this video contains general narrative
spoilers for the movie "cruella." however no specific plot points or
twists will be mentioned. hello my sweet puppies! welcome back to my
channel. my name is mina and today– i don't think i've ever introduced myself like as my name
in any of my videos. this is the first for me– today we're going to be doing a costume analysis
on disney's new movie "cruella" AND–yes there's an and because i'm giving you guys a double
feature–we're also going to be talking about the live action "101 dalmatians" with glenn
close as well. we will unfortunately not be talking about "102 dalmatians" just because i
haven't seen "102 dalmatians." i think that's the only movie i haven't seen in the 101 dcu aka
the 101 dalmatians cinematic universe. and i don't have any intention of seeing "102 dalmatians"
anytime soon because hot take–well actually i don't know if it's that hot of a take because i
don't know what the general consensus is on the glenn keane– glenn keane??–glenn close version is.
and i'm a little nervous to break the news because i feel like i'm gonna break some hearts when i say
this but... i actually didn't like it that much. i watched it for the first time recently in
preparation for this video and i think it just doesn't have the nostalgic appeal (for me) that
it has for a lot of people. i felt it was kind of boring honestly, but that's just my opinion. i'm
not going to talk too much beyond the costumes for this video but as a quick review on what i thought
about the new "cruella," these are just generally my thoughts and feelings: "i thought definitely...
i thought it was fun. i liked the beat..." "uh huh." i had a really good time watching it. i
think emma stone and emma thompson are fabulous actors just in general so it was a delight to see
them act together. i thought the 70s songs were great. there were i think too many needle drops
to be honest for my taste, but i liked every song that they played in the movie so i couldn't be
too angry about that. and generally i thought the movie was more entertaining than any other movie
in the 101 dcu. but with that said i still felt a certain way about the costuming and i thought
it was pretty superficial and actually diminished cruella's appeal as a villain character. and
this is just gonna be a really weird review for me i guess, because i really loved this movie
but i just couldn't get behind the costumes and i felt the reverse with the glenn
close movie. yeah we'll see how this goes. disney's 1961 "one hundred and one dalmatians"
was initially based on the 1956 novel "the hundred and one dalmatians" by dodie smith, which
briefly covers some of cruella's backstory such as... her family home hell hall being once
owned by her grandfather who was allegedly a serial killer and one of her other ancestors
was also allegedly a demon. so... evil runs in the family in this very hyperbolic "dickensian"???
(mispronounces and tries again:) "dickensian"??? type of way. i tried to be smart, added some new
vocabulary and i can't pronounce it, so that kind of defeated the purpose of saying that. in the
words of glenn close, "i think cruella basically has no redeeming human characteristics–except
she does have a sense of humor albeit wicked. she's gleeful in her evilness." sidenote: what i
would have loved even more than a 70s punk prequel is if they actually did something more along
the lines of "a series of unfortunate events" or "the addams family." doing cruella's family
storyline and introducing these really wacky characters that have these very hyperbolic
names like "cruella de vil," i think that just would have been so much fun. i just also
feel like when i look at cruella de vil's house and the way that it was animated in the
original animation, it would have just been a way cooler prequel to go through this aesthetically
darker victorian route. think about it and then get back to me when you realize how amazing of an
idea that would have been. so i was taking a look at some of the concept art created by marc davis
for the original 1961 movie and i'm just gonna show you a couple images for that. early designs
of her portrayed her much younger looking, which would have technically made more sense because
cruella allegedly met anita while in school, but her final cartoon design looks a good 20 years
older than anita. "must be cruella, your dearly devoted old schoolmate." um maybe evilness makes
you age faster?? unsure. i love the style of the turban and red and blue color scheme but i think
she is serving more hollywood vixen than she is chic fashion house diva here. her look actually
reminds me a lot of norma desmond from "sunset boulevard." in these drawings, cruella's basically
wearing her final outfit design in the movie but the way that they drew her hair and face
makes her look more conventionally feminine, fashionable, and refined. in contrast, the final
cruella feels like a caricature of the refined, fashionable woman. if you think of the "pretty"
and "elegant" villains that disney has animated: the evil queen and maleficent come to mind, they
are both a lot more static. we can cough it up to disney's animation technology back then but
both of these characters move languidly, slowly, and have stable expressions. they are depicted
as way scarier than the likes of yzma or ursula, who are given more cartoonish personality in
their body movements and facial expressions. if we had a cruella who looked like this, we
probably wouldn't have had a cruella who looked like this. because disney has shown us that a
pretty girl can't do ugly things and an ugly girl can't do pretty things, aka in "the little
mermaid" when ursula transforms into vanessa when she needs to be seductive, or when the evil
queen transforms into an old hag caricature and when maleficent transforms into a dragon leading
up to their deaths, because pretty girls can't die right (/s)??? i also think it's generally a bad
and messy practice to draw the disney villains as "conventionally uglier" than the princesses or
heroes because then it often leads to employing negative ethnic stereotypes for the villains. but
i'm getting off track–my point is i think that if they went with these initial concept art images,
we would have had a totally different cruella in the movie and thus a totally different cruella in
every subsequent adaptation. something that all cruella concept art images have in common though
is the dependency on a black, white, and red color scheme and the fur coat. fur is imperative to
cruella's entire identity. "i live for furs, i worship furs." the whole conflict of the original
movie is that she wants roger and anita's puppies to create her fur coat. but i also do want to note
that the original "one hundred and one dalmatians" is not an anti-fur story it's just an anti-puppy
fur story because there is a scene when anita says that she herself would like a fur coat but she's
too modest to purchase one. "oh i'd like a nice fur but there are so many other things." "sweet
simple, anita." we're going to get more into the fur discourse later on in this video and why i
think the lack of it in the new cruella movie basically is something i cannot get behind
at all... but all in due time, just you wait. glamour published an article recently stating
"the incarnation of cruella in the 1996 movie as a fashion designer has been essential to her
contemporary success–despite her obsession with literally wearing the fur of dogs, she is by
all accounts, 'fabulous.'" let's be honest, cruella's a revamp in the 90s to haute couture
fashion designer was essential for the culture. rather than being a kooky 1960s dognapper, she
rose above that to become this hyper glamorous ceo with a truly evil capitalistic bloodlust.
cruella was always portrayed as rich but i would say that it wasn't until the 96 version that you
really see how her villainy is tied in with her wealth and status. at the beginning of the movie
she actually was planning on a stripes collection featuring endangered tiger skin. "do you like
spots frederick?" "oh i don't believe so, madam. i thought we liked stripes this year." but
then tosses millions of dollars post-killing these tigers already to reroute and go for dalmatian
spots instead. "what would it cost us to start again on next year's line?" "millions." "can we
afford it?" "well yes..." "thank you darling, now go away, i have to talk to anita." the
1961 movie posits cruella as simply an evil, sadistic woman but the 96 movie makes us question
whether or not cruella wants these dalmatians for art or for cruelty? it adds another level of
complexity to the character, grounding her in the cruel realities of the fashion industry, without
portraying her as sympathetic in the slightest. i actually loved cruella's outfits in this version
way more than her outfits in "cruella" the movie. they were all perfect maximalist camp. the
costume designer anthony powell (rest in peace) incorporated all types of feathers, furs, and
snake skin into the costumes. and coincidence or not, the movie actually captures the state
of the fur industry in the late 90s pretty well. for context, there was an anti-fur
campaign that started in the late 70s, really took off in the 80s, and then kind of
fizzled out by the mid 90s. to illustrate this further, in 1985, there were 42 designers that had
real fur in their collections and then by 1997, more than 160 designers were using fur in their
collections. what caused this shift? chantal nadeau said in her book "fur nation: from the
beaver to brigitte bardot" that the fur industry changed their strategy to create a correlation
between the human woman and fur. she says, "the strategy behind this humanizing campaign
that really kicked off in 1994 has been less to sell fur than to sell names and faces to clearly
thwart the image of fur as an economy of death." "if you buy a paula lishman, you buy not
only a wacky crazy original fernando garment, but you also support a woman who, throughout her
career has styled herself as a nature lover, a dedicated mother, a responsible creator, but also
a fierce female entrepreneur. [...] against the bimbo image of female consumers so predominant in
many anti-fur activities and fictional accounts, the modern fur trade constructs narratives within
which women are the agents of the fur nation." and who is cruella but a girl boss with a passion
for fur? you can't deny that cruella looks super glammed up wearing all her fur coats. i feel like
the impression i get when i watch this movie is not "ugh gross she's wearing an endangered
animal." it's "wow she looks pretty freaking fabulous." as nadeau says, "cruella's ferocious
appetite to get the little dogs as her second skin reads as a burlesque, yet provocative
piece of pro-fur rhetoric." on designing her costumes anthony powell said,
"cruella is a total monster, a force of nature. if it's too realistic, it becomes unpleasant, so
we needed to make her unlike anybody you would bump into walking down the street. i needed to
make her larger than life." and he's right. it's like what i said in the beginning: designing an
evil character that makes goofy facial expressions and moves abnormally brings back the fun into
the story. and it makes the movie that actually deals with pretty disturbing subjects a lot more
lighthearted for child audiences. but because a live action uses real humans and, even though
glenn close is a great actress and they do fun things like redrawing her eyebrows (hey that's a
genius idea) and redrawing the shape of her lips, she's not a cartoon and there are
limitations. so to make up for that, having her wear outrageous costumes that no
average human would ever wear out and about, brings that fun back. the first shot of cruella
we get is her getting out of the car wearing all black in stiletto heels. her cigarette ash
drops on her show first foot and she ignores it, showing how she has little regard for anyone. she
steps out and drags along luscious fur coattails behind her. we don't even see her face yet but we
know exactly who she is and what she's all about. anthony said that putting her in black was
purposeful. "it took me a lifetime to realize that you should never be afraid of being obvious. black
spells villain once you establish that with an audience, you can do whatever you like." cruella
also doesn't have a particular time influence. the shoulder pads and nipped waist definitely
make me think of the 40s or 80s if anything. but all the silhouettes and elements are so severe
that her clothes don't really reflect any kind of trends people actually wore. anthony has said he
did this on purpose as well. "directors often ask you to do 'no period,' which is extremely hard
to do as there's always something which dates it. so with cruella i had to create a very original
look. i started with her silhouette. she's such a spiky and forceful person that i wanted her
silhouette to be striking and exaggerated–in at the waist, out of the hips, with shoulders
you could impale somebody on. you'll also notice that you never see your hands. there's
something about pink skin which is softening, so she wears gloves with fingernails, which both
extends the length of her fingers and makes her hands seem like claws." i think by creating a very
unique silhouette for cruella, it doesn't really matter if she's taking more references from the
40s in this look or from the 60s in this look, because the look is still very signature to
her, and is a look that not a lot of other people could pull off, and therefore, is a
look that transcends trends. anthony powell also worked on the costumes for "102 dalmatians"
and like i said i haven't seen that movie before, but i did take a look at some of the
costumes in it and they are immaculate. there's a scene where cruella is in prison and
she's wearing the most "glamorous prison" uniform that is designed like a 1960s mod dress complete
with a pill box hat that says 666 on it, prison shoes that are just striped stiletto heels, and
gold shackles that could pass for fine jewelry. jenny beaven did the costume design for disney's
"cruella" and she made about 47 looks for cruella alone and they are all so beautifully constructed.
but with that said, i don't think they make any sense. and i'm not blaming her for that i know
with disney especially–with any movie–but disney especially, the costume designer is at the mercy
of whatever the director wants or whatever the executives want and yeah, she doesn't have total
autonomy over disney's costuming. so i'm not blaming anyone in particular for this, i'm just
pointing out things in the movie that i felt were inconsistent or i felt were things that i would
have liked to change. so cruella takes place in the 1970s and yes this is very important, they
really shove it down your throats: the music is from the 1970s that's playing at this time and
cruella also takes a lot of references from 1970s punk fashion. jenny talks about how they employed
shapes from the decade like the nipped waist, exaggerated flares, and oversized lapels. she
didn't want to go overboard though, saying, "i found if i overdid the excesses of the 70s, it
started to look like costume more than clothes." i personally have no issue with costume design
looking more costumey, but maybe that's just me. cruella in this incarnation is an inspiring
designer with punk sensibilities. even as a child, she acts rebelliously and shreds up her school
blazer, paints her shirt, and wraps her tie around herself like some kind of belt-harness. the early
scenes of her as a child DIYing her school uniform are honestly when she is at her most punk in the
entire movie. and this is because she's rebelling against an actual system aka her school. she also
dons red hair for a good portion of the movie, embarrassed by her natural two-tone hair color.
and the midpoint of the movie when she decides to be more herself is symbolized by the
hair change. predictable but fine. jenny said that they took a lot of aesthetic cues
from nina hagan, a german new wave singer, the club kid brand body map, and designers
vivienne westwood, alexander mcqueen, and john galliano. the theme of the story here is that the
baroness, the villain, represents the dior couture establishment in high fashion and cruella is the
punk westwood disrupter. also sorry, can we just talk about this missed opportunity and yes this
is a spoiler, so if you don't want to be spoiled, please skip ahead to this timestamp: 18:03, but
i just have to mention this, i'm really sorry. there's a traumatic scene for cruella at the
beginning of the movie when she's a kid and she shows up to this 18th century rococo themed gala
event, and then at the end of the movie, there's a scene that parallels the first scene. and i
just think it would have been super cool for emma stone to wear a vivienne westwood-esque rococo
themed outfit, rather than, i don't know, this kind of anticlimactic suit. she's overthrowing
the baroness and i think there would have been no better way to visually symbolize that than
having her wear like a punk, deconstructed version of what the baroness was wearing in the first
couple scenes. especially when vivian westwood, john galliano, and alexander mcqueen have all
played with historical silhouettes. even if they didn't want to push it that far, i mean, just
even going with like a vivienne westwood t-shirt, one that says "god save the queen"... that'd
be hilarious, that would be funny, i would co-sign that expeditiously. the work is literally
out there. lost opportunity aside, i think the framing of cruella's agenda is probably the
weakest part of this entire film. don't get me wrong, i love 70s punk, i've mentioned it a couple
times on this channel already... but the problem is cruella de vil is just not punk. angelica jade
bastién writes for vulture: "if you look closely, "cruella" is indicative of the very culture it
pretends to critique. its central character is a white woman whose concerns and politics begin and
end with herself. she's a girl boss pretending to fight against the powers that be. she doesn't
want to overthrow the establishment so much as become it. hannah strong writes for little
white lies: "there's something a little grim about co-opting the imagery of a movement that
developed out of dissatisfaction with politics, capitalism, and restrictions on personal freedoms,
in order to sell the story of a woman whose entire personality is that she wants to turn dogs
into coats, though it's hardly surprising. the point is, cruella in this film is not anti-the
establishment, she's anti-the baroness. she's anti a singular person. and she wants to overthrow her
to become the new baroness essentially. there's nothing wrong about the system to her, there's
just something wrong with the person who heads it. there's even scenes of her working at the
bottom of the barrel of the fashion industry. "why are you speaking?" "i think you've nicked
me." and getting outrageous takeout orders for her boss in "the devil wears prada-esque" style
and yet, no commentary on that regard??? hm. there's the sequence in the film where emma
stone is wearing back-to-back amazing couture costumes as publicity stunts, like this military
jacket get up and this garbage truck dress, but again it feels so hollow because she's not
trying to make any kind of statement for herself or what she believes in. she's just trying to
show up this other designer. this cruella lacks the individuality that glenn close's cruella
has. glenn's cruella is all about herself, all about her ego, all about HER dalmatian
collection that she's willing to prioritize over the lives of actual puppies and the owners
that actually own these puppies. but this cruella is so focused on the baroness and her family
trauma that she doesn't really have anything else going for her. cruella doesn't seem to have
any design influences in the entire film. at least in the other dalmatian movies, cruella's design
aesthetic derives from her love of animal skin but for this movie, i feel like all the materials
she uses, all the silhouettes that she likes, they kind of just pop out of thin air. how is disney
going to make a movie about an artist and not show where that artist gets their motivations from?
it just ?!?!?! it just seems like disney decided on cruella's aesthetic because they thought it
looked cool and they just didn't feel a need to dig for a reason to explain it? sure it's fine
that cruella has always been socially outcasted or kind of "mad"–they kept saying that, i'm
not really sure what that's supposed to mean... "born brilliant. born bad. and a little bit mad." but that doesn't make her punk. [OOOOOOOOOHHHHH] and i think by costuming her as a punk heroine
with clear punk influences from established punk inspired designers, it ends up diluting the
real life punk movement, which feels a little gross to me. also cruella's outfits ,once again to
jenny's credit are beautiful, they look expensive and that's the problem. the punk movement started
on the streets, and in the uk, it started among the working class. punk fashion was accessible. in
my corset video, i mentioned how the ripped jeans trend came about because the ramones who made them
a statement actually couldn't afford new jeans to replace their worn ones. another big punk trend
was ripping a shirt and securing it with safety pins. this is something that is also relatively
cheap to make. in contrast to the DIY aspect of punk fashion, cruella's designs are very over
the top and they're made of–what seems like–very expensive materials. sure we can take a look at
some real-life couture punk-inspired designers, but you know, vivienne westwood for instance
didn't make any money–or didn't profit i should say–from her work until the 90s. and that was long
after she had already given up on punk. fashion journalist booth moore interviewed vivienne
westwood in 2000 and she wrote in the article that "vivienne realized by the late 1970s that she
wasn't a revolutionary. she was a victim. she gave up on punk which, like, the 1960s hippie look
had been co-opted and copied by big business." there's never an underground feeling to cruella's
designs. her designs are like the high fashion co-option of punk. which i wouldn't actually have
an issue with if disney didn't market her as this "anti-establishment, anarchist, punk character."
and no, i also don't expect disney to cover the complexities of punk fashion in a 2 hour and 17
minute movie–also it's disney so i know they're not going to do that. i'm just saying that by
removing all the context around punk fashion, you end up with costumes that feel pretty hollow.
and that just sticking to the assignment like they did with the glenn close version would have one)
been easier and two) just more satisfying. because to rewrite cruella as this punk girl is way more
work, especially when we consider the fact that her character originally represented this dark
side of a wealthy, older fashion establishment. like she kills endangered animals for the
aesthetic and she wants a real fur because she wants the luxury associated with real fur and she
wants these animals in excess–like 101 of them–and she fires people for disagreeing with her. she's
basically always been the more evil miranda priestly. she is the antithesis of punk. but punk
comes from the underground, and what do we expect from a mega corporation like disney to represent
it as, especially in one of its cash grab reboots? and that brings me to the biggest problem in
the entire wardrobe, which is the lack of fur. "what would you do with 15 puppies?" "that's
irrelevant." irrelevant because she no longer likes fur. i'm not trying to spoil too much, but
the new cruella basically gets the sympathetic backstory and a complete character rewrite.
i don't mind spin-offs, alternate universes, reboots, or anything that messes with the canon,
but i do think that it's kind of unnecessary to rewrite a character named cruella de vil to be
more sympathetic. the fun of cruella is just how absurdly sadistic she is. "what horrible little
white rats!" there's a moment where she wears a dalmatian fur coat to f*** with the baroness whose
dalmatians she's dog-napped, but it turns out to be fake fur. this cruella is more of a troll
messing with audience expectations than anything. and apparently in disney's production notes, they
wrote: "in our film, the character cruella does not in any way harm animals. cruella doesn't share
the same motivations as her animated counterpart." which actually makes no sense to me, because
being anti-fur is like a relatively new concept. it wasn't until the 1980s when activists started
to push this anti-fur campaign and before that, wearing synthetic fur was actually like a mark of
shame among fashion people. chantal nadeau said, "until the 1980s anti-fur campaign, synthetic fur
was perceived by the industry and designers–and the consumers–as the poor woman's skin, the
bastard beast, worse–the castrated image of the fur trade." and i would even argue that now,
the fur debate isn't as hot as the sustainability debate. like faux fur is actually very bad for
the environment because it's made of plastic so it doesn't break down, it doesn't degrade naturally.
so i think now people are switching to just buying vintage fur, faux and animal. i feel like with
this movie, disney was trying to avoid everything about the fur discourse to appease modern
audiences, but it feels wrong because the movie takes place in the 70s, which is actually a time
period when fur was really abundant. even jenny beaven said in an interview with pop sugar, "there
was definitely a lot of fur around in the 70s, particularly sheepskin–people smelled faintly
of sheep. there were wonderful afghan coats in kensington market for about 23 pounds." once
again the fur is symbolic to cruella's villainy. it is a symbol of her desire for a luxurious
expensive product, a desire that is so strong that she doesn't care who she has to kill or what
she has to kill to get it. without fur, she's no villain. and maybe that's what disney wants in
the end because honestly this cruella–she actually likes dogs. and so i feel like it's... you know,
very difficult for me to foresee how she could end up becoming like glenn close's cruella in the
future. and there's some throwaway questionable lines about mental illness like oh how cruella
has always been like a "psycho," or whatever. "i guess you were always scared...
weren't you? that i'd be a psycho." for the most part, she's just kind
of a nice, somewhat manic girl. "🎵 oh she's sweet but a pyschoooo 🎵" i expected the movie to lead up to her becoming
more sucked into the evil sides of the fashion industry, because god knows there's so many
of them, and to evolve to become like the baroness herself. but despite her name,
cruella de vil does for the most part, stay on everyone's good side of their moral
compasses. and no, i don't expect her to actually kill puppies in this movie. i just think that
the movie could exist better as a spin-off or an alternate universe cruella, because you can take
the puppy killer out of the girl, but you cannot take the girl out of the puppy killer...
and that sounded better in my head. thank you all so much for joining me today.
that's all i have. let me know in the comments what you think of the new "cruella" movie,
whether you liked it more or less than the glenn close version, and i'll see you all
next time! thanks, have a great day, bye!
