Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition What Cinderella Wore Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics Monash University Melbourne, VIC, Australia ISBN 978-3-319-91100-7 ISBN 978-3-319-91101-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91101-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941874 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Cover credit: George Mayer/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Papa, a debonair dresser and benevolent king of our small family, much missed. To Popie, who didn’t read the kind of rubbish I write (but was still proud). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Books are diffcult to write, even when they give you moments of great joy. It is much easier to write a book when you have wonderful people to help you. My thanks to Professor Peter Fitzpatrick, who supervised my Ph.D. on Disney musicals. His humour and empathy have been an exam- ple to me in my career. I’ve also been lucky in having some tremen- dous students, from the frst-year undergraduates to my brilliant band of Doctors, whose enthusiasm has compelled me to continue to learn, investigate, and discover. I’d like to acknowledge those who joined us in the Monash Fairy Tale Salon, who were there when this project was taking its frst steps. Their camaraderie and insight has been much appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge the Australian Fairy Tale Society, which has given me so many opportunities to reach out to other scholars, writers, storytellers, and artists who delight and inspire me. My thanks to Dr. Michelle J. Smith, Hilary Davidson, Dr. Victoria Tedeschi, Dr. Lenise Prater, Dr. Laura-Jane Maher, Lorena Carrington, Elisabeth Skoda, Wiebke Eikholt, my editors, Ben Doyle and Camille Davies, and reader for their expertise, patience, encouragement, and contributions of all shapes and sizes. Mistakes are, of course, all my own. I come from a long line of amazing women—my own fairy godmoth- ers—and my gratitude to them is boundless. My profuse thanks and love to my mother, who is the smartest person I know and who taught me how to harness a stubborn streak for good. Much gratitude and love to vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Papa, too, who was here when the project began. Holding this book in my hands won’t be at all the same without his proud smile. Also my thanks to my small scottie, Wee Davie, who always reminds me when I’ve been sitting too long at the computer. He’s a good boy. CONTENTS 1 Introduction: The Rise of Fashionable Fairy Tales, a Noble Fabrication 1 2 Fashion Felons I: Leading La Mode 47 3 Fashion Felons II: Breaking All the Fashion Rules 91 4 Skills with Threads: Heroes Who Make Fashion 129 5 Shoes, the Sole of Fairy Tale: Stepping Between Desire and Damnation 179 6 What the Fairies Wore: Sartorial Means and Darkest Villainies 225 7 Conclusion: The Fairy Tale Undressed 273 References 285 Index 307 ix LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 2.1 Finette Cendron rides to the palace. Illustration by Gordon Browne. Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d’Aulnoy, Fairy Tales by the Countess d’Aulnoy, trans. J. R. Planché (London: George Routledge, 1888) 72 Fig. 3.1 The Beast from The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast. Malcolm Douglas, The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast (suggested by Klaw & Erlanger’s Production) (New York: Towers & Curran, 1901) 107 Fig. 5.1 The old shoemaker’s widow makes a pair of red shoes. Hans Christian Andersen, Andersen’s Tales for Children, trans. Alfred Wehnert and Caroline Peachey (London: George Bell & Sons, 1874) 190 Fig. 5.2 Puss is ftted for boots. Illustration by Otto Speckter. Puss in Boots (London: John Murray, 1844) 208 Fig. 6.1 The Prince is dressed in the château of the White Cat. Contes de Fées (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1875) 228 Fig. 6.2 Gammer Grethel. Illustration by George Cruikshank. Edgar Taylor, German Popular Stories and Fairy Tales, as Told by Gammer Grethel, from the Collection of MM. Grimm (London: Bell & Daldy, 1872) 236 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Rise of Fashionable Fairy Tales, a Noble Fabrication A glass slipper clatters down the palace steps, a scrap of red cloth falls from the jaws of a wolf, the stiff new leather of a small pair of boots repulses brambles as a cat stalks his prey, a donkey’s pelt lies discarded upon the foor of a scullery maid’s room, and the severed feet of a child, shod in red shoes, dance through a deep forest. These are just some of the objects of clothing and footwear woven through the most famous fairy tales. The items of the fairy tale wardrobe exist within changing economies of consumption and luxury, evolving textile and clothing industries, and discourses of fashion that shape the fate of fairy tale’s divers protagonists. We’re dealing with what is worn, what meanings can be understood from sartorial gestures, and the skill, economics, and even political powers that drive sartorial choices. Fairy tale is fashion. For a long time, fairy tale has been treated as an ancient legacy, a universal compendium of symbols, a guide to the inner psyche. More recently, there has been increased focus on fairy-tale his- tory, on the waves of retellings and adaptations. Still, very frequently, objects of fashion are treated chiefy as symbol or metaphor, rather than as the representation of dress on trend or otherwise at the time. The words themselves, rather than the fashions represented, become critical. Scholars such as Marina Warner and Elizabeth Wanning Harries have scoured print histories and redeemed authors from the timeless haze of the fairy-tale miasma, and others such as Holly Tucker and Jo Eldridge Carney have embedded key topics of fairy tale—fertility and queenship, © The Author(s) 2018 1 R.-A. C. Do Rozario, Fashion in the Fairy Tale Tradition, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91101-4_1 2 R.-A. C. DO ROZARIO respectively—in their historical contexts. Still, a great part of the history of fairy tale is actively stimulated by sartorial practices. Colleen Hill’s Fairy Tale Fashion (2016), based upon the 2016 Fashion Institute of Technology’s exhibition of the same name, traces fairy tale’s infuence upon high fashion, smartly relating the fashions evoked in fairy tales themselves. Other scholars have written about the items of fashion that have found fame as iconic sartorial gestures; Kathryn A. Hoffmann, for instance, writing on the glass that went into the slipper, and Hilary Davidson exploring the redoubtable red shoe. The key is bringing these threads together—exploring how the fashion system and material cul- tures have infuenced the way fairy tales have evolved—to fnd out why those glass slippers, red capes, and feline boots exist not simply as iconic symbols, but also as active components of fairy tale. “Fashion” itself is a slippery term, referring to trends in clothing and also felds such as music, literature, and interior design. Fashion has a broad reach, but at its core is sartorial display and temporality. As Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil describe fashion, it “is the result of a historical process: fashion as a fux in time.”1 It is a mercurial phenom- enon in motion. It both reinvents and scorns the past, gripped by aspi- ration for the new and original, yet embracing the ideal of the timeless, organised to evolve into the conventional. It has both the authority to impose rules of dress and the freedom to break the rules. Fashion is but an aspect of the material cultures of dress, including, for instance, the tex- tile industries that create and generate clothing and, ultimately, the stuff of fashion. Understanding fashion and material cultures in relation to fairy tale is not a straightforward undertaking. Storytellers, from authors and sources to illustrators and costume designers, do not necessarily accu- rately reproduce fashion in their tales; indeed, many attempt to evoke the timeless or archaic in order to present a tale as authentic, ancient, or as a fgment of imagination, rather than a tale inspired by a particular point in time and place.2 In this respect, it would seem that fairy tales oper- ate counter to fashion.