Rating Disney Princess Dresses on Historical Accuracy (Part One)

i don't know how to put this nicely but i honestly think ariel's dress is pretty ugly welcome back everyone and today we're going to be raiding disney princess dresses or i'm gonna be writing disney princess dresses just to get some things out of the way um i will be breaking up this video into two parts because this video would be super super long if i cover all the princesses and so today i'm just gonna be doing the first seven disney princesses and those are snow white cinderella aurora ariel belle jasmine and pocahontas to explain my rating metric i'm going to be giving each princess two scores and a final combined score the first score is going to be style and the second score is going to be historical accuracy as a disclaimer i'm not a stickler for historical accuracy i think if a movie has like witchcraft and magic and mermaids and fairies historical accuracy is not really a priority but um i do think it gives this video a little bit more substance and it's also something that i think viewers of this channel enjoy so without further ado let's get started with snow white snow white takes place in 16th century germany technically bavaria but her clothing looks more in line with saxony so let's say 16th century saxony we know this because the original story takes place during this time period in bavaria and there's nothing in the movie that says otherwise for the purposes of analysis i'm going to be saying mid-1500s because specificity is always better when it comes to fashion history now let's take a look at what disney got right so as you can see snow white has period accurate slashed puff sleeves and a standing collar or partlet we do know that the gown is considered very regal because of the slash sleeves which were definitely a sign of nobility at the time this was because of some short laws that were in place aka laws that restricted certain expenditures these laws prevented people from slashing their attire but of course laws never applied the same to nobles the red color inset is also a dead giveaway to her status because the less rich wouldn't have extra fabric insets and instead would let their white chemises peek through the slashed fabric even the mismatch of her bodice and skirt can be seen as historically accurate because i was able to find images of people wearing mismatching bodices and skirts even though this wasn't common as for things that disney got wrong her arms should definitely not be bare i haven't seen any historical paintings or manuscript images that suggest women especially royal women would have bare arms contrast color piping would also not really be a thing she's not wearing a hoop skirt or stockings and it goes without saying that her entire silhouette her makeup her shoes are very 1930s just a reminder snow white was released in the 1930s and this is not a new white well i guess this was a new idea because it was the first movie but this is a continuing idea that happens in disney movies where disney animators will animate these princesses to reflect contemporary beauty ideals unfortunately when i look at snow white holistically i would give her about a 5 out of 10 on historical accuracy and that's a very generous rating so if i was to revise snow white stress here's a couple things i would do i do want to mention the glamour video on this because i did watch that and i do agree with the fashion historian for the most part but there is just one thing that she says that i want to expand on and that is the fact that she mentions snow white would be wearing a pair of bodies the earliest dated excellent pair of bodies is from 1598 which doesn't tell us whether or not women wore them in the mid-1500s unfortunately um due to the fact that clothes deteriorate over time it's very difficult tracing back clothing from that long ago most historians usually look at paintings manuscripts texts to kind of see what people were wearing the only problem with this is that in a lot of paintings painters usually draw women fully clothed or not clothed at all and there's little attention to the actual undergarments so it's difficult to determine what undergarments existed or what undergarments were popular however we do know that the shape of a gown could be achieved via a curdle which is basically a middle layered dress worn on top of a chemist but under a gown the bodice of the curdle could be stiffened with buck ram reeds or vents also it's important to note that the german silhouette was a lot less rigid than the french or the english silhouette so it's entirely possible that many mid-1500s german women could suffice with a structured curdle now let's look at the gown one of the most popular mid-1500s dresses is the chronic gown chronic gowns are named after lucas krennic a painter from the time period who painted women in these gowns often again unfortunately we don't know if this gown actually existed because there are no extant gowns of the style if it did exist though the chronic gown was considered a very youthful gown and would therefore be appropriate for snow white who is 14 in the movie we also see chronic gowns with puffed and slashed sleeves and high standing collars in fashion with what she already wears snow could be wearing either a partlet or a high stain collar as i mentioned before one of the reasons i'm more insistent on dating her to the mid-1500s is because by the late 1500s the partlet transformed into these massive roughs which deviates a little bit more from her original design now in terms of style i am super biased because i do love the 1930s fashion and beauty so i really do love her dress i think the red blue and yellow are very iconic to her and i can't think of any animated character that has the same color scheme so that's super original i love originality i like her cape i like her collar i like the puff sleeves with that being said the major deduction i would make is the fact that her bodice and her skirt are not matching as i've said before this mismatch is not necessarily historically inaccurate but i just would prefer a more uniform look so i'm going to give her a 7 out of 10. this gives snow a combined score of six out of ten moving on to cinderella cinderella takes place in france i would say um this is because the version of the fairy tale is based on child pearl's story which takes place in france as for the timeline it's a little bit confusing because there is a lot of inconsistencies in the characters costumes for instance anastasia and drizella wear 1870s victorian dresses of the early bustle era and lady tremaine wears an 1890s leg of mutton high-collar dress also cinderella's victorian dress which she wears as a child is pretty accurate to the mid-19th century with that being said her actual ball gown is pretty inaccurate the silhouette is just not victorian not 1800s at all in actuality it definitely resembles the 1947 dior new look dress this is not crazy because cinderella was released in 1950 and as i said before with snow white it is not a surprise for animators to incorporate fashion trends from the time period into their movie it is interesting though that cinderella is made to look more contemporary while her step family looks very victorian i assume this is to make her step family seem outdated and tasteless which helps the audience sympathize with cinderella i also want to add that disney was on the brink of bankruptcy at this time following world war ii and so the team did everything in their power to make sure that cinderella would be a financial success and a success it was her rags to riches theme is not only a universally loved theme but at the same time it also signified a post-war return to luxury which made the story even more popular and cinderella even more likeable coincidentally though the new look takes a lot of influence from victorian silhouettes it is said that dior's costuming work for the film elita colognes which takes place in the 1870s introduced him to the bella poke and 19th century silhouettes and couture methods unfortunately despite all this beautiful history on the making of cinderella i'm going to have to give her a 1 out of 10 on historical accuracy but her style i will give her a 10 out of 10. and this is because i love dior i love the new look i love the silvery color of the dress and yes the dress is silver i think cinderella's dress is such an iconic dress it's probably the most iconic dress out of all the disney princesses and so it just wouldn't make sense for me to rate it anything lower than a 10. and also i love a good puff sleeve this gives her a combined score of 5.5 out of 10. now if i was going to revise cinderella's dress to make it more victorian first i would have to pick a victorian time period and i'm leaning more towards the 1870s because this lines up nicely with anastasia and drizella's dresses the hallmark of an 1870s dress is the ruffle on ruffle on ruffle on ruffle on ribbon on flowers on ruffle on ruffle look this is because the 1870s was very inspired by the french rococo era of clothing 1870s dresses also normally had basque bodices and decorative three-quarter length sleeves that were either pagoda or bishop trains were also very characteristic of these dresses and as a final touch a velvet black ribbon would replace cinderella's choker quite nicely next is princess aurora so sleeping beauty takes place in 14th century germany we can assume this because the original tale is set in germany and our castle is also based on a german castle and in the film prince philip says this line now father you're living in the past this is the 14th century now nowadays i'm still the king so we're going to take that as gospel and go with the 14th century for the sake of analysis let's say late 1300s as far as accuracy goes i would give sleeping beauty a 2 out of 10 because there really is nothing accurate about this dress other than maybe the colors i was looking at some medieval manuscripts and blue was a very popular color it seems pink not so much it did exist but crimson would have been a better choice if i was going to revise this dress in a historically accurate way i would definitely give aurora a curdle there were different types of curdles but in the late 1300s they were fitted at the bodice and sleeves and closed with either buttons or lacing some curls were worn as a top layer with no extra gown necklines in the late 1300s were either off the shoulder square or curved aurora's neckline is a v-neck which is like so close and i just don't understand why disney wouldn't give her a square neckline because that would just make her dress a little bit more historically accurate but i digress and then she would probably wear a gown or stir coat over the curdle one version of the surcoat is the sideless circo and this was in fashion in the late 1300s it had openings to show off the highly decorative curdle underneath for royalty the sideless surcoat had expensive ironing for a trim and in this photo historians say the buttons were probably byzance which are jewel-like ornaments stamped in gold because of aurora's royal status i would assume that her kurdal and or surcoat would have pretty decorative buttons an ornamental belt and pretty intense embroidery to give you an idea of how intricate the embroidery was during this time period for royalty according to the book merchants princes and painters by lisa monas four artists spent 24 days drawing embroidery designs for matching sets of clothing for richard ii of england and his first wife anna bohemia to wear to the feast of the purification of the virgin in 1386. these included stags worked in pearls gold and silver thread and colored silk placed on red velvet now aurora's dress is pink in merchandising probably because cinderella's dress is already blue tone but something i discovered that's really interesting is the party color gown this could technically be a curdle or a gown but it's basically a dress where half the body is one color and the other half is another color this was first a popular style among entertainers but became popular for nobles later on and therefore totally okay for aurora to wear this dress would literally solve any debate that fans have over whether words dress should be blue or pink and on top of that it would have been historically accurate so why disney why why why what as for style i don't love or hate aurora's dress the only thing that kind of pees me is just like the very angular pointy neckline so i generously give this dress a 6 out of 10 which gives aurora a combined final score of 4 out of 10. now moving on to ariel so the little mermaid is a historical accuracy hot mess but for the sake of analysis once more i'm choosing the 1830s because ariel's pink gown is vaguely 1830s the original story is also danish so a lot of people like to place the little mermaid in denmark however directors in the filmmaker's commentary say they based the little mermaid on the mediterranean region which makes sense because of the geography in the movie so take it or leave it but i'm just going to base the little mermaid in europe very generally so let's take a look at the accuracy of her dress her pink dress has some accurate elements for example the broad deep neckline and the leg of mutton sleeves were very characteristic of 1830s dresses however according to imdb ariel's pink dress is a combination of snow white cinderella and aurora's dresses so the accurate elements could just be a coincidence in this case i give it a three out of ten now for style i don't know how to put this nicely but i honestly think ariel's dress is pretty ugly the pink color doesn't do anything for her hair i'm personally biased against like a mutton sleeves and i just don't really think it's an iconic dress it's just not a memorable dress because again it takes all these characteristics from earlier princess dresses the dress area where is coming out of the water is actually a lot better and i kind of wished disney chose this dress to use for her marketing but i don't know maybe it was just too sexy again don't know why disney does some of the things that they do for style i'm going to give her a 1 out of 10 which gives us a combined score of 2 out of 10. if i was going to revise this dress to look more historically accurate i would probably have ariel looking more like this now the 1830s time period was a time when dresses were getting really big both in skirt size and in sleeve size this is another reason why i'm more biased to dating the little mermaid in the 1830s because we see giant sleeves in this movie that's probably because there was a revival of giant sleeves in the 80s which is the time when the little mermaid was released but it correlates nicely with the 1830s to give you an idea of how big these sleeves were though in the 1830s um women would have to wear sleeve supports to support their sleeves sleeve supports were usually down filled pillows but chins with ribs of wire or cane created area forms so we do see these lantern-like sleeve supports as well they could either be sewn into the dress or attached to the corset straps with ties they were usually oriented at a 45 degree angle to keep up with the birth and necklines of 30s women would wear lots of petticoats underneath to achieve the maximum skirt fullness as well which does seem like a tall order for ariel to walk around on her new legs with all that weight if you ask me so maybe the 1830s would not be so kind to her next is belle so everyone pretty much agrees that beating the beast takes place in a pre-revolutionary france obviously because the beast is royalty and still has a head i'm going to say around 1760 just for again more specificity now belle's dress is very annoying to me because i love 18th century french clothing it's one of my favorite fashion eras of all time and i just don't want to give disney any excuses not to have been historically accurate when designing her dress but what's even worse is that disney actually knew what they were doing and we can see that in the concept art pretty clearly the concept art is rococo and belle looks so much more in line with her time period than she does in the actual movie i just don't understand why you would de-historicize the character design for this movie like does it hurt the story to make it more historically accurate no and also beauty and the beast was released in 1991 and none of the clothes strike me as being particularly 90s so yeah i'm just confused disney the only things i can say are accurate are the gloves and the fact that the dress is yellow maybe but the silhouette is completely wrong belle's skirt is not wide enough at the hips probably because she's not wearing a pant underneath the wider the pannier the higher your prestige and because the beast is royalty we can assume that the dresses he would have available for belle would be pretty heck and wide belle would also be wearing a stays sorry emma watson and so this off the shoulder nonsense would not be a thing let's clear his skin and think about what belle's dress should have been so she should be wearing a robe a la francaise also known as the sackback dress this triangle shape in the middle of the dress is called a stomacher which would be pinned or stitched onto the stays the dress would also have pagoda sleeves usually which are fitted at the elbow and have lots of ruffles and then there would be box pleats in the back as for the actual style of her dress i'm gonna be honest i really did like the style growing up i really liked the color yellow which you know made belle's dress even more enticing to me as a child but as i get older and as i read more about fashion history and learn more about the actual time periods that these movies take place in it is really difficult for me to like this dress because of how much i love 18th century french clothing so i'm going to deduct a couple points and give this dress a 6 out of 10 which gives belle a combined score of 3.5 out of 10. now moving on to jasmine so aladdin is probably the most historically confusing movie disney has ever created the land of agrabah is fictional though it is situated in the arabian peninsula and borrows elements from india persia and numerous other cultures timeline is also pretty crazy the story of aladdin is based on a story in the book the 1001 nights i watched the glamour video and the historian situated aladdin in the 18th century because it was during this time that antoine galland introduced aladdin who was not part of the original story for those unfamiliar with the 1001 knights it is a story of stories the main character shahir zod is married to a king who kills his new wives one day after wedding them to save her life she tells her husband the story every night but leaves out the ending promising to finish later these cliffhangers compel the king to delay her death to find out what happens next the story of aladdin is one of the stories contained in the book in the movie the genie actually references this book out he had a thousand tails i understood that reference to cut disney some slack the 1001 nights is a centuries old story and so it has been adapted translated and revised numerous times since its original um telling so even placing the original source material into a specific time and place is very difficult i don't necessarily disagree with the historian but there are a lot of conflicting details within the actual movie and she addresses this as well but just because aladdin was added to the collection in the 1700s doesn't mean the story actually took place then for the purposes of this video i'm actually going to situate aladdin in 9th century arabia during the abbasid caliphate the reason is that the oldest surviving fragment of the 1001 knights is dated back to the 9th century also the fact that there is a sultan implies that the movie takes place around the 9th century because by then there was a rise of autonomous provinces in the arab world and yes i am aware i'm picking details to follow because again there are a lot of conflicting details other people might interpret aladdin differently than me and that's totally okay let's get on to jasmine's dress it should be no surprise to anyone that it is completely inaccurate in kristen stanninger's essay disney's magic carpet ride aladdin women in islam she argues that jasmine is dressed like an american teenager of the 90s with only ornamental elements linking her back to her exotic culture she points out the see-through dresses baggy pants halter tops and long hair held in scrunchies this interpretation is not surprising because jasmine was definitely created to embody the new independent ideal for young girls so it makes sense that disney would design her with that in mind how dare you all of you standing around deciding my future i am not a prize to be one however basing her off of californian girls is pretty inaccurate and offensive to literally all the cultures that jasmine supposedly belongs to in any era persian or indian culture women would cover themselves out in public or around potential suitors overall her fashion choices emphasize a very westernized view of independence and rebellion but we have to remember that brown women can also be very feminist and independent without relinquishing their culture westernization does not equate to feminism i've also seen people compare jasmine to a belly dancer this is clearly orientalist in design and yes her costume mirrors the outfits a lot of pop stars wear when they're appropriating arab or south asian culture it doesn't help that she's the most sexualized disney princess either for historical accuracy i'm giving jasmine a 1 out of 10. what jasmine should have been wearing consists of loose pants that reach down the ankle a tunic like shirt with a round neckline and longer short sleeves a long row belted with a sash and a head covering during this time period rich and poor women were dressed alike the main differences would be the fabric quality and the level of decoration jasmine may also be wearing tear ass bands aka medieval textiles with arabic inscription these bands are usually woven embroidered or applicate onto the upper sleeves of the robe as a general note during the basset empire clothes were a significant indicator of status and if you wore clothes from foreign lands you were viewed as being quite wealthy as for style i grew up loving jasmine and i actually really liked that she wore pants because i saw that as more feminist when i was a kid i don't know but despite that i'm giving jasmine a one out of ten on style as well because just learning about these things and realizing that she was modeled after a belly dancer just doesn't sit right with me at all so that gives her a combined score of one out of ten last but of course not least is pocahontas so pocahontas is pretty easy to determine the time period and place it's 1607 jamestown and this is because she is a real person and not a fictional character first before we get into the dress i want to address pocahontas's actual design her phase is based on roughly 15 different models including naomi campbell christy tarlington dinah taylor and pocahontas's voice actress irene bedard i found this newspaper clipping from 1995 which i will link below that talks about the making of pocahontas i don't know if this is a direct quotation from glenn keane the supervising animator for her but the article says that originally he looked at a 1620 drawing of her in a history book but quote she wasn't exactly a candidate for people's magazine most beautiful issue this is of course a huge eggs to me because they're basically saying that um indigenous women were not beautiful enough on their own to be the model for pocahontas um they literally had to result to using 15 different indigenous and non-indigenous models to create her critics have also referred to pocahontas as a native american barbie due to her proportions her waist is smaller than her head she has ample breasts and shapely legs and arms and keen even said that they designed her to be sexy designing pocahontas as an object of beauty and desire is problematic due to the existing stereotypes against indigenous women indigenous women have been stereotyped as being sexually alluring and submissive and this rhetoric is used to justify and facilitate the rape and abuse of indigenous women in history but even now indigenous women in america are at least 2.5 times more likely to experience rape and sexual assault crimes than any other races so this really is no joke and it's not a coincidence that pocahontas has one of the most gratuitous white male gaze scenes in the entirety of disney canon now the reason i bring this up is because pocahontas's sexualization is directly related to her dress design the main thing that ticks me off about this dress is the sweetheart neckline which doesn't make sense gravitationally the neckline is clearly designed to bring attention to her cleavage and that's it the dress is also extremely tight fitting again to exaggerate her breasts hips and overall disproportionate hourglass figure i did look into what pawatan women wore back in the 1600s but this was a very difficult area of research for me because i generally don't trust textbooks when it comes to learning about indigenous cultures because and so i mostly resorted to perusing indigenous run tumblr blogs which i know is not conventional i honestly feel the only way to gain accurate information on indigenous culture is through indigenous people so this is what i've gathered pocahontas should be wearing a lot more jewelry due to her status pawaton jewelry was made of shell beads fresh water pearls copper or animal bones the turquoise necklace that pocahontas wears is not actually accurate turquoise was not really commodity in the region and shell had a lot more significance among eastern woodland tribes pocahontas would also be covered in more face paint and tattoos and when it comes to clothing typically in temperate weather women wore an apron of dear skin around the waist off the shoulder deer hide dresses did exist though these dresses were tied at the shoulder and a lot looser and longer moccasins were also worn in the forest as well so for historical accuracy i'm giving pocahontas a 1 out of 10 and for style i'm also giving her a 1 out of 10 which gives her a combined score of 1 out of 10. the reason i rate her style so literally is not because i didn't think she looked good but it's just once again like knowing all this history and all this kind of harmful rhetoric that went into designing her it just doesn't sit right with me to give her any higher of a rating so that's the end of this video let me know what your favorite disney princess dress is and i'll see you along for part two we'll cover the rest of them

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 1,135,430

Rating: 4.9261775 out of 5

Keywords: disney, princess, disney princess, disney princesses, snow white, the little mermaid, beauty and the beast, cinderella, sleeping beauty, aladdin, pocahontas, ranking disney princess dresses, rating disney princess dresses, which disney princess dress is the prettiest, prettiest disney princess dresses, film commentary, fashion commentary, historically accuracy, historically accurate, historically accurate costumes, historically accurate disney princesses, glamour, video essay

Id: UeRa9bEhgXg

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020