Rating Disney Princess Dresses on Historical Accuracy (Part 2)

and yes before anyone comes at me to state the obvious i do recognize that in our society it would not be well responded to if disney had a topless disney princess i'm just merely pointing out the historical inaccuracy hey everyone i am back today with the second part of my disney princess um raiding series for those of you who are new here basically in this two-part series i rate disney princesses um on their main dresses aka the dresses that disney uses to market the most and i rate them out of 10 on historical accuracy and style you definitely don't need to watch the first part of the video i highly recommend it because it gets more views but um you definitely don't need to watch the first part to understand this part i'm just going to be doing a different set of disney princesses um starting with mulan tiana rapunzel merida elsa anna and moana so if your favorite wasn't listed they're definitely in the previous video and i'll leave a link for that down in the description box also as just a note i did get some requests for like specific disney characters and i'm only doing for this series the disney princesses in the official disney lineup as designated by disney so we have a problem with who's in the lineup and take it up with the mouse but i think in the future maybe i would do another series like this i don't really know it just kind of depends on what people want from me which brings me to my next point if you have an idea you're dying for me to do um don't hesitate ask and you shall receive if i've seen the content and if i like it okay so i'm just learning upon editing that elsa and anna are not official disney princesses which is super embarrassing for me but i already researched and recorded their sections so i'm just going to leave them in because it would be a shame if i just removed stuff that i already recorded with that said let's get started with mulan mulan is my favorite disney princess i don't know if there's anything that makes that obvious but we're not here today to listen to a lengthy ted talk on why mulan was the most groundbreaking disney princess of her time why she's a beacon of tenacity and ambition and why she's an icon for asian american girls trans boys and other gender non-conforming people alike no we're going to be talking about something much more important than all of that hi jess so mulan has actually been marketed in a ton of different dresses most of them look like an amalgamation of her green dress and her pink dress though others are completely different for the sake of just pinpointing one i'm choosing her pink dress because it is her most formal dress and also the dress that my beloved mulan doll is wearing so i'm partial to it we know that the movie takes place in northern china because the tang chao pass is located in northern china disney also adapted mulan from the ballad of mulan which was most likely composed during the northern way period around 400 ce despite inaccuracies in the movie that point otherwise as for mulan's main dress it looks most similar to dresses from the tang and song dynasties we can even see one of the girls in the honor to us all musical number wearing this kind of forehead decoration which was popular during the tang and song dynasties mulan is also wearing a type of han fu called chi yao rushin aka waist high russian arushan translated to english is literally just top and skirt it's a form of han fu which is a general term for historical han chinese clothing the waist thai rouchan is cross collared and we see mulan is wearing a purple long scarf probably made of silk called a pee bowl as well the apron-like top skirt she's wearing is called a hui chang the dress is actually very accurate to historical chinese clothing it's just 300 years early with that said though the elements of the hong fu such as the top and skirts the broad sleeves um the crossed collar don't change that much over time so i would give mulan about a 7 out of 10 on historical accuracy the dress is at least historical and a non-offensive portrayal of ancient chinese clothing which is more than we can say about some other princesses i never realized how now let's look at the northern whey period during this period the woman's russian was usually composed of a wide crossed collar top that reveals an under layer with a circular neckline and an elaborate finely pleated skirt tied at the waist a long sash would wrap around the waist and its ties would trail down the front the sleeves were also excessively wide there's also a garment called the zaju which is a formal han foo for upper class woman there's some debate on which class mulan's family belongs to because there are no servants depicted in the movie and she's seen working which implies a lower status but her family also owns a hugely vast piece of land which indicates nobility if mulan is of higher status it is possible for her to be wearing this dress these dresses would have decorative overlapping triangular cloth pieces that hang like banners on the skirt of the dress there is still some debate on whether the cloth pieces are attached to the skirt or the robe these dresses also had long silk ribbons that would extend from the top skirt for style i would give mulan a 10 out of 10. i am fully biased because i think that um chinese hanfu are one of the most beautiful kinds of clothing in human history i love the silhouette the long broad sleeves i love the silk purple scarf accessory it's all very elegant and i think she looks like a fairy i always wanted to be her when i was younger so yes i am fully biased and i admit that but it is a very beautiful dress this gives mulan a score of 8.5 out of 10. next we have tiana so the princess and the frog quite obviously takes place in the 1920s in new orleans and let me just preface by saying the 1920s is one of my favorite uh fashion eras in the entirety of western fashion and since tiana is our most contemporary princess and because there is such an abundance of resources going back to 1920s clothing one would assume that disney would make a historically accurate costume for her and one would assume wrong tiana we're gonna give you a one out of ten on historical accuracy the dress is very obviously ball gown shaped it definitely follows cinderella's footprints one of the most reliable ways of dating a dress is looking at the silhouette and this silhouette is very very period inaccurate in reality 1920s dresses were known for their drop waists rising hemlines and tubular silhouettes the shift from 1910s in wardian fashion to the 1920s was actually pretty severe and a lot of it had to do with changing ideals in society during the 20s white women gained the right to vote and start enrolling in high schools and colleges and entering the workforce at higher rates than ever before women started drinking dancing the charleston smoking and hooking up in parked cars they revealed their legs the first time in western history that was huge as you can see clothing trends reflect societal ideals and vice versa there is another type of dress though called the robe to steal which was introduced by jean lanvin in 1919 this dress was heavily influenced by 17th and 18th century dresses and offered an alternative for women looking for something more feminine than the flapper look these dresses had long full skirts that were sometimes so long and full that women would wear panniers side petticoats or hoops underneath following trends of the period these dresses were often ornamented with beads art deco designs and cross-cultural motifs such as chinese embroidery the robe to steal definitely looks more compatible with disney's whole ball gown aesthetic so i could totally imagine tiana wearing something like this oh wait i don't have to imagine because one peek at the disney concept art and we can see they actually did design her with the robe distilled dress so for whatever reason during some point of the production process they booted these historically accurate depictions to go for a dress that is much more fanciful maybe because the drop waste isn't considered in vogue by today's standards and they were worried tiana's dress wouldn't sell so well it remains a mystery however despite these inaccuracies i do love tiana's dress the way that it is i think it's very cool that the dress incorporates elements from her surroundings the flower look is very oat couture i love the petals on the dress the well-placed vine and the green color looks super flattering on her so i'm giving this dress a 10 out of 10 for style this gives tiana combined score a 5.5 out of 10. i will say though that style for sure outweighs the historical accuracy in this movie moving on to rapunzel so according to directors byron howard and nathan greeno tangle takes place in the 1780s corona is a magical place of course but was heavily inspired by germany so let's say 1780s germany there were a couple of different outfits at this time the robe a la francaise was going out of style and so what we start seeing in the late 1700s include the robe a langlais the robe pollinates the robe alan glaze retrosay the rope oli turk among others unfortunately rapunzel's dress does not look like any of them so for historical accuracy we're giving her a one out of ten rapunzel looks a lot like she's wearing a run fair costume rather than anything historically accurate there are also other historical inaccuracies in the movie um such as the king's 16th century getup according to the creators though mother gothel's dress was purposely designed to look several centuries old to convey how old she actually is which i can respect if i was to revise this dress i probably put rapunzel in a chemise a lorraine or gaul which is the dress that marie antoinette popularized in the 1780s this makes the most sense to me because the chamise ella rain balances between formal and informal dress it's formal in the sense that marie antoinette wore it and it's informal in the sense that it resembles a chemise aka a woman's underlayer hence the name marie antoinette was our first hashtag cottage core queen and had a rustic garden called the ammo de lorraine which was built in versailles in the early 1780s for her to escape royal pressures she started wearing the chamise alorain during this time period and struck up a major controversy among french nobles as i said before the shamis alarin resembled the shemis a bit too much and the portrait of her wearing one was akin to a portrait of a queen in her underwear many nobles also didn't like the idea of dressing simpler because it allowed lower classes to dress more similarly to them oh the horror the gown itself was made of several layers of white moosling cotton had a ribbon draw string at the neck a colored sash at the waistline and a soft fully gathered skirt the muslin was imported from india which also stirred controversy because marie was seen as being unpatriotic by not supporting her own country silk production even though the dress is completely white and rapunzel is known for wearing purple i think it would be a perfect dress for rapunzel because it is essentially a fancy peasant dress for reasons unknown to us rapunzel seems like she's wearing royal attire throughout the whole movie which is why i opt for the chamisa lorraine instead of an actual 1780s peasant dress the chamisa raiden was more comfortable than other clothing at the time not requiring a pannier and would make more functional sense for rapunzel also similar to marie antoinette rapunzel was hidden away from her palace in a rustic tower of her own albeit not by choice in terms of style i don't really like rapunzel's dress to be honest i think it looks pretty low budget halloween costume like and most of that is because of the lace trim on the sleeves the bodice and the skirt hem i think it looks just kind of tacky and then the purple and pink color combination is not really known to be an elegant combination also yeah i don't know why it has just this satiny quality that looks kind of cheap i don't know maybe mother gothel did not provide rapunzel with quality fabrics in her tower and she's supposed to look cheap who's to say for style i give her a 4 out of 10 which gives her a combined score of 2.5 out of 10. so now let's talk about merida brave takes place in the 10th century this was confirmed at the d23 expo however in another interview i found co-director mark andrews says that they looked at the 9th to 12th centuries and took all the stuff that they liked and made a fantasy scotland but for the purposes of the video let's go with the 10th century because it narrows it down a little bit more let's take a look at merida's primary dress her dress is made up of a cream-colored chemise and a dark blue curdle that she wears on the top her sleeves have slashing details at the shoulders and elbows which reveal her shimmies underneath what merida is wearing is not really accurate the slashed sleeve detail was definitely not characteristic of the time period actually her dress looks like those from a waterhouse painting more than anything scottish women actually wore i'll give merida a 5 out of 10 for accuracy because at least the elements are there like the cloak the tunic and the belts but it's just the details that are off in reality meredith should be wearing elena which is a tunic that is usually ankle length a shorter lane existed but was seen as a mark of low status because the wearer probably was involved in physical labor so merida as a royal princess would have an ankle length lena the lana was worn over a shift and was usually made of linen but nobles would wear silk ones the book of kells also depicts bands of trim on almost every single elena at the hem the cuffs and the neckline the neckline could range from circular to a wide v-shape the lana was often belted with a woven or leather belt called a creos it kept the tunic in place but also was used to carry objects and utensils instead of the simple cape she's wearing merida would wear a brat the brat is a cloak usually made of wool it's pinned to the wear with a brooch it was also a status symbol with the wealthier wearing heavily embroidered more voluminous ones with details such as fur trim or fringe later designs incorporated hood but in the 10th century the wearer would draw over the folds of the brat as a protective head covering a note about the brooch surviving brooches from before 800 ce were beautifully styled paint annular brooches with enamel inlaid stones gold and silver only the royal golden brooches were annular but after 900 ce only simple thistle brooches could be found we don't really know why that's the case but merida would wear a simple thistle bridge i guess in line with 10th century some argue that men would pin their brat over the shoulder and a woman would pin their brat over the torso in the center however there are examples in the book of kells that show otherwise so it's safe to assume that the brat was pinned however the wearer preferred as for style merida's dress is pretty simple the muted four screen i think works well for her character being adventurous and free spirited and whatnot and you know i'm not mad about it it's not awful it looks good with her red hair but the dress itself i just don't have i guess that much of an opinion on it's just a very simple dress so um yeah i'll give it a 6 out of 10 for style this gives merida a 6.5 out of 10. now moving on to the frozen sisters so according to the art of frozen early costume designs placed the store in the late 1700s but then they decided to change it to the 1840s because apparently the 1840s gave the story a more classical fairy tale look and then arendelle is based on the city of bergen in norway so 1840s norway is what we're dealing with i also want to give a quick shout out to faustina theresa on instagram before we get started because i was using a lot of norwegian resources for this and had some trouble translating from norwegian to english and i would not be able to do this without her help so thank you let's talk about elsa first for elsa's dress it should be obvious to everyone that she gets a one out of ten on historical accuracy it is a very modern tight-fitting silhouette with a thigh slit and yes even though elsa conjures up her dress it would make more sense for her to conjure one up following trendy silhouettes of the time period when i thought about a historically accurate dress that she would wear instead i mostly looked at paintings of josephine of luchtenberg who was the queen consort of sweden and norway during the 1840s she seems to follow the general european trends which include long waisted bodices short or elbow length sleeves and full floor-length skirts gathered at the waist this bodice shape was achieved by this kind of corset elsa's neckline would be off the shoulder either straight or on cur we see a lot of necklines trimmed with a bertha day wear dresses were pretty simple but trimmings could be more extensive on evening dresses with lace ribbon and artificial flowers compared to the 1830s which had these exuberant puffs and these over-the-top full-length skirts the 1840s had a very droopy feeling this is because the 1840s fashion did take a lot of inspiration from the gothic revival architecture movement in the 18th century but you know that's just the historical background for this i can definitely see why disney would not want to give elsa an 1840 silhouette mainly because the whole marketing power of frozen is that it's like this feminist disney princess story and elsa is so different from all the other disney princesses because she doesn't end up with a man or whatever don't get me wrong frozen is a feminist story the only thing is that i think in the discourse we kind of conflate the ideas of feminism with being single at least in the terms of media for girls and i don't know i think saving china is a pretty big deal is a pretty feminist ideal and we shouldn't forget about that just because mulan invited shang over for dinner at the end of the movie would you like to stay for dinner would you like to stay forever but yeah i can see why opting for a ball gown that is reminiscent of the earlier disney princesses would kind of go against the whole fresh approach that frozen was taking so for style i would probably give elsa a 9 out of 10. her dress is honestly the dress we should have given ariel but it's fine the sparkle detail is hallmark disney princess but also makes sense given that she made the dress out of snow and ice the blue looks good with her blonde hair and i love the sheer cape that flows behind her my only complaint is that i think the sleeves make the dress more awkward but i think sheer opera gloves would have looked nicer just my opinion this gives elsa a combined score of five out of ten moving on to anna so one thing that's puked me since i started my foray into norwegian folkware is the misuse of the term boundary i've seen the word bunad being tossed around when talking about frozen costumes and the term bunnad actually is a 20th century invention it means norwegian national dress but it wasn't a thing until the 20th century even though it's based on a lot of the traditional folkwear it's it's still modern if you get what i mean so i'm gonna be using the term folk dress when i talk about anna's dress most of the norwegian folk dresses i've seen in art consist of a white long-sleeved high collar blouse a bodice a skirt and an apron every region in norway has its own local design for the folk dress but the silhouette was basically the same actually just something to know in several parts of norway mostly in cities there has been no evidence that peasants even wore a localized regional folk dress they just wore clothing that was very similar to other peasants in other countries and that's because these cities or coastal towns had a lot more foreign trade and activity the embroidery we see on anna and elsa's dresses are called rosemaling which is a folk art that uses stylized flower ornamentation lining and geometric elements anna's dress is actually pretty accurate she has all the components minus the apron her cape even has norwegian pewter claps i literally can't pronounce that word clasps for extra authenticity and the rosemaling is pretty spot-on as well there are a couple things though her blouse would have fuller sleeves and probably be white because of the cold she'd be more likely to wear a little jacket on top of her bodice and then a hooded shawl or cape on top of that the colors are off as well the color for cape mauve is what it looks like was actually the first synthetic dye and wasn't discovered until 1859. her skirt would also probably have decorative ribbon trim at the hem overall i give anna and aydah 10 for historical accuracy and as for style i'm a big color person so i think that the color of a dress really affects how i feel about that dress and i just don't love the mismatched colors in anna's outfit i think that the mauve turquoise and royal blue clash too much and the dress would look so much nicer if the skirt and bodice matched also i think the embroidery blends in too much with the blue skirt which is a shame because it could stand out so much more with a matching black skirt but i probably give this dress a 5 out of 10 for style this gives anna a score of 6.5 out of 10. last but not least is our girl moana of course moana's story is fictional and based on a combination of different polynesian cultures but according to production designer ian gooding they based the island of montanui's design off of samoa the visual development artist nasa bove also based moana's ceremonial dress off of samoan dance attire so for the sake of clarity let's talk about samoan dress history as a disclaimer there aren't any surviving garments or art from this time period as it was over a thousand years ago and polynesian people used a lot of natural materials honestly everyone used natural materials until like the birth of synthetic fibers in the 20th century but anyway natural materials decompose over time and so it's very hard to preserve things that are that old or even find things that are even that old but you know times are changing in 30 50 my polyester dresses will still be alive so anyways i had to rely on more contemporary sources which is not my favorite kind of source to look at but i did find this amazing book by tirangi eroa called samoan material culture he was a maori anthropologist and museum director of the bishop museum in hawaii in the 1920s the university of wellington has a wonderful digital collection of his work and he's just explored so many different polynesian cultures material cultures specifically and if you're into polynesian culture at all i would highly recommend his work so when it comes to the costume design process for moana in an interview with beauvais she said that the pacific trust sent representatives to disney with authentic textile samples that would have been present in ancient polynesia bouvet ended up using tapa and pandanus as the basis for most costumes in the film tapa by the way is a tahitian word for the fine cloth made from a paper mulberry tree it's called siepo in samoan and in a lot of english translations it's called bark cloth both siapo and panzinus were used for a number of different things not just clothing by the way in the interview bove also explains the importance of depicting the right textiles because the materials are natural they tend to be more structured than a fabric how they move on people and how they move when wet is different and it's important to get those things right as much of a fan as i am of 2d animation disney's cgi technology does have its perks especially when it comes to looking at the characters clothing designs we can see texture so much more clearly with this animation style and i think that's a magical thing because it definitely makes the film feel more realistic so looking at ancient samoan clothing for everyday wear men and women would wear a leaf kilt also known as a tt named after the tea leaves that compose the skirt or cordolin leaves in english these kilts protected the midriff and served to conceal the lower part of the body leave kilts were used for this purpose because such clothing does not dissolve in water while sievo disintegrates when wet these quilts were the only everyday garment worn before the 1800s they were gender neutral though women's kilts were usually longer to resemble more of a skirt men and women were topless at this time prior to european colonization siapo was also used to make a sarong-like garment called a lava lava these were worn as indoor change garments for women of higher rank everyone else was prohibited from wearing one for special occasions there were variations to the kilt such as the feather kilt made from red feathers of ephegian parakeet and worn by the village maid and young chiefs at village festivals using panzinis samoans constructed fine mats that were dyed or painted and then ornamented with fringes and red feathers fine mats were worn by higher classes on ceremonial occasions this looks to be what moana wears in the movie so knowing all this a more historically accurate moana would be topless and she would be wearing a leaf kilt even though she is the chief's daughter a lava lava is an indoor garment and she spends the majority of the movie outdoors and then also the fine mat is ceremonial wear so yeah moana would definitely not be wearing one on her voyage so to calculate moana's historical accuracy score i would give her a 7 out of 10. disney did their proper research when it comes to looking at textiles natural resources and the overall silhouette of the clothing but i'm taking deductions because of her top and misuse of formal wear and yes before anyone comes at me to state the obvious i do recognize that in our society it would not be well responded to if disney had a topless disney princess i'm just merely pointing out the historical inaccuracy for style i give milwan an 8 out of 10. um i love the use of natural materials to create her jewelry and clothing details red which is also historically accurate looks great on her this gives moana a combined score of 7.5 out of 10. so that's the end of this video that's the end of the series until disney makes more disney princesses i hope you enjoyed it and i hope you learned something the section was a lot more fun for me to research because i guess like over time disney has become less lazy or just more invested in rooting their characters in a time and place and so it was a lot easier to start researching and really streamline the process because i wasn't like thinking like oh my god well this is like denmark but it's the mediterranean but it's the caribbean so yeah thank you for that disney you're doing good and just a reminder because some people took my ratings really seriously and they're really not serious everything is subjective i'm just really using it as a way to structure my information so if i offended you i'm very sorry once again i am taking requests for future videos so if there's anything you want me to do just put it down in the comment section i also got a lot of comments on my last video about the shirt that i was wearing and some people were like oh i love your ariel cosplay that's just how i dressed all the time it's not a cosplay so if you're interested in my personal style stuff my instagram is also linked below anyways i'll catch you guys next time thank you for tuning in for this long

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 785,573

Rating: 4.9547029 out of 5

Keywords: disney, disney princess, disney princesses, rating disney princess dresses, historical accuracy, film analysis, video essay, fashion history, historical fashion, dress history, moana, frozen, elsa, anna, tiana, mulan, rapunzel, tangled, the princess and the frog, brave, merida, disney princess fashion, how historically accurate are disney movies, disney movies, fashion analysis, costume analysis, costume design, historically accurate disney princesses, prettiest disney princess dresses

Id: vk9nbEdemPo

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020