The Bling Ring: Steal the look

Celebrity-obsessed teenagers make a fashion offense in Sofia Coppola’s latest film.

In The Bling Ring director Sofia Coppola takes us into the wardrobes of celebrities and the glamorous world of Hollywood. If you are a fashion fiend or a celebrity-worshipper, this movie will leave you awestruck throughout. Far from other cinematic interpretations of celebrity lifestyles, Coppola’s film is based on a true story.

Coppola was inspired by a 2010 Vanity Fair piece ‘The Suspects Wore Louboutins’ by award-winning journalist Nancy Jo Sales. The article unveils the suspects and their motivations behind burglaries at celebrity homes. And so, from a distance Coppola shows us how a group of club-hopping teenagers in Calabasas, California, cat-burgle more than $3m in jewellery, cash and high-end goods.

The group of seven teenagers (popularly known as The Bling Ring) — Rebecca (Katie Chang) the mastermind, Marc (Israel Broussard) the new student at the high school, Rebecca’s friends Chloe (Claire Julien) and Nicki (Ema Watson), along with Nicki’s adopted sister Sam and Chloe’s friends Rob and Ricky — use the internet to track the whereabouts of their targets. Breaking in is easy as doors and windows are almost always unlocked. Once inside their homes, we are dragged into designer heaven — their victims’ wardrobes, stacked with Chanel, Hervé Leger, Louboutins, Birkins. Paris Hilton let Coppola shoot her wardrobe and night club room. Endless rows of shoes open into a room full of diamonds that opens into a room flowing with clothes. Paris has so many items in her wardrobe that she doesn’t even notice when her things go missing (the group breaks into her house five times).

After robbing their celebrity victims, the group members don the stolen items and upload photos on social media sites, posing with cash which later becomes evidence. This is strange, as normal robbers don’t show off their spoils. But these teenagers are different criminals, driven by celebrity-worship and consumer-culture. They actually belong to wealthy families and do not need to steal. They do it because each shoe and shirt they nick brings them one step closer to the high-profile people they adore and their perfect life.

Their vanity and desire to look and dress like the rich and famous drove them to rob the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Orlando Bloom, Rachel Bilson, Audrina Partridge and Megan Fox. When they break into Orlando Bloom’s house, after finding out that he is in New York for a shoot, they steal his wife Miranda Kerr’s lingerie. Stealing lingerie may seem absurd but as Sales points out in her piece, “they wanted to look sexy.”

Coppola assumes a distant position and shows us the events of the crime. She dwells on the subject but does not commit to a moral lesson. The narrative is a flashback of confessions, rendering the movie devoid of suspense. Despite this, Coppola has managed to keep the story interesting. She keeps us far from the characters (does not focus on family backgrounds) but close enough to realise that they have been corrupted by the seemingly glamorous and glitzy world of celebrities.

Overall, the success of the movie lies in highlighting the irony that being ‘burglars’ makes the teenagers ‘celebrities’ — the thing they truly desire.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, September 22^nd, 2013.