White Trash Fever

Every few years Hollywood resurrects trailer park chic. This year, the trend could reach an all-time high thanks to Julia Roberts, who slinks through Erin Brockovich in some of the sexiest pseudo-cheap duds this side of the Mississippi.

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Tinseltown has always had a soft spot for trailer park clothes. They're sexy and unpretentious and they conjure up easygoing nights of videos and six-packs rather than futile club-hopping and overpriced apple martinis. The big screen's love affair with glammed-up backwoods beauty dates back to 1956 (and, it seems, Tennessee Williams) when child bride Carroll Baker made tacky dresses look unbelievably alluring in Williams's Baby Doll. Natalie Wood's sassy Southern looker Alva Starr raised trailer tart style to a new height with her drug- store-bought jewelry and tight, frilly frocks in 1996's This Property Is Condemned (another Williams adaptation). Trailer park charm got a shot in the arm with 1980s Urban Cowboy (which introduced the effectiveness of a tight tank top) and then again in 1990 with David Lynch's odyssey into the out-there, Wild at Heart, which in part influenced 1993's True Romance. Of course, the following year, Natural Born Killers single-handedly killed off the trend by linking white trash fashion with white trash murder sprees. But now it looks like Erin Brockovich, the real-life story of a small town law firm clerk (played by Julia Roberts) who stumbles upon evidence that a utilities company has been poisoning a Southern California desert community's water supply, could give short skirts and tight, low-cut tops cachet all over again. Erin's look is, in fact, so brimming with sexuality that her boss tells her she may want to rethink her wardrobe, to which she replies, "Is that so? Well, it just so happens, I think I look nice. And as long as I have one ass instead of two, I'm gonna wear what I like." Exactly the sort of justification every girl could use for looking cheap and being high-minded at the same time. As it turns out, Erin's white trash ensembles actually help her get the job done--skimpy little numbers do tend to loosen tongues, after all.

Designers must be down on their knees thanking the movie gods fight now because several of 7th Avenue's biggest fashion companies, Ralph Lauren, CK Calvin Klein Jeans and Guess among them, have filled their spring lines with the kind of body-hugging, cleavage-baring clothes that Erin Brockovich will send girls running to buy. And master marketer Tommy Hilfiger will be flooding scores with denim miniskirts and halters just as Middle America catches on to Erin's trailer park appeal. Director Steven Soderbergh has a good deal more on his mind than playing into fashion cycles, but Erin Brockovich still couldn't have come along at a better rime. If Julia Roberts can't make those miniskirts and cotton print bustiers sell faster than hotcakes at a roadside diner, no one can. Too bad white trash fashion doesn't come with Julia Roberts's inherent style and glamour sewn into it.

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Heidi Parker