Juliette Lewis has found an ingenious way to monetize her mugshot after she was arrested at age 16.
The Yellowjackets actress, 52, recently collaborated with apparel company Wildfang for a limited edition collection, which features a white T-shirt emblazoned with her face. The picture is, in fact, Lewis’ mugshot from a 1989 arrest after she was busted for underage drinking.
On the Thursday, April 9, episode of The Drew Barrymore Show, Lewis gave context to why she was arrested — and the reason she’s selling T-shirts with her mugshot on them.
“Is this a real mugshot, by the way?” host Drew Barrymore asked Lewis, holding up the T-shirt.
Lewis confirmed that it was indeed real, quipping, “Because we all have a past.”
“What’s funny about this is it’s actually a really innocent story. All I did was try to go dancing,” Lewis explained. “But the club did not have its liquor license, so the cops busted the club and they were like, ‘Anyone who’s under 18, raise your hand and we’ll let you go.’ They didn’t let us go. So, we get handcuffed in the back seat of a car.”
She continued, “I was living on my own at that time, paying rent, paying taxes. I was quite precocious with the cop. I was like, ‘You mean, I can pay taxes, but I can’t go dancing?’ and so he kind of rolled his eyes at me.”
“Anyway, he gave us a copy of the mugshot, and my dad blew up the picture. I make T-shirts out of it to fund my rock ‘n’ roll career,” added the Oscar nominee, who formed rock band Juliette and the Licks in 2003 and currently releases music as a solo artist.
In March, Wildfang CEO Emma McIlroy and creative director Taralyn Thuot talked about collaborating with Lewis for the mugshot T-shirt.
“Juliette made massive design decisions and directed the design from concept through the entire thing,” McIlroy told Forbes. “She had her hands on it from the very first meeting where we said, here’s who Wildfang is, and here’s what we’re all about. And she was like, ‘Oh my God, we have to use my mugshot.’ And we were like, ‘What? You have a mugshot?’”
“She told us we had to use [her] mugshot in this collection,” McIlroy added. “This is such a fit for Wildfang, you know?”
Thuot told Forbes, “One of the things Juliette was so excited to show us is this giant screen print of her mugshot in her house that her friend made for her after that experience. Because of course, being the sort of spunky, untamed, very confident person that she is, even at 16, Juliette sweet-talks the policeman into giving her the mugshot so that she can take it with her. And now it’s part of her story and part of her DNA, and now obviously part of our collection’s DNA.”
