The '40s look is really kind of cool: going off to war, entertaining the troops. But I have a teacher, who’s also a friend, Irene. She had just gotten married at that time and she told me it was nothing like it appears to be. It was awful—she was a smoker and she couldn’t find any cigarettes and she worried every day that her husband wasn’t going to come back alive. When you look back on it, the Depression looks sort of romantic, but it wasn’t. I guess time tends to romanticize things. I don’t think much happened during the '40s except for war and I think that was sort of negative.”


Molly Ringwald in Interview, August 1985, all photos by Matthew Rolston.

“I like the '20s first and foremost because the fashion and everything was just really new and beautiful. Not that many things are really new now, because we’ve discovered so much and you can’t unlearn things and make them new again…”


Molly Ringwald on the cover of Interview, August 1985, image by Matthew Rolston & Richard Bernstein.

“I think of the '60s as a renaissance – sort of like the '20s. I like anything that is kind of rebellious. Individualism really appeals to me. The thing is that it got to the point that everybody was doing the same thing, so that it wasn’t really individual anymore. If I lived in the '60s I would definitely be the type to wear miniskirts and false eyelashes and…”  

"It’s hard to be objective about the era you’re living in. I know that the ‘70s seemed to be one of the most boring times in history ever. Ugly fashion, ugly music; nothing happened. It was like everybody was asleep. There were a few good things—Bowie was one of them.”