“Well, it’s nice to see you, too.”
Margot Tenenbaum is a closely guarded secret.
“Gentlemen…how much do you already know?”
“Very little, I'm afraid.”
Her thoughts and feelings, and her entire life,
are a mystery, even to her nearest and dearest.
“I never understood her myself.”
Yet in another way, Margot wears her
inner life on her sleeve — she loudly expresses
herself through her style.
It’s fitting that the Margot Tenenbaum look remains
iconic nearly two decades after The Royal Tenenbaums’
release.
She demonstrates how storytellers can express
character through aspects of physicality,
like costume, makeup and symbolic objects.
Director Wes Anderson had a crystal clear idea
of Margot’s appearance from the very beginning.
“And he said, ‘You know your hair is
gonna look like this and you're wearing
this kind of eyeliner and you're gonna be
wearing an Izod tennis dress with the fur coat’”
So it’s as if this character was partially conceived
through her sartorial choices.
Here’s our take on how Margot’s look speaks
for her, and what it has to say.
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Each of the disparate parts of Margot’s look expresses
some aspect of who she is,
so let’s unpack each item to undress the woman
underneath.
Her preppy polo dresses and Hermès Bergen bag reflect
the prestige and wealth of the Tenenbaum family.
Royal Tenenbaums' costume designer,
Karen Patch, even said the bag “could have been
[Margot’s] mother’s”
The Birkin bag is a major status symbol.
“The Birkin bag?
Really?
That's not even your style.”
“No, honey, it's not so much the style
as what carrying it means.”
Her Bass loafers, likewise, Patch said were
“very typical of that time and the country club kind of look.”
Patch has said the contradictions
of Margot’s style are what make it so compelling.
In her words,
“She was dressed in conservative pieces,
but she was rebellious as a person: she never smiled;
she wore heavy makeup; she chain-smoked;
she was sexually promiscuous.
I think those contradictions— the fact that she was wearing
what looked like her mother's clothes,
or something kind of country-club conservative—
made her edgy.”
Margot’s little-girl barrettes, her delicate
pink gloves, and the fact that she’s
still wearing all these
posh items from her early years --
reflect the inner child who’s never grown up.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Margot’s style
is that it’s fixed -- her look stays exactly the same
over the decades.
On the one hand, as Patch noted,
this indicates she
“knows who she is at a pretty young age.”
On the other hand, her unchanging
style represents her arrested development.
The joke about the Tenenbaum
kids is that they’re little adults.
But paradoxically, these mini-grown-ups have
aged into adults who are stuck in childhood.
“Dad.”
“Thank you, my sweet boy.”
In part, their arrested development stems
from their precociousness.
“He started buying real estate in his
early teens and seemed to have an almost
preternatural understanding of international finance.”
Margot doesn’t want to move beyond her
childhood because it was the apex of her achievement.
“She was a playwright, and won a Braverman Grant of
$50,000 in the ninth grade.”
To her, growing up means becoming
less brilliant and exceptional.
The other source of their perpetual childhood
is the scarring behavior of their cold father, Royal.
“Was it our fault?”
“No, no.
Obviously, we made certain
sacrifices as a result of having children,
but, uh, no.
Lord, no.”
A trauma may lead to feeling frozen in
the psychological stage you were at
when the disturbing event occurred.
“This is my adopted daughter, Margot Tenenbaum.”
For Margot, the wound that’s never healed
is her father’s rejection of her as both a daughter
and a playwright.
“What'd you think, Dad?”
“Mmm... didn't seem believable to me.”
Next, the blunt bob echoes Margot’s blunt tongue and
uncompromising nature.
“You think I'm especially not a genius?”
“Well, I just don't use that word lightly.”
This hairstyle is associated with
female rebellion and emancipation, as in
the 1920s, women started wearing
shorter hair that went against gender norms.
“Granny, what do you think?”
“Oh, it is you.
I thought it was
a man wearing your clothes.”
Then, of course, there’s that eyeliner,
which signals Margot’s melancholic outlook.
If the eyes are the windows to the soul,
lining those windows with heavy darkness
announces a storm raging inside.
“I think he's been very depressed.”
“So am I.”
“So are you, what?”
These raccoon eyes embody teen angst.
“I think she was slightly me as a teenager,
a little bit disaffected but a lot more, a lot more
damaged than I was, I think.”
Many can immediately relate to Margot,
because they see their own blues and
ennui reflected on her face.
Yet she brings a glamour to this attitude.
Margot makes melancholy and moodiness look cool—
just as there’s something haunting about her tragic
view of life.
“I think we're just going to have to be secretly
in love with each other and leave it at that, Richie.”
Margot’s eyeliner evokes the allure
of a classic movie star.
In the age of silent films, actresses often wore
heavy eyeliner to accentuate their
facial expressions onscreen.
60s ‘It girls’ also went for this dramatic eye.
And something about Margot belongs to that
60s and 70s era, just like her soundtrack.
[Music playing]
The Fur Coat is quintessential Margot, and encapsulates her
contradictory nature.
It’s out-of-date and incorrect to wear fur,
yet on Margot the old-world garment takes on a punk edge.
Again, it gives the feel like she’s been rummaging
around in the family closet, and nothing puts
the “Royal” in Royal Tenenbaums like fur.
Most of all, this vintage look captures the film’s
romantic view of the past.
[Singing] “These days I seem to think a lot
about the things that I forgot to do.”
One of its major influences is The Magnificent Ambersons—
Orson Welles’ film about a special family’s decline.
“The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873.”
Anderson alludes to The Magnificent Ambersons’
title by using his patriarch’s first name to describe
the Tenenbaum family as “royal.”
The Royal Tenenbaums is about a wistfulness
for a bygone era when the Tenenbaum family
was still great and the children were
still prodigies.
“In fact, virtually all memory of the brilliance
of the young Tenenbaums had been erased by two
decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster.”
Patch has said that Margot’s coat was
inspired by the 1960s film The World of Henry Orient,
where a schoolgirl named Valerie wears a fur coat
as she explores New York City.
Young Margot and Richie’s camping out
in the public archives
“They shared a sleeping bag
and survived on crackers and root beer.”
comes from the novel
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,
about a brother and sister who run away and live at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Then we have what’s hidden inside the coat pockets—
Margot’s cigarettes.
“She smokes?”
“Yes.”
This pack of smokes symbolizes the secrecy
at the heart of who she is.
“None of the Tenenbaums knew she was a smoker,
which she had been since the age of 12.
Nor were they aware of her first marriage and
divorce to a recording artist in Jamaica.
She kept a private studio in Mockingbird Heights
under the name ‘Helen Scott’”
These days it can feel like the whole purpose of having
experiences is to share them with the world,
“Pics or it didn’t happen.”
but Margot’s unknowability
is what makes her so entrancing to viewers.
While Margot is private about every aspect of her life,
her cigarettes specifically represent how she hides
her suffering.
“Your brother's all torn up inside.”
“Well, so am I, but I'm not going to discuss it with you.”
Her brother Richie’s depression is out in the open,
but Margot’s lifelong chain smoking is
a private form of slow suicide.
“How long have you been a smoker?”
“22 years.”
“Well, I think you should quit.”
Margot’s smoking is a textbook example
of sublimation— a defense mechanism that redirects
a negative or inappropriate impulse into a more socially
acceptable outlet.
Specifically, smoking is a way of sublimating
her attraction to her adopted brother.
Cigarettes are phallic objects, onscreen depictions of smoking
can treat it as an almost sexual compulsion,
[Inhales] “Oh my God.”
[Laughter]
and in our modern world this habit is often
considered a shameful vice,
“Listen, don’t give me a problem about the cigarettes—“
“Such a filthy habit
just as Margot’s incestuous love
for Richie could be considered dirty or sinful.
“You're in love with Richie which is sick and gross.”
The connection between Margot’s smoking and
her feelings for Richie is exposed in the graveyard
scene, where she subtly reveals that she knows
he’s in love with her.
“By the way, I heard about that letter you sent to Eli.”
“You dropped some cigarettes.”
“Those aren't mine.”
“They just fell out of your pocket.”
Her firm disavowal of the cigarettes,
right after she’s raised the issue of Richie’s
romantic interest in her, contains the subtext of
denying her love for her brother.
Yet here she can’t get away with saying
the cigarettes aren't hers, and her illicit feelings
can’t stay hidden forever.
After Margot and Richie finally admit their love,
Margot tries to quit smoking,
“What are you chewing on?”
“My nicotine inhaler.”
“It's supposed to help me quit.”
symbolizing that she’s ready to at least try to
leave behind her self-destructive suffering.
“Is it working?”
“Not really.”
Underneath the childish or conservative items,
Margot is wearing a slip.
This piece of her look represents her alluring,
sexual side.
And throughout the film, she’s like a siren bewitching
all the men around her.
“I can't stop thinking about you.
I went away for a year, and it only got worse
and I don't know what to do.”
A big part of Margot’s identity boils down
to—-daddy issues.
Psychology professor, Linda Neilsen says,
“Women who grow up with meaningful, comfortable,
conversational relationships with their dads make better
choices in who they date, sleep with, and marry.”
On some level, all of Margot’s
relationships are a way of seeking the validation
she never got from her father.
Yet she also imitates the toxic behavior
she learned from this bad role model.
“Maybe, uh, I wasn't as true to her as
I could've been.”
“You've made a cuckold of me.”
“I know.”
“Many times over.”
She rejects love when it’s offered to her,
just as her father rejected her love.
“You need to eat something.
May I make you dinner?”
“No, thank you.”
He constantly reminds her that she’s not
a “real” Tenenbaum.
“Well, she wasn't your real grandmother and
I never knew how much interest you had, sweetie.”
So her incestuous feelings for Richie
could spring from a need to be loved
by another Tenenbaum male,
or even a subconscious desire to procreate with
a Tenenbaum to have “real” Tenenbaum children.
Margot’s much older husband, Raleigh,
is a stand-in for Royal.
This is underscored by their similar names
and Royal’s sense of kinship and
protectiveness towards the man.
“I don't like the way you're treating Raleigh.”
“What are you talking about?
You don't even know him.”
“Well, I've met him, and I don't think he deserves—”
“Stay out of it.”
Margot’s promiscuity could also be a way
of displacing the love she feels for Richie.
Since she can’t pursue her attraction to him,
she projects her sexual feelings onto others,
as underlined when she explains why
she had an affair with Eli Cash.
“Anyway, we mostly just talked about you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.
I guess that was the attraction,
if you know what I mean.”
After Richie learns about Margot’s past,
he cuts off his hair and beard.
This is an interesting spin on the Bible’s
Samson and Delilah.
Delilah has Samson’s hair cut to take away his strength,
whereas here Richie hurts himself because he’s
torn apart by the revelation of Margot’s sexual history.
“I heard about your ex-husband.”
“Desmond?”
“I guess so.
I didn't get his name.”
So as a siren-like figure, Margot seems to
unintentionally put a spell on men,
almost driving them to their deaths.
“Why'd you do it?
Because of me?”
“Yeah, but it's not your fault.”
Finally, we have the Missing Piece.
Margot’s missing finger symbolizes her feeling
of being incomplete or not belonging.
“Four years later Margot disappeared
alone for two weeks and came back with
half a finger missing.”
In her play, Margot’s zebra costume has
bullet holes and blood on it
communicating how she feels wounded by Royal.
“Well, did you at least think the characters
were well-developed?”
“What characters?
This is a bunch of
little kids dressed up in animal costumes.”
“Good night, everyone.”
Her wound is made physical when she
runs away to visit her biological family,
and one of her relatives, presumably her father,
chops off her finger.
So the lost finger reminds her of her inability to fully
fit in anywhere.
And her prosthetic finger is made of wood, recalling
the circumstances of her failed search.
The ice cream parlor scene, where all the tables are
occupied by fathers and daughters,
“You probably don’t even know my middle name.”
“That’s a trick question.
You don’t have one.”
“Helen.”
underlines that Margot won’t ever heal from
Royal’s failure to love her, just as her finger
will never grow back.
“Can't somebody be a shit their whole life
and try to repair the damage?”
As an adult, though, Margot turns Royal’s
rejection around and disavows him.
“He’s not your father.”
“Neither are you.”
She seems to accept her painful loss as a part of her,
“Did you try to sew it back on?”
“Wasn't worth it.”
just as she eventually takes ownership of being
an adopted Tenenbaum.
“I’m adopted, did you know that?
Well I am.”
There’s something punk rock about her missing finger—
it’s like a battle scar and what’s given her
the most pain, may be the key
to her potential happiness.
The fact that she’s adopted means that she and Richie
could ultimately be together, if they decide to be.
“It's probably illegal.”
“I don't think so.
We're not related by blood.”
“That's true.
Still frowned upon.
But then, what isn't these days, right?”
All of her pieces may not seem to “go together,”
but that’s the beauty — they add up to the enigmatic
person that is Margot, just as we ourselves
are made up of many mismatched,
incongruous parts.
So instead of trying to recreate Margot’s
specific outfits, to follow in her shoes and craft
a truly memorable style we should dream up
our own unique ensembles.
Whether it’s a favorite color you identify with,
the right pair of shades, a love for bling,
throwing out gender norms, keeping it minimal,
those shoes that remind you of home,
or the jacket that makes you feel like a rebel,
how you present yourself should express you.
Embrace the nuances and contradictions
of your full, complex self.
As Margot proves, individuality never
goes out of style.
“Margot Tenenbaum?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, since when?”
“Since always.”
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