The princess bride
Disney weds girlish fantasy with adult desire for, er, girlish fantasy
By: SHARON STEEL
When it comes to weddings, at this point in my life, I have no idea what I should want. A Kirstie Kelly for Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings dress is yet another baffling piece of this puzzle. I watch Platinum Weddings reruns on the Style Network, and am somewhat addicted to following tricked-out bridezillas as they meticulously plan every last detail of their masturbatory celebrations, right down to the crystals on their cakes, the custom-made linens, and of course, the dress. “I feel like a princess!” they all squeal during their first fitting. “You look like a princess!” sigh their mothers, or bridesmaids, or BFFs. It’s true. They do.
Pop culture offers a wide variety of princess role-models, but Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Jasmine, et. al. reign as the femme fatales of the princess brat-pack. With these visions of fairy-tale loveliness in its corner, Disney has lured little girls and tweens into its $4 billion film-and-aftermarket Disney Princess enterprise, which includes toys, CDs, and books (see disney.go.com/princess). So it was only a matter of time before Disney connected the dots between fantasy and reality and decided to conquer an older, but no less susceptible, demographic.
In April, Disney launched a line of princess-inspired wedding dresses (available at disneybridal.com), conceived by veteran couture eveningwear and bridal designer Kirstie Kelly. The gowns were in stores by September — high shopping season for spring and summer brides. At the end of October, Disney announced a follow-up line and tie-in Maiden gowns for bridesmaids, and a line called Jewels, which includes veils, necklaces, and assorted sparkly accessories. A Blossoms collection for flower girls will be in stores this month. It makes sense: what’s the use of being in the fantasy business if you don’t offer a way for a real girl to live out one of her own?
Jasmine has a tattoo?
You know that a high-end designer has made it when they go slumming with a mass-market chain — such as Roberto Cavalli for H&M, Erin Fetherston for Target, or Stella McCartney for adidas. Kelly’s alignment with Disney is a clever collaboration. It brings up the corporation’s luxury profile and catapults hers into the mainstream.
Kelly, who turned out the first line in just six months, is already an expert at combining the Disney Princess sensibility with a precise shot of chic. “I just sort of entrenched myself with the princesses,” she says.
Disney’s wedding initiative is all about meshing its image with the aesthetic proclivities of adult women who still have girl-crushes on caricatures. “I spent a lot of time watching the films when I was developing who the princesses would be for today’s woman,” says Kelly. “A lot of it came down to describing their personalities through the gowns and through the stories we tell about them.”
Finding the princess in you amounts to taking a Disney-fied, saccharine version of a Jungian personality test. “Belle is more stylish, sophisticated — she’s book smart,” explains Paulette Cleghorn, the line’s head of sales and marketing. “She wants really nice fabric, she wants draping, she’s into that European flavor. Snow White is more demure and sweet. Jasmine’s more bohemian. She wants to have fun at her wedding. She’s got a great body and probably has a tattoo somewhere on her back!” The Ariel dress is a sleek fishtail cut that Cleghorn describes as “sultry and alluring,” while Cinderella and Aurora/Sleeping Beauty are somewhat less distinguishable: the former is classic glamour; the latter is “lovely and romantic.”
Disney is also making it possible for couples to plan their entire wedding based on Disney archetypes and fairy tales — essentially, the ultimate fantasy day. You can host your wedding at romantic locations at the Walt Disney World Resort or at Disneyland, or you can have a destination wedding on a Disney cruise line. If you didn’t get married at Disney World the first time around, you can renew your vows there. Or, you can treat yourself to a Disney honeymoon. The Disney wedding, however, is the bread-and-butter of festivities, an event that comes with seemingly endless customizable options.
Earlier this year, Disney hired celebrity party planner David Tutera to take the helm of Disney’s Couture Wedding Collection packages (see disneyweddings.go.com). The cheapest Disney wedding starts at around $4000, but if you want Tutera’s guidance, you must be prepared to spend a minimum of $75,000. Couples can choose from one of four themed packages, and can further tailor them by adding extras such as a $7000 orchestra or a 10-hour photography package ($5220). If you like, you can actually be Cinderella, and roll up to your nuptials in a coach pulled by six white ponies, guided by a driver and two footmen in “full regalia” ($2700).
And it doesn’t have to end with the reception. Jim Calhoun, head of Disney’s apparel line, has said that the company wants women “to have a little bit of princess every day.” So what does that mean? Well, in two months’ time, Kelly says, she’ll be able to discuss further plans for her line’s expansion. Right now, all she can say is that there will be some home pieces and more accessories, all “geared toward the idea of using the princess, who she is today, and developing out in a very luxurious way.”
I’m picturing Disney Princess engagement rings for the guy who is tapped in to his lady love’s needs; high-end décor and appliances — such as a Disney Princess canopy bed with 400-thread-count Princess sheets — for the Disney newlyweds; a Disney Princess Power Suit and a matching Princess “It” Bag for that great new job; and Disney Princess Bassinet for the Princess infant. Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings is just one sect within the Princess mega-church.
You’re wearing who?!
Of course, being a Disney bride does carry certain, er, connotations. From a marketing perspective, there’s nothing wrong with dressing up reality as happy ever after — it’s cut-and-dry genius. But from a critic’s soapbox, there’s no logical reason for a grown woman to embrace a Disney delusion — never mind thread it into what are supposedly the most important moments of her life. One might assume that these women have no bull**** detector, that they really believe that a corporate version of princess glamour is the key to everlasting bliss.
In its quest to win over adults, Disney has managed to engender some bad publicity. “It’s douchey **** like this that makes me hate being a woman,” railed a commenter on Gawker. And in a brides.com message board, one woman expressed more concern about the label than the design. “What if the tag said Disney on it?” she wondered. Quelle horreur! So what’s an aspiring princess to do?
Yolanda Cellucci, the owner of Yolanda’s Waltham bridal salon, didn’t hesitate to stock the Disney gowns, and her 40-year-old outlet has exclusive distribution rights to the line in Massachusetts. Demand was immediate. Cellucci says she figured that, eventually, Disney would marry its success with weddings — around 2000 are hosted annually at its US resorts and on the Disney cruise lines — to attire. “The dresses were the only thing that was missing,” she says.
“Some people feel that the Disney name turns them off,” admits Cellucci. “But people love them. There are people who love the fantasy world of being a princess, of being Cinderella for a day. I had a young girl come in who said she’s been looking at Snow White for so long, and that was exactly what she wanted to look like. She knew the dress.
“I’ve heard girls say, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I wanted to be connected to a Disney dress.’ Then there’s the client who wants that. She’s striving for that storybook Cinderella with the coach, the handsome guy, the whole thing. . . . It’s about Prince Charming. I mean, it’s pretty hard, in today’s world, to say there’s a Prince Charming out there, when you look around.”
Not tacky . . . honest
And now for the strangest thing about the Disney bridal gowns: they aren’t the least bit cheesy or tacky. Not even a little. They aren’t overt, costume-y rip-offs of the animated dresses, they aren’t poufy monstrosities, and they don’t cost a princess’s fortune. They’re beautiful, polished, conventionally sweet, and pick up on extremely popular bridal trends. If you hated Disney, but didn’t know the dresses were in any way connected with the company, you’d probably covet one of them. You might even prefer it to a pricey Vera Wang or whatever you could snag at the Filene’s Basement wedding-dress sale. Thanks to Kelly, the dresses cleverly play on enduring themes and silhouettes and, true to Disney’s mainstream-appeal philosophy, they probably would look good on just about anyone.
Ranging from $1100 to $3500, Kirstie Kelly’s Disney dresses aren’t inexpensive, but, according to Cellucci, they do fall into the average brides’ budget. What’s more, each of them practically shouts, “OMG, I’m a princess!” But not, like, in a shrieky, Platinum Weddings kind of way. These gowns will age well in your photo album. Your friends are bound to compliment the one you choose. It would take a great deal of effort not to feel regal in any one of Kelly’s designs.
The first-season Disney’s Princess Jasmine dress costs under $2500 and features an empire waist (one of the trendier bridal cuts) and several layers of charmingly draped chiffon. It doesn’t have a bead or overt embellishment anywhere on it. It’s also the line’s best-selling frock. “The phones do not stop ringing for that dress,” says Cleghorn. “It looks good on a size two and on a size 24. It’s a wonderful, magic dress.”
“Disney has always known they’ve had the market on princesses,” adds Cleghorn. “It was the perfect marriage. How do we blend that Disney magic and make it something modern? This was the way to do it.”
It’s difficult to say what’s more brilliant — the fact that Disney is about to become a luxury label, or the fact that all the standard princess rules have been thrown out. You don’t have to be a blue blood or possess an infinite knowledge of a Disney heroine’s back-story to act the part. You just have to like what you see.
story from the bostonphoenix.com
Disney weds girlish fantasy with adult desire for, er, girlish fantasy
By: SHARON STEEL
When it comes to weddings, at this point in my life, I have no idea what I should want. A Kirstie Kelly for Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings dress is yet another baffling piece of this puzzle. I watch Platinum Weddings reruns on the Style Network, and am somewhat addicted to following tricked-out bridezillas as they meticulously plan every last detail of their masturbatory celebrations, right down to the crystals on their cakes, the custom-made linens, and of course, the dress. “I feel like a princess!” they all squeal during their first fitting. “You look like a princess!” sigh their mothers, or bridesmaids, or BFFs. It’s true. They do.
Pop culture offers a wide variety of princess role-models, but Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Jasmine, et. al. reign as the femme fatales of the princess brat-pack. With these visions of fairy-tale loveliness in its corner, Disney has lured little girls and tweens into its $4 billion film-and-aftermarket Disney Princess enterprise, which includes toys, CDs, and books (see disney.go.com/princess). So it was only a matter of time before Disney connected the dots between fantasy and reality and decided to conquer an older, but no less susceptible, demographic.
In April, Disney launched a line of princess-inspired wedding dresses (available at disneybridal.com), conceived by veteran couture eveningwear and bridal designer Kirstie Kelly. The gowns were in stores by September — high shopping season for spring and summer brides. At the end of October, Disney announced a follow-up line and tie-in Maiden gowns for bridesmaids, and a line called Jewels, which includes veils, necklaces, and assorted sparkly accessories. A Blossoms collection for flower girls will be in stores this month. It makes sense: what’s the use of being in the fantasy business if you don’t offer a way for a real girl to live out one of her own?
Jasmine has a tattoo?
You know that a high-end designer has made it when they go slumming with a mass-market chain — such as Roberto Cavalli for H&M, Erin Fetherston for Target, or Stella McCartney for adidas. Kelly’s alignment with Disney is a clever collaboration. It brings up the corporation’s luxury profile and catapults hers into the mainstream.
Kelly, who turned out the first line in just six months, is already an expert at combining the Disney Princess sensibility with a precise shot of chic. “I just sort of entrenched myself with the princesses,” she says.
Disney’s wedding initiative is all about meshing its image with the aesthetic proclivities of adult women who still have girl-crushes on caricatures. “I spent a lot of time watching the films when I was developing who the princesses would be for today’s woman,” says Kelly. “A lot of it came down to describing their personalities through the gowns and through the stories we tell about them.”
Finding the princess in you amounts to taking a Disney-fied, saccharine version of a Jungian personality test. “Belle is more stylish, sophisticated — she’s book smart,” explains Paulette Cleghorn, the line’s head of sales and marketing. “She wants really nice fabric, she wants draping, she’s into that European flavor. Snow White is more demure and sweet. Jasmine’s more bohemian. She wants to have fun at her wedding. She’s got a great body and probably has a tattoo somewhere on her back!” The Ariel dress is a sleek fishtail cut that Cleghorn describes as “sultry and alluring,” while Cinderella and Aurora/Sleeping Beauty are somewhat less distinguishable: the former is classic glamour; the latter is “lovely and romantic.”
Disney is also making it possible for couples to plan their entire wedding based on Disney archetypes and fairy tales — essentially, the ultimate fantasy day. You can host your wedding at romantic locations at the Walt Disney World Resort or at Disneyland, or you can have a destination wedding on a Disney cruise line. If you didn’t get married at Disney World the first time around, you can renew your vows there. Or, you can treat yourself to a Disney honeymoon. The Disney wedding, however, is the bread-and-butter of festivities, an event that comes with seemingly endless customizable options.
Earlier this year, Disney hired celebrity party planner David Tutera to take the helm of Disney’s Couture Wedding Collection packages (see disneyweddings.go.com). The cheapest Disney wedding starts at around $4000, but if you want Tutera’s guidance, you must be prepared to spend a minimum of $75,000. Couples can choose from one of four themed packages, and can further tailor them by adding extras such as a $7000 orchestra or a 10-hour photography package ($5220). If you like, you can actually be Cinderella, and roll up to your nuptials in a coach pulled by six white ponies, guided by a driver and two footmen in “full regalia” ($2700).
And it doesn’t have to end with the reception. Jim Calhoun, head of Disney’s apparel line, has said that the company wants women “to have a little bit of princess every day.” So what does that mean? Well, in two months’ time, Kelly says, she’ll be able to discuss further plans for her line’s expansion. Right now, all she can say is that there will be some home pieces and more accessories, all “geared toward the idea of using the princess, who she is today, and developing out in a very luxurious way.”
I’m picturing Disney Princess engagement rings for the guy who is tapped in to his lady love’s needs; high-end décor and appliances — such as a Disney Princess canopy bed with 400-thread-count Princess sheets — for the Disney newlyweds; a Disney Princess Power Suit and a matching Princess “It” Bag for that great new job; and Disney Princess Bassinet for the Princess infant. Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings is just one sect within the Princess mega-church.
You’re wearing who?!
Of course, being a Disney bride does carry certain, er, connotations. From a marketing perspective, there’s nothing wrong with dressing up reality as happy ever after — it’s cut-and-dry genius. But from a critic’s soapbox, there’s no logical reason for a grown woman to embrace a Disney delusion — never mind thread it into what are supposedly the most important moments of her life. One might assume that these women have no bull**** detector, that they really believe that a corporate version of princess glamour is the key to everlasting bliss.
In its quest to win over adults, Disney has managed to engender some bad publicity. “It’s douchey **** like this that makes me hate being a woman,” railed a commenter on Gawker. And in a brides.com message board, one woman expressed more concern about the label than the design. “What if the tag said Disney on it?” she wondered. Quelle horreur! So what’s an aspiring princess to do?
Yolanda Cellucci, the owner of Yolanda’s Waltham bridal salon, didn’t hesitate to stock the Disney gowns, and her 40-year-old outlet has exclusive distribution rights to the line in Massachusetts. Demand was immediate. Cellucci says she figured that, eventually, Disney would marry its success with weddings — around 2000 are hosted annually at its US resorts and on the Disney cruise lines — to attire. “The dresses were the only thing that was missing,” she says.
“Some people feel that the Disney name turns them off,” admits Cellucci. “But people love them. There are people who love the fantasy world of being a princess, of being Cinderella for a day. I had a young girl come in who said she’s been looking at Snow White for so long, and that was exactly what she wanted to look like. She knew the dress.
“I’ve heard girls say, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I wanted to be connected to a Disney dress.’ Then there’s the client who wants that. She’s striving for that storybook Cinderella with the coach, the handsome guy, the whole thing. . . . It’s about Prince Charming. I mean, it’s pretty hard, in today’s world, to say there’s a Prince Charming out there, when you look around.”
Not tacky . . . honest
And now for the strangest thing about the Disney bridal gowns: they aren’t the least bit cheesy or tacky. Not even a little. They aren’t overt, costume-y rip-offs of the animated dresses, they aren’t poufy monstrosities, and they don’t cost a princess’s fortune. They’re beautiful, polished, conventionally sweet, and pick up on extremely popular bridal trends. If you hated Disney, but didn’t know the dresses were in any way connected with the company, you’d probably covet one of them. You might even prefer it to a pricey Vera Wang or whatever you could snag at the Filene’s Basement wedding-dress sale. Thanks to Kelly, the dresses cleverly play on enduring themes and silhouettes and, true to Disney’s mainstream-appeal philosophy, they probably would look good on just about anyone.
Ranging from $1100 to $3500, Kirstie Kelly’s Disney dresses aren’t inexpensive, but, according to Cellucci, they do fall into the average brides’ budget. What’s more, each of them practically shouts, “OMG, I’m a princess!” But not, like, in a shrieky, Platinum Weddings kind of way. These gowns will age well in your photo album. Your friends are bound to compliment the one you choose. It would take a great deal of effort not to feel regal in any one of Kelly’s designs.
The first-season Disney’s Princess Jasmine dress costs under $2500 and features an empire waist (one of the trendier bridal cuts) and several layers of charmingly draped chiffon. It doesn’t have a bead or overt embellishment anywhere on it. It’s also the line’s best-selling frock. “The phones do not stop ringing for that dress,” says Cleghorn. “It looks good on a size two and on a size 24. It’s a wonderful, magic dress.”
“Disney has always known they’ve had the market on princesses,” adds Cleghorn. “It was the perfect marriage. How do we blend that Disney magic and make it something modern? This was the way to do it.”
It’s difficult to say what’s more brilliant — the fact that Disney is about to become a luxury label, or the fact that all the standard princess rules have been thrown out. You don’t have to be a blue blood or possess an infinite knowledge of a Disney heroine’s back-story to act the part. You just have to like what you see.
story from the bostonphoenix.com
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