the problem with belle's dress 😶🥀⚜️

the problem with Bell's dress this probably would have been a more relevant topic three years ago but I didn't have a YouTube channel then so you're getting it now let me start by saying that I don't think every costume in the live-action Beauty and the Beast film is bad the costumes of nearly all of the supporting characters are absolutely fantastic but because many of the costume shortcomings happen to the film's lead character it's hard to focus on anything else there's nothing wrong with liking the costumes if you do it's all a matter of opinion anyway I'm just sharing mine I want to bring attention to the places where the film fell short in regard to Belle's costumes and how potentially could have been better and I'm not disparaging or bashing Jacqueline Durant's work costuming and designing for a film is more difficult than I could ever imagine and she's done lots of amazing work over the course of her career I just think that in regard to this film in particular there were some missteps here and there so let's get into it the animation to live-action conundrum it's difficult to translate an animated piece of clothing into live-action that's just a fact besides drawings not having to bend to the will of gravity you can also use colors that aren't easily found in real-life picture the animated Cinderella what color do you remember her dress being blue well you'd be wrong it's a sparkling silver but over the years through various five action adaptations and Disney's own marketing for their princess brand many of us associate Cinderella with the color blue that was the color picked for Cinderella's gown in the 2015 live-action adaptation but it still gave off the shimmering magical quality of the original animated version even if they barely looked alike these differences in similarities allow the audience to reminisce about the original but still have both dresses stand on their own in every Disney animated film the princess dress is the biggest reveal of the whole movie it's the moment we're all waiting for whether it's Elsa's ice gown Tiana's wedding dress or Aurora's color-changing gown they're show-stopping and the stuff of dreams in the Cinderella adaptation her dress lives up to that expectation the same can't be said for Belle's live action dress in the original animated film Belle's dresses detailing that makes it appear gold but in Disney's marketing it's yellow a decision which of course makes its way into the live-action film because capitalism and we've got to sell Halloween costumes instead of the lux gold fabric that many of us hoped for and expected we wound up with a single toned pastel yellow with sparse gold embroidery it's a far cry from the shimmering gold gown that Belle wears in the original even if you were going for a different silhouette than the one that appears in the animated film it's a shame that the golden color was taken away if they'd added layers of different fabrics and more gold and embroidery it could have given off the appearance of having more depth and have exude it a little bit more of the magic that the original had historical inaccuracy let's begin by discussing artistic liberty and how it pertains to costume designs specifically artistic liberty essentially means making creative choices that stray from historical accuracy to either help set an aesthetic for the film make it more interesting or help with world building and character development examples of this being done well in my opinion are the great gatsby and Anna Karenina the costumes in both films are wildly inaccurate for the respective time periods they take place in but the decisions are constant throughout the film on all members of the cast and helped solidify the more modern take on both films a movie that didn't do this so well 1963's Cleopatra instead of the historical inaccuracies looking like a stylistic choice it actually seems more like the costume designers didn't know what else to do and couldn't be bothered to do any research the dresses have your typical 60s era cut and styling just with random embroidery that doesn't mean they don't look great because it does but you could pin most of that on Elizabeth Taylor not the dresses themselves there are only a few dresses that are actually memorable in that film and most wind up looking like Halloween costumes obviously demanding historical accuracy from a fictional Disney movie might be a waste of time to begin with but in the case of this movie we have just caused to be peeved let's go through what we know about the time period the movie is meant to be in firstly it obviously happens in France the original tale is not only from there but the character's names and dialogue confirms this for us we get bits and pieces of other information that teach us about the time period through gasps sounds time in the war which is probably the war of Austrian succession or seven years war as well as a knowledge that Belle and her father lived through the plague this lets us pin the time period somewhere in the middle of the 1700s the style of fashion that was most popular with upper-class around this time was the late Baroque style aka Rococo the Rococo era was all about being extravagant elegant and excessive think of Marie Antoinette with her giant wigs and poufy dresses that kind of situation the common folk of course dressed more simply with style remaining constant for the majority of that century the issue I have with accuracy in this film is that it picks and chooses when it wants to be Bela's peasant dress mostly accurate I'll be it - of course it even her little jacket in this scene is accurate this makes her ball gown and wedding gown all the more jarring because she's previously been shown to wear accurate pieces it's an even bigger issue when you see her standing alongside characters who are mostly dressed correctly during the ballroom scene you see Belle stroll in and a little flowy thing that basically looks like the dress from The Prince and me but in yellow her sleeves are too short and I need someone to explain to me why she's wearing a gold ear cuff even the prints and all of his hairy glory is actually wearing something about 90% accurate to the time period so imagine if instead of the structureless yellow dress you wound up with in the film we actually had gotten something with elegant sleeves and an exaggerated skirt something a little bit like this or maybe this and if your first thought is oh that wouldn't fit in with the rest of the movie just look at some of these other outfits of the supporting characters where take this early scene from the movie for instance the women are wearing accurate robe Elif Ron says the most popular dress style in France from the 1740s through the 1760s it's got the side hoops the pleats the petticoats the little cape even the trim on the dresses is mostly accurate isn't it a bit odd that the lead character doesn't have the fanciest dress and I also want to take a minute to discuss the corsets or lack of them during the press for this movie Emma Watson was very vocal about the fact that she made the decision to not wear a boned corset during this movie as a feminist statement well that's all well and good there's one problem with that corsets at the time weren't a torture device meant to stifle women's freedoms their waist down or prevent them from being able to breathe that's what they're more commonly associated with today thanks to repeated references to that in films like Pirates of the Caribbean and Gone with the Wind but corsets at the time were roughly the equivalent of a bra today they actually served a structural purpose there were a variety of different types of course that's including a more rigid version and a softer unbound version back then you needed a course in order to wear the clothes and the course it actually helped maintain the integrity of the garments and actually keep you from feeling weighed down by them it would help support both your back and your front the choice had not wear a corset with one of these dresses would roughly be the modern-day equivalent of going for a five-mile jog while wearing a weighted vest without wearing a sports bra it'd be really uncomfortable and considering what I know about Jacqueline Duran's previous work I don't doubt that this decision to not wear a boned corset inevitably affected the silhouette of the gown what are your thoughts on Belle's dress did you love it hate it make sure to LIKE and subscribe for more fun content and I'll see you soon bye you [Music]

Channel: ModernGurlz

Views: 1,401,364

Rating: 4.8878961 out of 5

Keywords: style, internet girl, modern gurlz, informational, fashion montage, movie montage, 90s fashion, fashion, 90s tv, delias, dollskill, movie review, movie commentary, moderngurlz, egirl, tiktok

Id: qAFfnRLmXZ0

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020