Mona May had no designs on becoming a movie star.
But as the costume designer of cult classic “Clueless,” she covertly slayed a scene with Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz— as if being on camera were her true calling.
“It’s a really great-kept secret that I’m in the movie,” May exclusively told The Post of her blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, proposed by director Amy Heckerling, as Cher’s massage therapist in the 1995 teen comedy.
“It was a last-minute thing,” laughed the style savant, lionizing Heckerling for cinematically immortalizing her in the film, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
“Amy was, like, ‘Oh, my God, we gotta do this masseuse scene. We need somebody Eastern European — let’s get [you] in there,’” recalled May, who was born in India but raised in Poland and Germany.
“I dressed myself with the turban, did my own makeup, got the massage oils,” she continued. “I didn’t have any fear. I just was game.”
Her impromptu promotion rubbed Silverstone the right way, too.
“Alicia was, like, ‘Oh, my God, let’s do it, Mona!’ She felt comfortable with me because I was massaging her,” said May. “I was, like, ‘Alicia, is this too hard?’ We had a lot of laughs; it was really fun.”
It’s a collegial kinship that has stood the test of time — as have the famous fashions May curated as the flick’s chief costumer. Untold stories of the film’s legendary looks — from Cher’s flawless first-day-of-school outfit to English teacher Miss Geist’s custom bridal gown — and camaraderie are finally unfurling in May’s new tome, “The Fashion of Clueless,” out Oct. 28.
Most notably, May gave Cher a Catholic schoolgirl-like vibe, mixing sweet virtuousness with “high fashion on steroids.”
That was a big turning point in the history of style: the birth of high-low fashion — the amalgamation of pricy finery and tailored thrift store finds.
“I’ve been waiting to put this book out for 30 years,” admitted May, who has sewn up gigs on a string of TV projects including “Santa Clarita Diet,” the 2015 biopic “Whitney” and “The House Bunny,” plus films like “Enchanted,” “Never Been Kissed” and “The Wedding Singer.”
‘We were like family’
Giving readers accounts straight from the clotheshorse’s mouth, she interviewed members of the iconic cast, including Silverstone, Stacey Dash as Dionne Davenport, and Paul Rudd as Cher’s stepbrother-turned-sweetheart, Josh, for the illustrated volume.
“To have these relationships for so long, it’s magic,” May gushed about her “intimate,” lasting bonds with the silver-screen stars — including Silverstone, whom she most recently dressed again for the 2025 Acorn TV drama “Irish Blood.”
“We had such a good set; everybody was so friendly,” she added of her “Clueless” experience. “We were like family.”
The photographs that decorate the artful pages of the book, written with fashion journalist Monica Corcoran Harel, include previously unseen costume Polaroids that “were stuck in a vault” at Paramount Studios, according to May.
Just before landing the Clueless gig, a then-unknown May was “hustling” to make a name for herself in the industry. After being accepted into the Costume Designers Guild, she booked a slew of small jobs with MTV and on music video sets with artists such as Debbie Gibson and Run-DMC.
“I took every job. I had a stick-shift van, no air conditioning,” said May.
But then May met filmmaker and writer Amy Heckerling, and worked with her for a pilot she was directing.
“When she wrote ‘Clueless,’ she called and said, ‘Mona, you are the girl. I want this to be high fashion. I want to create this world that does not exist,’” explained May.
“Young girls didn’t dress [in haute couture],” said May of the fashions at the time. “So I really had to put on my fashion designer hat, dive into the runways and see what was happening in London, Paris, Milan and New York.”
‘Lovable, innocent and not oversexed’
May also camped out at local high schools, studying how youngsters of the day dressed. Using pictures and magazine cutouts, she made collages of potential looks that would make Cher and her crew appear luxe, but “lovable.”
“They were 16, and Amy wanted to make sure they were lovable, innocent and not oversexed,” May explained. “We never used high heels, just Mary Janes and over-the-knee stockings. Empire waistline and capped sleeves — little nods to ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen.”
Those choices marked the beginning of May’s love for timeless fashions.
The modest, yet à la mode aesthetic is one she’s recreated in her films since “Clueless,” including “Never Been Kissed,” “Enchanted” and campy fave “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.”
However, much of the main character’s pretty apparel — notably stored in her digitized, revolving closet, a swank technology inspired by a computer-savvy friend of Heckerling — cost a pretty penny, which May didn’t have to spend.
“There was no money,” she said of the film’s $200,000 costume budget, which had to be stretched across 1,000 outfits, including expensive staples like Cher’s iconic, $1,500 yellow plaid set by Jean Paul Gaultier.
But the vaunted two-piece, despite its steep price tag, was a purchase May couldn’t help but make from a Rodeo Drive shop whose name she no longer recalls.
“I found a beautiful blue plaid suit. I found a red one,” the mastermind recalled. “Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the yellow.
“And it just popped,” May said of the a-ha moment.
Heckerling and Silverstone agreed on the choice.
“When she put on the yellow, it was just perfect,” May said. “It was everything we needed for her to be the queen — the ray of sunshine, the ‘It’ girl of the school.”
To remain on budget for the rest of Cher’s threads, the fashioneer borrowed pieces from designers here and there, tailored choice secondhand clothes to a T, and hand-made several memorable looks, including the cast’s subtly sexy gym clothes.
In “Fashion of Clueless,” May applauds Cher and her classmates for “inventing the athleisure trend,” which they helped popularize by creating spandex onesies, water bottle holders, and dainty, little cell phone purses for the P.E. class scene.
“Cher opted for a sexy black tank over a classic white tee, which became all the rage after ‘Clueless,’” May writes. “I wanted to show that she would confidently mix chic with comfort and high with low. That’s totally Cher.”
‘Don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t wiggle’
Cher’s best friend, Dionne, shone equally bright as hallway royalty.
“Stacey immediately knew who she wanted to be in that character,” said May. “More sexy and funky [than Cher].”
To complement her sunshiny swag, May frocked Dash in black and white plaid, topped with a Chanel-inspired hat made by NYC milliner to the stars Kokin.
“It was so incredible,” May raved. “But it would have never worked if [Dash] wasn’t game. You have to have confidence to walk out of that house in that hat and make it so fabulous that it truly looks like you’re [modeling] Chanel.”
May tips her hat to both Dash and Silverstone for boldly bringing her clothes selections to life. And she lauds Cher and Dionne’s opening looks as two of her favorites from the film — although she told The Post that asking her to choose a winner is like “asking a mother to pick her favorite child.”
But she says the acclaimed Alaïa dress is a top contender for the title.
“I couldn’t afford it,” she recalled of the $3,000 number. “I had to find somebody who spoke French, call Paris, call the Alaïa atelier, and beg them for this dress.”
The groveling worked.
Alaïa agreed to loan her the red head-turner — but it had to be returned in pristine condition.
“I was completely nerve-wracked because it had to get on the ground,” she laughed about the infamous stick-up scene, when a victimized Cher tells her gun-wielding robber, “This is an Alaïa,” to which he responds, “An A-whatta?” before forcing her to lie face-down on concrete.
Filming the funny moment was no laughing matter to May.
“I was taking a little brush and cleaning it [between takes],” she said. “I told [Silverstone], ‘When you’re on the ground, don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t wiggle! We can’t have any snags.’”
May — who custom-made Cher’s peplum jacket, which featured a feather boa collar and cuffs, and a matching purse for the scene — gave Twink Caplan, the actress who played Miss Geist, similar instructions while shooting the wedding sequence.
“It was so much fun designing the [bridal] dress,” May mused.
“It was so fitted to [Caplan] that we actually had to get her a leaning board from the 1930s,” she added of the structures that old-Hollywood starlets rested on to avoid wrinkling their frocks during filming breaks.
“She couldn’t sit down. She couldn’t eat. I didn’t want it wrinkled or ripped.”
But when it came to Brittany Murphy’s looks as the shy, impressionable “Tai Frasier,” May said the late actress was the one calling the shots.
“Brittany was so smart,” praised May. “She said, ‘Mona, don’t make me cool in the beginning. I want to have this arc. I want to be a Cher mini-me, then really find myself at the end, when Tai is in the skatepark.’”
Long hours and pizza nights: Careers are born
May applauds all the actors — including Rudd, Donald Faison as “Murray Duvall,” and Elisa Donovan as the snarky “Amber Mariens” — for helping her shape them into big-screen fashion plates.
“These young actors bring so much to the story,” she said, harkening back to the fun “pizza nights” the cast and crew often enjoyed together after working 12- to 14-hour shifts.
“We’d talk about the hopes that we had for this film,” said May. “We never thought that 30 years later we’d be talking about this film, [nor that] it would jumpstart all of our careers.”
And now, with a multitude of movies under her belt and her book on its way to shelves, May is grateful that folks of all ages — even the teens and 20-somethings of Gen Z — still want to be clued in to her fashion mastery.
“When I go to schools and teach, kids come up and say, ‘Mona, your work inspired me to become a costume designer’ or ‘a fashion designer,’” she said. “That’s the greatest honor: making a mark on someone’s life and helping them choose who they want to be.
“I’ll rest in peace with a boa around my grave.”
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