Betty & Veronica

This is a story about Archie Comics. So how many Archie comic fans are in the house tonight? Okay, alright. And this show was recorded in part live in Boston. We're at WBUR City Space. Okay. And before I got on stage, WBUR producer Stephen Davey came up to ask the crowd a very important question. Well, who's team Veronica? Okay, who is team Betty? Okay, so this is a team Betty situation here. Okay. Sorry to start up the Boston-New York rivalry immediately, but come on, that's so funny. I have to say it was the most Boston thing in the world that like everyone's a Betty. I'm sorry, in New York you'd all be Veronica's. Because for those unfamiliar with the franchise, in the comics, Betty is the sweet, blonde girl next door, and Veronica is the raven-haired, globe-trotting, glamorous rich girl. I'll be Veronica enough for everybody else. That is, the most Veronica woman in Boston senior audio producer and host for the Boston Globe, Jasmine Aguilera. She knows everything there is to know about Betty and Veronica and Archie and everybody in the fictitious town of Riverdale, which is actually a lot more like Boston than New York. Even though there is an actual Riverdale that exists in New York, that is not Riverdale. Riverdale is based in a large part to Haverhill nearby. They have New England roots. Even Veronica's name, Veronica Lodge, is bursting with Massachusetts pride. Her name originated from Veronica Lake, who was an actress in the 40s, and a Massachusetts senator, Henry Cabot Lodge. Okay, point for New England. So Jasmine Aguilera is like an unaccredited Archie Comics expert. She is a mega fan. Archie is so important to me. It shaped who I was. I saw Archie Comics in a grocery store a while. I'm sure a lot of people have that same experience. and you know I was learning to read when I first saw those Archie comics they helped me learn to read so it really holds a very special place in my heart yeah so you might be wondering okay so I like Archie this is all kind of interesting why are we talking about Archie on a fashion podcast buckle up okay so I have loved Betty and Veronica fashion since I was a little kid and I aspired to be just like Veronica both as a source of my fashion inspiration and also a source of so much of my personality. If you loved Betty and Veronica fashion as a child, you know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what Jasmine is talking about. I also loved Archie Comics as a kid, even though it started out kind of by default when I was growing up. Archie Comics were the only reading material in the grocery store checkout aisle that were for kids that had any girls in it. Like the rest of the comic books mostly had monsters and superheroes. And then I really kept reading Archie comics because the characters were wearing the most extraordinary, interesting clothes. I was just mesmerized by them. I adored them. And Jasmine and I weren't alone. This is the argument we want to make, that it was actually Archie comics, as much as Barbie dolls or fashion magazines that shaped generations of style. And it was through a series of little accidents and coincidences that turned Betty and Veronica into pretty serious fashion models who meant so much to so many people, which we will tell you about after the break. Hey there, it's Robin from PRX, and I'm so excited to tell you about Radiotopia's newest show, Amityvilleville. Alex Goldman, host of Hyperfixed and former host of Reply All, teams up with his close friend, journalist, and supernatural phenomena enthusiast Carolyn Thompson to review all 91 movies in the Amityville franchise. Inspired by the true story of the DeFeo murders in 1974, the Amityville horror became the second highest grossing movie when it came out in 1979, inspiring books, documentaries, and of course, a sprawling and bizarre film franchise. Along the way, some enterprising filmmakers realized you can't copyright the name Amityville. which has led to a total of 91 movies in the franchise, including titles like Amityville Elevator, Amityville Outhouse, Amityville Job Interview, even Amityville in Space. And yes, these are all real movies. The show will feature recaps of all 91 movies in the order they were released, and there will also be special one-off episodes featuring interviews with the people involved in making of the films, or even in the investigation of the alleged haunting at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. The show we have cinema, pop culture, true crime, the ghost hunter industrial complex, and a couple of horror fans chopping it up. Don't miss it. Something that drew me to Archie over the comic books that featured superheroes or whatever was that they featured normal teenagers, all just hanging out together doing their normal teenage thing. But when Archie Comics first came out, these teenagers were not considered normal. Because teenagers were not considered normal. Period. Like, teenagers, as a concept, did not yet exist. It's really hard to believe, but even before in the 1910s and before that, you were a child and then you were an adult. And there was no in between. When Archie Comics first started in the 1940s, teenager was not a word. Teenagehood was not a stage of life. But then because of the Depression, people started to realize, like, it's better for my kids to stay in school longer. Public schooling was starting to expand. So this whole new class of almost adults started to spark up. And then especially after World War II, young adults didn't have to enlist anymore. It was like this new period of extended youth where you were sort of an adult, but you didn't have responsibilities. Like, what was this? And those almost adults were a big portion of the population. And so marketing started to pay attention. Hey, wait a minute. And so what followed after that was this new awareness of this demographic that hadn't existed before, which was teenagers. The word teenager came into mainstream culture in 1944. Archie Comics were before that. They came out in 1941. Archie Comics arguably helped shape the culture of what it means to be a teenager. So we're going to invite a very special guest to help explain where Archie came from, Joel Christian Gill. Joel Christian Gill is the chair of the Masters in Fine Arts and Visual Narrative at Boston University. Professor, cartoonist, historian. Hi, Joel. Hi, everybody. So, Archie Comics, where did they come from? Why were these the only comics that featured women? Misogyny, I'm sorry. I had something in my throat. Okay, but what would one day become Archie was started by this publisher, John Goldwater. When Goldwater started, they started as a magazine publishing company first. And they decided that they were going to buy old magazines, and then they were going to resell them overseas. And it was going to be a huge deal. And for three months, it was amazing. Then World War II happened. So they had to switch. And so they switched and they created a superhero comic because superhero comics were getting popular. Super popular. Everything was superhero comics. Fun fact, most people don't know this, but when Superman became popular, the only person that knew Superman was popular was the accountant because he could go through and see that this is the book that was actually the most popular. And once he found that out, he immediately left and created Wonder Man. Um, so, but, um, actually there's a whole series of comic covers where you see Archie, the superhero, I forget his name, but I think it was the Guardian, he was a superhero. The character that would become Archie started as a superhero. He's actually the one, the reason that Captain America has a round shield, because he had a triangle shield and they were too close together. And so they had to give Captain America the round shield. But somehow there's a shift to making a comic about a quote-unquote normal, relatable character, similar in age to what they imagined the reader would be. And then they decided to create Archie, which I think his original name, his nickname was Chip originally, but that's what they were calling him. And that comic took off. Like the superhero comic was not nearly as popular. It's like it fits a lane. So soldiers come back from World War II, and some of you might be familiar with this, but that was what they were sending in care packages. they were sending comics. And then when they came back after reading comics and learning and loving comics, it's like crime comics and all these different types of comics. And Archie just fits a vibe for a specific type of person. This specific type of person, this new creature called a teenager. Wasn't supposed to be the biggest thing in the company. Took it over within about five years. Tim Hanley is a historian of comics and author of Betty and Veronica, The Leading Ladies of Riverdale. I think when people think of Archie, they think of these teenagers having like typical adventures. I'm using air quotes because... They're not typical. They're white, upper-middle-class teenagers. And Archie was kind of buffoonish teenage antics. Archie and Jughead have any antics. Betty kind of mooning over him. What's really interesting about very early Archies is Betty is just kind of there to be the person who's in love with Archie and doesn't have any kind of extra character design. Betty shows up first. She's in the first panel of the first story of Archie ever. Betty has just moved into town and Archie is standing on a bicycle riding it down the road to impress her. Then he walks on a fence and falls off and like goes through a painting her father has. It's a whole slapstick situation that grows from there. So Betty's gaga for Archie from panel one And for about six months Archie would just screw things up left and right and Betty would be oh it okay Archie you so wonderful It was fun but it was fairly one note there wasn a lot of conflict So a few months in they introduced Veronica Veronica comes on the scene a couple months later and she supposed to be the antagonist She a source of conflict She the symbol of a dying debutante culture from the Gilded Age that came to small-town America. She moves from out of town. She's wealthy. All the boys go crazy for her. Archie is like middle class. Veronica's quite rich, so he can't afford to take her to the fancy restaurants or all the expensive places she wanted to go. And it creates a new dynamic in the comics where Archie has to work now, so there's a lot more struggle. And so while Betty was there originally, within a few years she kind of fades into the background. Then Veronica is really the dominant one for the next little while until they reach a sort of equilibrium. And even though the two leading women were now equally attractive to Archie and both vying for his attention for a while, Betty and Veronica did not interact with each other. Betty and Veronica barely spoke to each other at all. Archie was the focus and they sort of revolved around him. They were satellites to Archie. Yoo-hoo! Archie! Gee, Veronica. Hello, Veronica. They used to just not pass the Bechdel test. And you can hear this. Archie used to have a radio show in 1943. Well, Betty, school's almost out. Yes. How many more days? Well, I haven't figured it out exactly, Betty, but roughly speaking, there's about 41 hours, 15 minutes, and 30 seconds of school time left this term. Then by putting them together, by letting them sort of develop a friendship, they began to grow characters in ways they hadn't intended from the start. But it wasn't intentional to put Betty and Veronica together and to make them friends and to actually turn them into in-depth characters. Archie Comics sort of accidentally became kind of feminist. Not only was it one of the first comics that had women, but women actually doing things. Women having friendships, women having hobbies and interests. And why? It wasn't trying to make a statement. It was trying to fill a comic book. These comic artists had to fill so many pages each week. By the mid-1940s, they were putting out, I think, at least four or five of them, and it was only grown from there. And comics back in the day were about 72 pages long. It was a lot of material. Let's reuse old storylines. Very easy to just repurpose old storylines from Archie and Jughead and repurpose them for Betty and Veronica. So it was these two female characters taking on what was a typically male story. Just having the girls there, having them read their own stories was completely accidental. but massive for the characters and for the world of Archie as a whole. After all, the gender rules were still kind of being written in a way. Like there wasn't yet etiquette around what teens were or what they did yet. So yeah, why not give the gals the boy storylines? Bay and Veronica could do what Archie and Jughead did. They could have all these crazy antics. They're terrible cooks. They could play sports and get into all these activities. This was, accidentally, the first step in bringing fashion to the forefront was bringing women to the forefront. Betty and Veronica become these main characters, and clothing became integral to the plot of many of these stories, in part because in a lot of early Archie comics, there was a lot of gender bending. In the 1940s, there were a lot of stories that involved cross-dressing. There'd be a dance competition, and Veronica would put on some pants and a sweater and would dance with Betty, and they'd win the contest. And like Archie would have to dance with Reggie, it would go terribly. This was a fairly common storyline that happened several times over several years. Archie was kind of helping define what the teenager was. And at the moment, it was defining this kind of new freedom for teens until, dun, dun, dun, the Comics Code. How should we talk about the Comics Code, Joel? How should we talk about the Comics Code? It's a moral panic in line with, do y'all remember when D&D was causing demons to kill people in the 80s? Right. It's like it's just like that. It's hip hop is a is a moral panic. There's all these moral panics. And after World War Two, like I was saying that soldiers come back and they want to they want to read comics now. They're everybody's into comics, right? They make crime comics. They make psychological thrillers. They make detective novels. Batman actually started as a detective story. Like all of these things are coming out for the soldiers who were used to reading comics. Right. Comic books are an important contributing factor in many cases of juvenile delinquency. Fred Wertham was basically a pseudo-scientist. He was actually a civil rights activist as well. And he thought that this was going to help black children in Harlem. Most of his studies were done with black children in Harlem. And so he— Getting rid of comics would help black children in Harlem. Yeah, getting rid of comics, right? Yeah, okay. That's what's going to help the children, right? So he started—he writes this book called Seduction of the Innocent, where he basically uses his faulty research to say that comics were creating juvenile delinquency. There's an amazing video of one of the senators who was involved in this. He's like smoking a cigarette and he's like talking and he's like comics are destroying America And then it goes away and it shows these little boys and they're all reading these crime these comics And it's like this kid is reading a crime comic and he puts the crime comic He pulls out a knife and he starts stabbing a tree It is wild You said a senator Yeah this was a senator This went to the Senate This was a Senate hearing I mean that's not that crazy anymore It's true So yeah So, and so with that, the new moral panic was comics, right? And so the Comic Code Authority was created by John Goldwater. Yes, John Goldwater, the president of Archie Comics. And a number of other people in the comics industry because they were trying to get ahead of censorship. The Comics Code passed in 1954. And so they did things like, you can't have vampires in comics. You can't have horror. You can't even use the word horror. There's no sex, no drugs, no rock and roll, which, fun fact, leads directly to the underground comics, which are all sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It's like directly creates Mad Magazine. Yeah, and it directly creates Mad Magazine. Another fun fact, Mad Magazine is called Mad Magazine because they did not want to be connected to comics. And so they changed the name from Mad. So it should be Mad Comics, but it's not. It's called Mad Magazine. And the Comics Code Authority would label specific comics with a specific label that would appear in the corner. Not that Archie Comics were particularly risque or violent in any way, but the artists were asked to raise necklines. In terms of what characters can wear, the ways genders were depicted. Tim Hanley says after the comics code, all that cross-dressing stuff was out. Betty and Veronica suddenly lost a whole bunch of agency that they had in the 40s, and in the 50s, suddenly they only wanted to cook. Teenage girls had to be good marriage material. And suddenly they became really boy crazy, and then suddenly they stopped playing sports or being interested in running for class president. all during this era of this moral panic around Comics Code Authority. There were antics, but within these confines. It narrowed down. It took probably 20 years to start to get out of it and then probably another 20 to really leave it all behind. So Betty and Veronica have this period where they're good marriage material, during which they're wearing a lot of very pretty kind of boring dresses. But they start to leave this era and get kind of interesting with the arrival of a new artist into Archie Comics named Dan DiCarlo. And he's interesting because Dan DiCarlo, before he came to Archie Comics, drew a lot of pinups, especially during the World War II. He would draw pinups for soldiers, and obviously they want to see some skin. So he would draw these very seductive pinups. Dan DiCarlo drew gorgeous, very curvy women. Betty and Veronica are quite pinup-like, truly. I grew up reading Archie comics. And of course, I didn't know who Dan DiCarlo was. I mean, as a kid, I remember one of the reasons I liked Archie comics is I liked the way the girls looked. I'm not going to deny that. I'm not going to deny it either. I get it. I'm gay. Maybe it had an influence on me. I don't know. Jasmine was gaying out with Bill Morrison, who wrote a book that's clearly a nod to Seduction of the Innocent, that book that started up the whole Comics Code moral panic. I wrote a book titled Innocence and Seduction, The Art of Dan DiCarlo. At the same time that Dan DiCarlo was drawing pinups for his fellow soldiers during World War II, he was also one of the soldiers getting comics in care packages. When he went into the service, Archie was kind of just starting, so he probably read Archie comics overseas, over in France. Might have been one of the reasons he thought to approach them when he got back. Back in civilian life, Dan DiCarlo drew for a lot of different places. It was in the early 50s. He was doing a lot of different projects for different publishers, one of them being Archie. He drew these cute, sexy girls, and it was definitely kind of horny, but it was almost in a, like, Bugs Bunny way, like a wooga. Like, it wasn't X-rated. Not doing anything adult or, you know, no nudity, but he was working for these publishers that were putting out very child-friendly books, but he was drawing very seductive women within those books. And at a certain point, he had to tone down a little bit because of the Comics Code Authority. But even after the Comics Code, the pinups were able to continue because they didn't just have sex appeal. Dan DiCarlo gave them fashion appeal. So this, again, this new market of teenage girls were looking at these pinups. They appealed both to men and women. Women loved to read it because they would look at it for fashion advice. There were pinups of Betty and Veronica just posing in different outfits. And again, this was a way to be like, let's fill some pages with one big picture of a great outfit. Great way to fill space. They decided to do these fashion pages. I think it started in 1947. Pages of one outfit, just full pinup pages. There are no storylines. It's just, here's how they look. And they were wildly popular. Simplicity patterns would run their patterns inside of Archie Comics for women who saw these pinups and thought oh I actually really like that dress And then they would make that dress with the simplicity patterns that were inside And it wasn just Archie Comics that featured pretty girls wearing great clothes He was getting a lot of work from Marvel, doing all these books that had fashion models as their stars. This was like a genre of comic books, these model comics. My Friend Irma, Millie the Model, Sherry the Showgirl. They were a specialty of Dan DiCarlo. All the fashion model-centric comics that Dan was doing in the 50s, you'll see a lot of the current fashion trends. And that just made sense. You've got a character who's a model. She's going to have to stay current. But Dan DiCarlo had a secret weapon behind his fashion knowledge. It was through his wife, Josie, that he started really paying attention to what people were wearing. By the way, if you recognize that name, Josie was also one of Dan's creations, Josie and the Pussycats. And he named the character after his wife. Josie DiCarlo was born Josette Dumont. She was a French citizen, and she and Dan met in Belgium shortly after the Battle of the Bulge. He barely spoke French, but he would draw cartoons to talk to her. Back in the 50s, his wife Josie was quite the fashion plate. and she worked at Lord & Taylor in Manhattan. She worked at a makeup counter. So she was very into fashion. And so thanks to Josie, Dan DiCarlo developed a genuine interest in fashion. He really was fascinated by it. Dan told me that at one point he had subscriptions to all the teen fashion magazines. So he was really paying attention. He was very conscientious about keeping them up to date. Archie Comics eventually lured Dan DiCarlo in-house. They took him away from Millie the model and Sherry the Showgirl and Nellie the Nurse and all his other work drawing sexy girls in beautiful clothes. And the way Archie Comics convinced Dan DiCarlo to drop all this other work for other comic book companies, mostly Marvel, was that they basically let Dan DiCarlo do his own thing. They were like, you can just draw Archie Comics however you want. The books that Dan drew were selling better than some of the other books. So they said, from now on, you can do it your way. DiCarlo soon set the new house style at Archie Comics. And part of that house style became style. All the artists and cartoonists, by necessity, had to consult magazines and stay on top of fashions. I don't know if you guys know this, there was a time before Pinterest. Again, Professor Joel Christian Gill. So it wasn't like you can go online and look up a picture of a dress that's ankle height, right? You actually had to go through women's magazines and you had to go through fashion magazines of the time period and find those images. They would trace things, they would copy them, and they had files filled with lots and lots of images of clothes for whatever character you're looking for. So ultimately, Dan DiCarlo and all the cartoonists at Archie were reading Seventeen magazine and all the latest glossies and bringing current trends to little kids. And not only that, they were reinterpreting the most recent styles with much louder, bolder colors. This is like a bold blue dress. It's got to look good on them. Comic historian Tim Henley again. In the 40s, 50s, 60s, well into the 70s, you couldn't get the color gradation you see in comic books now. So the colors had to be really bright and overt. No subtle hues or demure tones here. Betty and Veronica was big, bright patches of color. And that's all you could do. And I can't help but imagine that seeing all these bold, modern styles influenced what people wore and what they wanted. Especially because these comics were so widely read. Because this is something that was very important about Archie Comics. They went beyond the comic book shop. Comic book stores is where you would find a lot of superhero comics. But Archie Comics were recognizing, hey, only dudes are going over there. Maybe we should find a way to connect to the women that have been enjoying the fashion pages. So Archie Comics found a new venue. Archie comics started to show up in grocery stores. That's where women were shopping and where children would see them. And they weren't the only comics that would show up in grocery stores, but they were the longest running ones. And there was a different format of Archie comics that would sell in supermarkets. They were thicker books and they were called digests. They were padded out with old stories from Archie's archives. Digests were revolutionary and also really played into the, let's be as efficient as possible with our backlog. We can mix it up so you'd see a story from the 1940s, a story from the 1960s, a story from the 1990s. And then there's some like Jughead goes punk and he has some really 80s haircut. And so when the Die just started coming out, that's when you get like a bunch of different stories together from across time. So when you get the thin like comic books, correct me if I'm wrong here. Floppies. The floppies, that's what they call them. Or single issue, yeah. Single issue floppies. These were like the current cutting edge fashions. And then you get the big chunky digest and then you were looking back at all kinds of fashions from across time. Yeah, that's right. Immediately when the digest started showing up in grocery stores, that was the 70s. And they immediately had storylines from the 40s. In these digest magazines, when they printed old comics right next to the new ones, it was an amazing compendium of vintage fashion that I was exposed to. I think they've actually had a much bigger, more subtle impact. I mean, it was kind of the first place I ever saw what fashion looked like in the 40s or the 50s. I would stack digests in my bathroom, still do. And my mom and my stepdad and people would go in there. My mom would come out. I'm from a Mexican family. And so she doesn't have a lot of these cultural references. And she'd ask me specifically, like, what does swell mean? And without any kind of context. And it was like this beautiful connection point. And that really kind of goes to this other part of how Archie affected fashion. There was this character arc for Veronica. She went from being a rich, spoiled girl to this fashion diplomat. She would go to Europe all the time, like go to Rome, go to Paris. Tim Hanley again. And through that would teach the reader about the fashion and oftentimes what it means and why it's important. She goes to Russia and in exchange for learning about the democratization of Russia, she would give the ambassador a makeover. And if you were just reading it quickly, it would maybe seem like a little shallow. But this is early days of democracy in Russia, I think, at this point. You've got a democracy now, you're open to the West. But I also think that these were a function of, you know, as Archie grew and grew and hired more women writers. there was you know I think fashion was often a punchline in early Archie comics like oh you girls you like buy so much stuff and then you get like Veronica the fashion diplomat which is kind of awesome actually and it was a way to teach people I mean I learned what the traditional religious wear of the Tonganese I think it's Tonganese of of people from Tonga they're Tongans what they would wear and I'm reading that like as a 10 year old little girl and suddenly I'm very well-versed in this culture that I would have never been exposed to before. This world of fashion, this portal, opened for so many kids who might have never found it otherwise, who might have never thought they would be into fashion or even into comics. The way that I discovered them was through the checkout line at my grocery store in Shitville, Texas in 1996. If, like, little Kayla couldn't find them, then anyone could find them. Cartoonist Kayla E. I identify as a cartoonist also essentially as a fashion designer. I think all cartoonists are. There's so much that is involved in being a cartoonist. We're essentially like one person filmmaking. The cartoonist does everything. The sets, the props, the camera angles, the acting. And yes, the costumes. Just nothing compares, at least in my mind, to the outfits in the world of Archie Comics. And I have like thousands of images on my computer, a ton of Archie content. It's this repository of fashion that Kayla can go and use for her own work and research. And they're this fascinating record of the latter half of the 20th century because they are candy colored reinterpretations of the latest styles from magazines. And Archie comics are also chronicles of readers' fantasies. because readers would submit descriptions of outfits. And if they were lucky, the cartoonists at Archie Comics would draw them on Betty and Veronica. And have Veronica wearing this ridiculous cowgirl costume or something that Ginny from Michigan invented. Just a fabulous idea. And I'm sure it was so exciting as a little girl to see your fashion idea come to life on the body of Veronica. When I was a kid, I just desperately wanted to be Veronica. more than anything. I wanted her body. I wanted her wardrobe. I wanted her house. I wanted her life. And it's very fun. It's very fun. But also, you know, my relationship with Veronica and her wardrobe isn't entirely delightful. I mean, it definitely gave me some issues as a child. I definitely remember looking at Betty and Veronica's perfect curves in the depths of puberty and being like, is that what a 16 year old is supposed to look like? I think that was just an early experience in feeling ugly in my body and fat in my body and tacky in my clothes. Obviously, no 16-year-old looks like Betty or Veronica. They're stylized pinups. This is not a realistic depiction of bodies But kids don know that This is an unintended consequence of Dan DiCarlo style I mean no woman has the actual waist of Veronica I think it the same with the Bratz dolls And yet, for kids like Kayla, all of the good in Archie comics ultimately outweighed any of the bad. Ultimately, it was a gift, I think, Archie comics, because it like was one of the first things that showed me this like foil against my own world where I was like, oh, like my room is dirty and like my clothes are dirty and hand-me-downs and like not cute and like my world is not safe like Riverdale. So maybe there's something wrong with my world. Because at a very young age, I started to realize that something really bad, like I was, that something really bad was happening to me. And I think that Archie really, I don't know, gave me the first sort of ways of thinking about that. Kayla depicted what happened in her childhood, surviving poverty and incest and childhood sexual abuse and violence in a graphic memoir called Precious Rubbish. It's the story of my traumatic childhood told through the reappropriation of mid-century children's comics. And part of the children's comics that she incorporates into her memoir are the Archie Comics fashion pinup pages. My fashion pages. They are very, very direct replicas of the Betty and Veronica fashion pages. Kayla has drawn almost the exact same outfits as Betty and Veronica, but with her own character's face on them. And so often I'm just like clipping and saving these fashion pages, both for my work, but also for my own personal attempts at making outfits. So, oh my God. I think to this day, I'm still trying to be Veronica. But that's the question. What would it mean to try to dress like Veronica today? If you look at their most fashionable years, the Dan DiCarlo period, Betty and Veronica would wear whatever is most currently in style in all the magazines. So what does it mean to actually dress in a modern version of Betty and Veronica? Bringing a comic to life, right? This was the challenge for the costume designer of Riverdale. After the break. Roseberry and Jonathan Anderson. On Thursdays, join head of editorial content at Vogue, Chloe Mal, and head of editorial content at British Vogue, Chomanadi, as they explore style and culture through the lens of fashion with guests like Martha Stewart, Kamala Harris, and Tracee Ellis Ross. The Run Through with Vogue, new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Do you think Betty and Veronica had an influence in the world of fashion design? I do, for sure. I think it depends on where you grew up. For me, that was in Norway. I was from a small town, so I didn't dress often like that. Rebecca Sorensen would grow up to become a costume designer and would costume, of all things, the CW show Riverdale, which is based on Archie Comics. When I got the opportunity to do costume designs for a series like that, I just knew that I had to do it. Did you grow up reading Archie Comics? I actually did, yes. Being in a region, that was something I always got in my stocking every Christmas, Archie Comics. And so what did you think of Archie Comics growing up? I thought they were great. They were, especially Veronica and Betty, they were my favorite, of course. So would you say they were sort of your first exposure? That they were my first exposure for fashion? Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Any Archie purist will immediately butt in here and be like, Riverdale is so different from Archie comics, you can't possibly compare them. And it's true, the TV show has taken a lot of liberties. They've added in time travel and gangs and murder and a bunch of elements that are not in the comics. However, the way Rebecca approaches fashion is truly in the spirit of Dan DiCarlo. For one, fashion is an important and vital part of the entire enterprise. Fashion today in shows, depending on what production you're working on, is kind of like what they put on the screen to get the audience. Because a lot of kids, or not kids, but me, I watch shows. Sometimes I'm drawn to them just due to the fashion. I want to see a show because of what the cast are wearing. And then you get attached. It really is like the modern continuation of Archie in that way. And two, just like in the original Archie, the palette and colors are really important here. This was a great question from Jasmine. The images of the clothes were restricted by specific parameters of the comic book. Did that factor into the color palette for those characters? We definitely did have a color world for them. Veronica was our purple girl. And then I would say that Betty was more than the girl next door, pink, blue, softer colors. She was very pastel-y the first season. And then we just realized that that didn't really fit with her character. In the TV show, Betty becomes a serial killer, among many other things. Big changes. Betty in the comics is very different than Betty on the show. You can change the colors of what she's doing. darker colors for any of the characters. Whatever journey they are going, that color arc kind of goes with it. And I think the biggest way that Archie Comics and Riverdale are similar is that they both innovated from a place of necessity. They both had to make a lot of stuff really quickly. Like the comic artists were drawing pinups and recycling plot lines to fill up pages. And Rebecca was coming up with exciting new outfits because she had to make big, elaborate wardrobes on a limited budget. Some of these shows have a lot of money, so much money. And of course, you can do fabulous stuff if you have money and you can shop everywhere. On Riverdale, in the beginning, we didn't have much. So I had to add the extra to it and do half builds to get that excitement there. What do you mean by builds? Builds mean that you make it from scratch. And in Rebecca's case, half builds are augmenting and changing pre-existing clothes. I would take a dress or a sweater or a shirt and I would chop it up to the style that fits the character. And, you know, taking the sleeves off, making it a v-neck, making it really tight or using just the top of a dress and not the bottom of a dress. Always working efficiently and cheaply and stylishly. I will tell you this, it was always on sale. That was one that was always, always on sale. And also secondhand stores. And it could be something that was Gucci. Ralph Lauren. I messed with everything and anything. I mean, how quickly were you working? Oh, we have long days in Riverdale, for sure. Sometimes something was built within a day. And sometimes in Riverdale storylines where characters would time travel, they would appear in outfits that were ripped exactly from the panels of Archie. My favorite part, honestly, was the few times that I got to really recreate their looks from the pages. Because that wasn't really the kind of show that we were doing at all times, right? It was a mixture of the vintage with modern. We created our own little look. The show was sort of the equivalent of reading an Archie Digest. It was a mixture of modern, up-to-date fashion with retro fashion. I mean, no wonder people went wild for Riverdale's style. I was actually, to be honest, a little bit shocked how into the fashion that people were for Riverdale. All of a sudden, everybody wanting to buy it if it was affordable. So clearly, whatever the audience liked because there were seven seasons of it. Have you read Archie since you've worked on the show? Yes, I was just going through some of my Riverdale stuff not so long ago, and I did open up some of my Archie comics. So I do have my own little collection still that I'll always hold on to for sure. If only I'd saved my Archie comics. This episode was made by me and Jasmine Aguilera. Thanks, buddy. That was fun. Music by Ray Royal, Sasami, and Lollatone. Thanks so much to Stephen Davey at WBUR, Yori Lasordo at Radiotopia, and Gina James at PRX, and Tucker Stone at Fanagraphics. And many thanks to another unaccredited Archie expert, Jordan Iannucci. If you would like to see the full unedited cut of our live event where Jasmine and I are wearing our matching Rachel Antonoff dresses from her Betty and Veronica collection, Jasmine will tell you what she thought of that collection. When I heard that there was going to be a Betty and Veronica fashion line, I was like, first drop, I'm going to be that first one. And then I saw the actual designs. And here's my rant, you guys. Tell us how you really feel. I'll have a link for you at articlesofinterest.substack.com.