shawl and topped with a veiled hat, she con­fi­dent­ly stomps the grounds of the coun­try club in a mul­ti-lay­ered out­fit that guests liken to a Christ­mas tree, but she prefers the com­pa­ny of clothes to peo­ple any­way. In the final scene, her gar­ments rec­i­p­ro­cate her devo­tion and arrive at her defence at last: the struc­tured, fur-col­lared tweed coat and wide-brimmed hat serve as armour, pro­tect­ing her against the ele­ments and a soci­ety unfor­giv­ing to sar­to­r­i­al visionaries.