Alicia Silverstone hints that Cher Horowitz’s 2025 wardrobe will be gently used, sustainable, and vegan, as the follow-up Clueless series advances at Peacock.
Alicia Silverstone is ready to restyle ’90s icon Cher Horowitz for 2025, hinting that the Clueless character’s closet will lean vintage, sustainable, and vegan. In a recent interview, she teased a greener spin on Cher’s designer habits: “I can’t wait to step back into Cher’s skin and her fancy designer shoes that will be gently used, of course, duh, because she’s evolved,” Silverstone said.
“This is 2025, she’s not wearing the new stuff unless it’s sustainable or vegan,” Silverstone added. “We’ll have to see how far we can go with that.” The series, which comes as the original film turns 30, remains in early development at Peacock, with Silverstone returning as star and executive producer. Writing and executive production are led by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage with Jordan Weiss, while original writer-director Amy Heckerling and producer Robert Lawrence are also on board.
Silverstone’s remarks are more than nostalgic sentiment; they intersect with a booming market for animal-free apparel and accessories. Industry analyses forecast robust growth for vegan fashion this decade. One report estimates the vegan fashion market at more than $500 billion in 2025, with projected expansion to the high hundreds of billions by the early 2030s, driven by materials innovation and consumer ethics. Another global outlook pegs the category at $1.2 trillion by 2034, noting momentum in footwear, handbags, and ready-to-wear. The direction is clear: demand for animal-free options is rising, particularly among younger luxury shoppers.
That demand has pushed material science forward. Today’s vegan leather spans several families: petroleum-based synthetics like polyurethane, and increasingly, next-gen biomaterials derived from mycelium, cactus, apple, and pineapple by-products. Academic and industry reviews caution that not all alternatives are created equal; some synthetics carry petrochemical footprints, while plant-based versions vary in durability and composition. The takeaway for a costume department: traceability and testing matter as much as trend.
Clued-in costume departments
Costume teams across film and television have been building frameworks to meet that challenge. Albert — the screen industry sustainability initiative backed by Bafta — maintains practical guidance for wardrobe departments, urging greater reuse, rental, and verified sourcing, with a dedicated “Costume Directory” of suppliers that prioritize environmental and social standards.
Complementary checklists from Sustainable Screens Australia and resources from Broadway Green Alliance echo similar best practices: buy less new, rent and recirculate more, and vet fibers for lower-impact inputs. For a character like Cher, whose closet once embodied maximalist novelty, a contemporary read could skew toward archival pieces, luxury consignment, rental platforms, and certified low-impact fabrics.
Crucially, the screen sector is codifying greener production across departments. Policy papers tracking the audiovisual industry’s transition note that studios and funds are tying incentives and certifications to emissions reductions, with groups like Albert and the Environmental Media Association shaping expectations for everything from catering to set builds to wardrobe. Costume is a sizable lever: a single drama can cycle through clothing volumes that dwarf household use, making rental, repair, and end-of-production donation plans meaningful climate tools as well as good PR.
Silverstone’s own advocacy adds credibility to a vegan wardrobe arc. She has spent years fronting campaigns that call out the impacts of animal skins and promote cruelty-free fashion, arguing that leather’s resource intensity is out of step with the climate reality. Her high-profile activism has included campaigns with PETA focused on swapping animal skins for alternatives. If that ethos flows into costuming choices on the new series, it could push animal-free accessories and secondhand designer to the center of the narrative, rather than the eco-addendum at the end of a shopping montage.
Market researchers suggest apparel is likely to account for more than half of vegan clothing sales, with footwear as a major share driver. Growth curves are supported by mainstream luxury’s experiments with non-animal inputs and by premium high-street labels expanding recycled and bio-based ranges. Even mass players report rising shares of “more sustainably sourced” materials in their seasonal assortments, signaling a baseline shift in sourcing. For a style icon known for color-coordinated sets and runway-adjacent impulse buys, that could translate to consciously edited staples in Tencel and certified cellulose blends, handbags in plant-based leather substitutes, and a trophy vintage piece styled three ways rather than three brand-new looks.
Where does that leave Cher? Silverstone has been careful not to over-promise specifics while the writers’ room is at work. Still, she has been transparent about her aim to protect what fans love and to build something timely. Coverage of her updates also notes that the creative trio — Schwartz, Savage, and Weiss — are steering a follow-up that lives inside the original film’s world, rather than a full tonal overhaul.
Fan discourse is already polarized—the standard fate of any reboot with a fervent online memory. Some see a sustainable-style Cher as the rare character evolution that feels authentic to Beverly Hills retail culture in 2025: resale is chic, and the language of “buy better, wear longer” has become status code. Others worry about moralizing from a show that once found its joy in exuberant consumption. Silverstone, now 48, describes her return as a careful step: “I never thought that, that was something that I would ever do because I wouldn’t wanna mess up this thing that we all love so much. We will do our very best to honour the original movie that we love and also bring something new to it.”
Related on Ethos:
