Why Did Lorelai Pick *That* Outfit?

Very good remark Arieanna, for I thought the same thing when I watched the show at the first time, and go on each time I see it again. Which happens rather often, for, even though I bought the whole seasons, I’m still at the first?
However, any point of view trying to explain why a beautiful sophisticated American women runs out of clothes just the day Rory begins to Chilton may be good. And, if we ask Arieanna to rummage Lorelai’s wardrobe, she will come out with something else, more appropriate, for sure…

Yet, but a show is also a piece of art, even when it’s focused on real life as GG is.
Creators have to find a way to show us the real state of mind, the mood, and the soul of their characters. And one way is using contrasts.
For instance, in the first episode, Rory is taking note about her assignment, while the other girls – more close to her mother’s state of mind at the same age – are comparing colors, and perfumes. If you watch this scene closely, you’ll see that the contrast is not really resolved yet. Why? Because it’s still on the processing?

First, we see Rory becoming for a while the simple teenager she still is, with appropriate thoughts of her age, while her mother is shown as a very mature woman, taking in charge many responsibilities… Yet, it’s not really her character… And one of the striking examples is that she runs to her mother as soon as there is a crucial problem: the fees matters.

So the balance must be reached again, through a new process: the undressing, dressing, and undressing process.
First Lorelai fails to get up on time, and of course it’s the fault of the clock. She undresses her mind from all responsibilities. This kind of regression is pictured through the careless way she dresses, which contrasts the way she is dressed at the inn. (Dressing, undressing, dressing…)
While Rory goes to school to study, the now again teenager Lorelai is going to the kind of high school she remembers going sixteen years ago. And, probably, she would have liked to go there dressed like that if she had been allowed too, even if this state of mind is hidden by a thick coat. But it’s the sixty years old Lorelai that is flirting with the handsome father of a Chilton’s pupil, as if he was someway an accomplice of her state of mood.
But, as if she were sixteen again, she must pay the price of those orgies of liberty: She faces her mother, and Mister Authority, and she must obey the injunction, and appear a little foolish. End of the dream, of the feast, of that orgy of liberty.

Everything has come to an end. When the handsome man – may be “the may be King of the Queen of the promotion Lorelai would have loved to be” – comes to the inn, the teenager Lorelai is not there anymore, it’s Lorelai the women, dressed as the women she is… he meets.

And since the show often relates to the real life, I bet that many mothers shared that sort of feeling when their daughters went to school, high school, and university for the first time.
That’s the reason why Emily, deprived of those many sweet feelings, wants so much be part of that aspect of Rory’s new life.

Everything is dressed again, isn’t it?

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I think she picked that outfit because she was just going to send Rory into see the Headmaster by herself. So she took the long coat to cover herself in the car maybe.

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