A Modern Snow White by Vogue Italia & Camilla Akran

Another recent find that I missed when it was fresh in September last year (2013) for Vogue Italia, but worth sharing because it's both classic and modern at the same time and a really beautiful way to dress a Snow White figure. More importantly though, if you take a good look, you'll realize the clothes are telling the story.)

Dress on the left: Gah! *swoon*
In the video below, the one on the right has some really interesting insect & rhino details

Apart from just being pretty to look at, I'm including the behind-the-scenes video to show you a lot of the details you miss in the photos, because ! (I'm sure I could find some room in my wardrobe for a few of these...)

You have to check the details of this dress shown in the video...

I really like that they use a unicorn in the decoration details as well (that would be the dress above, by the way). You don't usually see Snow White with unicorn imagery but it makes a lot of sense with regard to the regal innocence she's supposed to have - whether being seven years old or seventeen.

Seems like a sinister accessory on her lips on the left there... is it a ring?
(But then is sticks to her skin in some shots in the video.)
The whole thing tells quite a dark story, ring, brooch, whatever it is.

Here's the lovely, lovely video (which, with these locations, light and more I would have used to make more of a story, but the whole point of this shoot is for the clothes to tell the story - which in the photos, if you really look at them, they actually do. This is one stylist and photographer (Camilla Akran) combination that I think is very successful in not only showing off the clothes so that they appeal (which is usually the main point of fashion) but in telling a unique version of a well-worn tale, especially in fashion circles. Apparently this is much harder to do than you'd think because I rarely get a sense of story so subtly, just via the clothes and styling.

Take a look at the details:

The only odd thing is that this model doesn't really give off a Snow White feel to me. I don't mean necessarily wide-eyed and innocent but she seems... a little jaded. Perhaps, though, this is Snow White after she's been woken and rushed to marriage. If this is what she's supposed to represent, Queen Snow White, then I'm on board with it.

If you'd like to know which designer made which dress, there are a few different ones in there so I suggest checking the Vogue Italia link HERE for the details.

Untranslatable Words of the Day: Waldeinsamkeit (German) & Istoriesmearkoudes (Greek)

One of those words in a foreign language we just don't have an English one for (but should). Today's is Waldeinsamkeit (German), aka "the feeling of being alone in the woods". (Hi Red!)

Another is Istoriesmearkoudes (Greek), meaning, literally, "stories with bears". Snow White & Rose Red! Bearskin! The Cat on the Dovrefell! So many more!

The images are by illustrator Anjana Iyer and is part of her 100 Days Project (creativity challenge being done by people around the world). You can see a whole lot more of her "untranslatable words" depicted in graphics HERE. I wish she had a lot more fairy tale words to make this a regular feature...

Angelina Jolie on Maleficent vs Sleeping Beauty, Fairy Tales & the Tashi Stories

The press events for the launch of Maleficent are heating up and Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning are currently in the UK promoting their film. Among the new fairy tale fashion statements (I adore Ms. Jolie's birds on branches dress here and check those character-themed shoes below from the French tour!) are a whole lot of Q&A's which, I have to say, they're really brave to do. (I feel for poor Elle getting random questions thrown at her about everything from being a role model to what she thinks of illegal downloading and piracy! Poor kid.)

Today (Friday) they held a large press conference in London to spontaneously (and bravely) answer questions from the press, and it was a delight to hear people asking about real fairy tales and have Ms. Jolie in particular, talk, not only about the film and Sleeping Beauty, but also about fairy tales and the stories she tells her children.
                               
I took a 6(ish) minute video clip from beginning of the full press conference video (which is about half an hour long), since that's the part fairy tale people will be most interested in, but you can find the full interview HERE.

Here's the fairy tale relevant portion of the interviews:

One question asked of Ms. Jolie was what fairy tales or stories she reads to her children and although I wasn't very surprised to hear she likes to make up her own tales, she did say she reads the Tashi stories,  of which there are many volumes and that she loves. (Basically, she's recommending them to parents everywhere.)

The Tashi stories (16 books so far with 2 Tashi adventures in each) are written by Australian authors Anna Fienberg with and her mother Barbara Fienberg, and illustrated by award winning artist Kim Gamble. While these books aren't traditional fairy tales, they are definitely drawn from and inspired by fairy tales from all over the world, centering on a character named Tashi, who comes "from a place far away", and goes on many, many adventures. Tashi is a Tibetan name meaning 'good fortune' or 'auspiciousness'.)

Here's an introduction to Tashi and his world of stories:

A boy named Jack describes his new friend, Tashi, who arrives one day on the back of a swan from a magical country populated with giants, dragons, ghosts and all sorts of other things that go bump in the night. Tashi mesmerizes Jack (and Jack mesmerizes his parents) with tales of his exploits about outwitting a succession of deliciously horrible villains ("I'll pluck out your nose hairs, one by one," a bandit threatens Tashi). Sometimes Tashi tells a story, to Jack; sometimes Jack recounts a Tashi adventure to his parents. In an amusing role reversal, Jack's parents hang breathlessly on their son's every word ("So tell us," Jack's father says. "After Tashi tricked those giants and teased the bandits, how did he meet these ghosts?"), and the dialogue between the storyteller and his audience invisibly tightens the narrative tension. Teasers end each tale ("`So that's the end of the story,' said Jack sadly. `And everyone was safe and happy again.' `Yes,' said Tashi, `that is, until the bandits arrived'.."). (Description from Publishers Weekly) 

   

Tashi began as a conversation with my mother. She was telling me how, when she was a child, she used to tell whoppers. Creative fibs. Tall stories. And the kids would crowd around, dying to hear the latest tale. We began talking about a character like her - a character who told fantastic stories - and over many cups of tea we cooked up Tashi’ - Anna Fienberg 

 

(Tashi) had so many appealing qualities: a rich friendship between boy and friend (or alter ego); a teasing relationship between boy and father; a fresh take on the 'tall tale'; a fearless blend of European and Asian folk story traditions; larger-than-life villains; an irrepressible hero living by his wits (brain not brawn always triumphs); action aplenty; exotic landscapes; and scope for cinematic pictures… (from the Alien Onion children's book editors blog)

Although I haven't read them all (I will soon fix that problem!) the ones I've seen are enchanting, both in the story telling and the illustrations and it's delightful to find characters we're familiar with along the way, whether they be giants that sound familiar or Baba Yaga or even Bluebeard (yes, there's a children's story with Bluebeard in the collection! But don't be concerned. You, and any kids you read to, are in good hands with these authors.)

The official website for the many Tashi books is HERE and you can get them pretty much anywhere in the world (and Amazon is a good place to start as the collection is currently 29% off).

One of Brad Pitt's personal portraits of Angelina Jolie: "wife & mother"

Micechat Discusses Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty in the Wood" (I Know!) & "About Sleeping Beauty" by PL Travers (yes, of Mary Poppins fame)

Dornroschen (Briar Rose) - Brothers Grimm

On Thursday, May 8, one of the prominent Disney fan blogs, Micechat, posted the full Perrault tale of Sleeping Beauty in the Wood AND included a little analysis of it at the end. (I nearly fell off my chair in excitement, when I found this.)

Thank you Cory Gross! (He wrote and posted the article on Micechat, illuminating a whole slew of Disney fans that there has always been a whole lot more to the fairy tale (even if it is bizarre and confusing at times) than Disney chose to show.

I did always find it interesting that Disney, when asked, credit Perrault with the story, rather than the Grimm's, as the Grimm's version is just the first half and completely light and sweet (very unlike Grimm's actually!) than Perrault's version. Nevertheless, I really like that in doing so, they send people back to this version every now and then as a result.

By the way, the images throughout are by Charles Keeping, from a book by P.L. Travers, titled About the Sleeping Beauty (yes, that's the same Travers who wrote Mary Poppins!). More about those and the book below. (After Micechat.)

La Belle au Bois Dormant (The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood) - Charles Perrault

Here's how the article begins:

With the excitement over the upcoming revisionist fairy tale Maleficent, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the original story published by Charles Perrault in 1697, with just a bit of commentary at the end. Most of us are familiar with the first half of the story, in which the princess (who is nameless in this version) is cursed by the aged fairy and slumbers for a century before being awoken by her predestined prince. This translation from the original French was by Charles Welsh, for the publication of The Tales of Mother Goose in 1901. I’ve also included the illustrations by the unparalleled French engraver Gustave Doré, published in 1867.

Once upon a time there was a king and a queen, who were very sorry that they had no children,—so sorry that it cannot be told.

At last, however, the Queen had a daughter. There was a very fine christening; and the Princess had for her godmothers all the fairies they could find in the whole kingdom (there were seven of them), so that every one of them might confer a gift upon her, as was the custom of fairies in those days. By this means the Princess had all the perfections imaginable.

Sole, Luna, E Talia (Sun, Moon, and Talia), an Italian folk tale

It goes on, as you would expect and then it includes the second half of Perrault's tale, with a little, ahem "warning" preceding it:

Though the princess is nameless in Perrault’s version of the fairy tale, the French name of her daughter is “L’Aurore,” meaning “The Dawn.” From this point in the story, there is an entire second half that most people are not familiar with. It is pretty wild as well, and I would have paid for this direct-to-video sequel!

The Queen spoke several times to her son, to learn after what manner he was passing his time, and told him that in this he ought in duty to satisfy her. But he never dared to trust her with his secret; he feared her, though he loved her, for she was of the race of the Ogres, and the King married her for her vast riches alone. It was even whispered about the Court that she had Ogreish inclinations, and that, whenever she saw little children passing by, she had all the difficulty in the world to prevent herself from falling upon them. And so the Prince would never tell her one word.

Delicious, yes?

And then some commentary:

This second half is so different from the first that scholars are of the opinion that it may have been tacked on from another fairy tale. The connection between these two stories may have originated with Giambattista Basile’s 1634 version of the story, titled Sun, Moon, and Talia. In that version, Talia is not cursed by a fairy, but simply predestined to fall asleep after getting a splinter of flax under her fingernail. During her slumbers, she is found by a king, and nine months later gives birth to twins. One of the twins suckles the splinter from under Talia’s fingernail and wakes her. The queen finds out about all this, and orders that the children be cooked and fed to their father. 

The Queen of Tubber Tintye - a myth from Ireland 

Thankfully they are rescued by the cook and it is the queen who is punished instead. Arguably that makes more coherent sense than Prince Philip’s mother being an ogre, and it is understandable why the Brothers Grimm would separate the latter half into its own story, The Evil Mother-in-Law, when they appropriated Little Briar Rose for their volume of fairy tales.Despite making some strange script choices (like having Aurora comatose for about a half-hour instead of a century or more), the Disney version does highlight the deep seated religious metaphors intrinsic to the story. Allow me to defer to the great Edwardian apologist of fairy tales, G.K. Chesterton:

But I deal here with what ethic and philosophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If I were describing them in detail I could note many noble and healthy principles that arise from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of “Jack the Giant Killer”; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. For the rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. There is the lesson of “Cinderella,” which is the same as that of the Magnificat—EXALTAVIT HUMILES. There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the “Sleeping Beauty,” which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. But I am not concerned with any of the separate statutes of elfand, but with the whole spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

What Chesterton points to in Sleeping Beauty is a powerful Christian metaphor, an allegory of the human condition and of human salvation buried amidst the dragons and fairies and noble daring.  What is latent in other versions comes right to the fore in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Some of the images are painfully obvious, such as the Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue gifted to Prince Philip, which is a muddled reference to Saint Paul’s admonition to don the “whole armor of God” in Ephesians 6:13-17. Maleficent graduates from Carbosse’s status as simply a vindictive fairy to being the Mistress of All Evil who proudly commands all the powers of Hell. 

"The Petrified Mansion" from “Bengal Fairy Tales.”

On the one hand, Aurora can be decried as more of a plot device than an actual character. On the other, she is a poetic metaphor for the whole human race. Though uniquely gifted with sentience, self-awareness, reason, and spiritual wakefulness, humanity is also cursed with awareness of its own impending, inexorable descent into death. Our efforts to avoid this destiny are like so many burning spinning wheels. No matter what we do with all our time, money, and industry, our fingers have an inevitable date with a spindle.

There's quite a bit more but I will leave it to you to go and read it. You can find the whole post, including the entire Sleeping Beauty in the Wood text, HERE.

Regarding About the Sleeping Beauty, in the book, Travers includes her own Sleeping Beauty tale, along with an "afterword" explaining her tale. Traver's story is set in the Far East (that nebulous place) so no giant dresses for her story's illustrations. The illustrations below is of the barren queen (in this case, a sultana). Below her is a depiction of Travers' own "Sleeping Beauty".

Barren Queen/Sultana from P.L. Travers’ story

Travers' Sleeping Beauty sleeping

The rest of the book includes several traditional "sleeping girl" tales from around the world, including a couple we're pretty familiar with here in these parts. To my mind anyway, these illustrations (so wiry looking!) are perfect for communicating the tenseness in absolute rest involved in each of these tales.

You can find information on About the Sleeping Beauty HERE at Goodreads and it's also available second hand via Amazon,

Benjamin Lacombe's Snow White: Animated Book Trailer

One of my favorite books ever (which I desperately want my own copy of but have never been able to afford every time I look it up) has a trailer, and I only just discovered it! They've taken Lacombe's beautiful art work and animated it, laying some music underneath to tell the story we know so well.

I just had to share because: gorgeous! (Plus the imagery he uses in his illustrations is just wonderful.)

I believe the text is in Portuguese but you don't really need it translated. The images speak for themselves. (I kind of want this on a DVD I can play over and over...)

Enjoy!

 

Boys Need Mythic Merchandise To Help Fantasy Stories Stick Today and Stella McCartney Gets That (aka Maleficent [& Fairy Tales] for Boys - 2 of 2)

This is part 2 of 2 o the topic of fairy tales (especially those considered girls tales) being marketed to boys and the importance of doing exactly that. (You can find part 1 HERE.)

Today, not only is there a new "creature feature trailer" for Maleficent (harking from Walt Disney Studios Australia), there are even more creature concept designs to share! Continuing on from yesterday's post, here is part 2 of "Maleficent [& Fairy Tales] for Boys"...

First, though, here's the new trailer, which is full of Henson-esque goodness (and oh, so toyable! And yes, that's actually a real word these days... *eyeroll*)

I still only see one dragon, though, and I'm fairly sure it's Diaval... *crosses fingers for an awesome Maleficent-dragon to be revealed in the movie*

But why am I focused on this being marketed to boys? Don't boys have plenty of tales? I would argue that, especially since the "princess culture" has asserted itself over every toy store in every country, that fairy tales are in serious danger of being thought to be only for girls. If you've read any traditional collection of fairytales (I'm not even talking about Grimm's and Perrault, but the much newer, pre-princess illustrated volumes of tales) it was clear that most fairy tales were both for boys and girls.

What's so interesting to me, is that Maleficent is not being marketed primarily at little girls per say,  even though:
1) Maleficent is Disney - the same Disney that has made a mint on princess culture propaganda and
2) the original animated film is considered a "princess movie" (despite having possibly THE best Prince ever created in the Disney canon, which is going to be doubly ironic when the live action version is so two dimensional - hah!)*

My thoughts on marketing fairy tales to boys began in earnest back when Disney started changing the names of their fairy tales to sounds less... fairy tale (or, as they thought, girly). When marketing Frozen, however, (which Disney continually says "is inspired by The Snow Queen", meaning, they keep putting that fairy tale association in front of us, no matter how unlike a fairy tale it actually is), the marketing team decided they needed to grab the boy-audience early and entice them to the theater in a way they hadn't yet managed.

Enter the re-arrange-able snowman, Olaf, and a very goofy reindeer in a short film used as a teaser for the movie.

Despite my misgivings at what seemed to be an obnoxious approach, the humor of the Olaf and Sven short did, indeed, catch the attention of little boys and they weren't disappointed when they saw Olaf, Marshmallow and Sven on the screen. They even enjoyed seeing Elsa using her powers and her character be a little conflicted about the whole thing. But then, Disney kind of shot themselves in the foot (as far as marketing to boys, anyway), as there was hardly any merchandise suitable for a boy who loved the movie to acquire, keep and play with. Instead, it was Princess-city. Even the Olaf plushes were kept in the "girl's aisle" with very "girly" packaging!

I cannot tell you how unhappy my initially delighted child became. He went from not being able to stop talking about Olaf and the power of ice and snow, and even talking about Snow Queen characters, to desperately wishing Olaf wasn't part of a "girl movie". To date I have only been able to find a pair of pajamas that were suitable, one plush (that had no girly packaging) and one decent t-shirt that didn't scream "this is for girls!". Now, whenever there's mention of the movie, his, and other children's, lasting association is that it's really just a princess movie. Although I'm not as bowled over by the movie as many have been/are, this really does a disservice to everyone who worked so very (very!) hard on this movie. It also jams another giant nail into the "fairy tales are girls, only" coffin (except in cases like Jack the Giant Slayer, which, for reasons I wrote at length on yesterday, just wasn't as successful a boys fairy tale film as it should have been either).

Whoever would have thought making a fairy tale stick would rely so much on merchandise? But, I can hear you say, surely we don't have to rely on t-shirts and plushies to pass our fairy tales to our kids these days, do we? That's downright deplorable! (Isn't it?)

I don't think we have to rely on merchandise BUT I think we have a better chance of making the tales stick, if we support the telling of a tale via the means that communicate best to kids best today. It's all about passing on - and holding onto - the essence of the information, or in this case, fairy tale. While at first the thought seems strange and even objectionable, the signs have been here all along. Even the Grimm's knew if you could create something you could hold and look at whenever you wanted and grow attached to, after the fact of the tale telling, that those stories would stick better than ever before. Today that means t-shirts, costumes, plushies, dolls, video games and lunch boxes. (Yes, lunch boxes!)

Enter Maleficent and the wide array of marketing happening for this film.

I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised if the marketing team drew a giant grid on a board, listing all the various channels they could market via: music, fashion, high end accessories, dolls, pop-vinyl figures, stationary, cosmetics, costumes and cosplay, commuters, children's dress-up, classic Disney re-imaginings merchandise and newer pop culture versions, etc and what they could create for each. They even took into consideration all the social media options for sending things viral: lots of visuals, posters, "gif-able" clips, progressive image reveals, concept designs, featurettes etc etc, not to mention looked at demographics: fashion conscious women, edgy teens, social media, artists, lovers of the classic animated movie, fantasy buffs (aka LOTR & similar fans), dark fairy tale aficionados, romance fans, Disney lovers and, yes, children. (And yes, Subway is covering the "lunch totes".)

So where does it show they've been considering boys as part of their audience? It started with the trailers: first impressions of the movie were on the darker side, with powerful images of landscape changing magic and intimidating characters who needed fighting. Then came indications of a fight, the more imposing forest creatures and instead of early-gentle nature-loving Maleficent; we were shown impressive power that made a king shake in his boots, along with some serious battle scenes and the forces of nature rising up to this character's call. It was only around this time that the prettiest of images started emerging but with an underscore of ominous music which was at odds with how pretty and light these scenes looked, like the young child Aurora in a field. Then came the dragon and more knights in battle and a reveal of a landscape at war with the people. I have to say, by this point I was wondering if parents were going to be concerned about taking their little girls to this movie! My son, on the other hand, went from being concerned that this was going to be too scary to "this is awesome!". The more creatures were revealed, the more fantastic everything has seemed to him. From the cute (but still not too girly) goblins and troll-like creatures, which have assured him that there will be fun magic as well as dark, to Diaval's many forms in which he enjoys seeing the bird-like aspects of, all these remind him of... ET and The Neverending Story. I kid you not.

But this is still all pre-release, and Frozen did fine with their approach as well. What I'm already seeing as being a huge plus for my son is that, while there still isn't a whole lot, there is merchandise just for boys.  While I hope there's more, here I'm talking specifically about the Stella McCartney Maleficent children's line, who Angelina Jolie collaborated with in designing, as well as Disney, of course. (My son has already grabbed his various lego dragons, including his version of Smaug, and enacts battle scenes where the dragon wins. Having recently also watched Epic (bad name, pretty good movie), he's very interested in wild nature both in weather and in growing things and gets annoyed when people clip their trailing vines or cut down their trees.) What he's going to want, though, is a piece of Maleficent he can take home for himself, and the Stella McCartney boys' options do exactly that. (In fact, he's already begged me for both shirts, "...but if you can only choose one, Mama, please choose the trolls.").

I have been so struck regarding the difference in impact on boys in general for merchandising for this particular blockbuster fairy tale production (not just my son), and the obvious consideration for little boys of the same that was lacking in presenting Frozen, that I sent a note to the company to thank them, making sure to tell them why I thought what they were doing was so important.

It reads as follows (emphasis in bold is only for the blog post here):

To Whom It May Concern at Stella McCartney, 

A quick note to say thank you for designing some great Maleficent stuff for boys too! 

With all the marketing thrown at little boys for Frozen and hardly any Olaf products in sight my son went from loving the Olaf & Sven parts of the movie, to believing it must only be for girls, because, there was only "girls stuff" available to purchase (mostly anyway). Maleficent, with all the trolls, ents, dragons and knights etc is great for boys to sink their fantasy teeth into and seeing these products he's already more excited about seeing the film.  

I wish more people understood how much impact these items have on kids perceptions of a story and film. The merchandise they (kids) see afterward helps create the lasting associations they have with the film, and if boys are going to tap into mythic stories, we need to cater to them too - so, again, thank you.

Sincerely.

(I should note here also, that Stella McCartney is sending a percentage of all sales to help disadvantaged children as well, which is another reason I'm considering pinching pennies and saving for one of these shirts my son wants so badly, when normally I wouldn't consider spending anywhere near that much!)

I do feel the need to add, here, that this is all before the film has been released, Perhaps it will all change after the fact and we'll have a re-run of the Frozen-is-a-girls-movie syndrome, but I really hope we don't.

In fact, I would be so very happy if legos bought the rights to making a mainstream (not a "Lego Friends" version *shudder*) construction toy for Maleficent. And then they made a lego video game... (I think I might have to go suggest this to them.)

I can tell you right now, if Disney made plushies of these troll-fae, they'll be half way to being beloved by everyone, including boys who adore ET, for generations to come!

* I'm actually wondering if Angelina Jolie, who is always thinking of her own children and continues to be a strong advocate of all children everywhere, had something to say about making sure her boys would love seeing the movie as much as the girls. I know she had a huge influence on almost every other part of the movie - from costumes and casting to directing and music - and it certainly feels that way to me. If that's the case, I am sincerely grateful to her on behalf of mothers of all little boys everywhere.