One Sky, One Destiny

Sleeping Beauty has one of the more consistent settings of the Disney Princess movies. It's pretty consistently late 15th century Western-Europe. In my first redesign I used French and Low Countries references because the Disney version is based on a French writer's version of the story and the fairy tale likely originates from France. But I don't think there is anything explicit (as far as I remember) in the film that points it to being specifically French setting. The names for example could be English just as well. Sleeping beauty has versions in many places in Western-Europe, so it's not like it's exclusively French fairy tale. So I decided to base my new redesign on English fashions, because Aurora's dress corresponds pretty well with late 15th century to very early 16th century English style.

The neckline of the original design suggests a gown based on Burgundian dress, which originated from Burgundian court in France and had lapels, which showed the fur lining. However the Burguandian gown was a-lined, was belted at the waist and had low v-neck, with garment underneath visible. very late 15th century Burgundian gowns come really close to the fitted style of the original design, which I did base my first redesign on, but they didn't have that closed front look. English version of that style however had that. For comparison here's an end of the century French style and (a copy of) an end of the century English style.

These fitted styles (English and French) usually had a belt which hung on the hips, rather than shaped a loose dress at the waist. The English styles didn't seem to always have a fur lining, rather like in the example above, it was sometimes a patterned fabric. English gowns still had the gown (or stomacher) showing from the neckline, which is lacking in the Aurora's original design. Except when the breasts were not covered. This seems to have been pretty common practice in the English court at the time. I talked about these bare-breasted gown styles in western fashion at length in another post. In it I mentioned that in sources I read, it was stated that the bare-breasted gowns were used as early as 15th century, but I also said I hadn't found contemporary depictions of that, but now I have. So here's some examples. First is from Church of St John the Baptist after 1477, second is from late 15th century (St Mary’s, Albury, Hertfordshire), and third is after 1485 (St Andrew's Church).

I went for the bare-breasted style, though of course it would not have been inaccurate to have her breasts covered, as seen in my first English example. The Disney version of course very much covered the breasts, but I choose the bare-breast gown for the more similar neckline to the original design and because I like to remind people that our modern conceptions of Medieval Era are often very flawed. Medieval Europe was certainly not as "chaste" or "modest" (in modern standards) as we often think. But here's also a version of my redesign with breasts covered.

I debated weather to have her hair open or closed. In wedding situations and for young unmarried women open hair was often appropriate, but most of the time women would have their hair up and covered. I decided to go with the open hair (though I might also do the covered version at some point). Here's an English example from likely at the very end of the 15th century. I based the styling of the hair and the circlet on this glass painting.

In 15th century round chin, very light eyebrows and high forehead were considered the beauty ideal. Women would even pluck their eyebrows, sometimes entire, and hair from their hairline, to achieve this look. Disney Aurora's defined jawline, prominent eyebrows and forehead-covering bangs simply won't do, since she's supposed to be a Late Medieval beauty. Here's a Dutch example of very peak 15th century beauty from 1460.

So lets start from the beginning. Like with the other non-western settings, I'm basing the story on the what could be described as the original setting of the story rather than try to guess what was the intended setting of the movie. As said my knowledge of Chinese history is very shallow, but here's what I've gathered relating to Mulan. The ballad of Hua Mulan (though apparently originally there was no surname mentioned) dates to Northern Wei dynasty, which lasted from 386 to 535. This period of Chinese history is called Northern and Southern dynasties and often considered part of Early Medieval China and sometimes latter half of Six Dynasties. It was a time of division, chaos and change. Northern Wei was ruled by Tuoba clan of the Xianbei. The Xianbei were a nomadic multi-ethnic confederation of mainly Proto-Mongolians, but probably partly some Tungusic and Turkic peoples as well. Northern Wei was therefore a very multicultural dynasty, where a plenty of cultural exchange was happening. In fashion this was very visible. Hanfu (Han clothing) was influenced by hufu (Hu, or nomadic/foreign, clothing) and the other way around. There were also political influences, since at different points of the Northern Wei history there were both Sinicisation and anti-Sinicisation policies leading to periods of suppression and promotion of hufu (and Xianbei culture in general).

You can probably already see that things are getting pretty complicated. In addition to all that there's apparently a prominent theory that Mulan in the original ballad was Xianbei. Xianbei in Northern Wei would dress at different points in hanfu or hufu, but even then both had an influence in each other and how much influenced changed through time as well. Of course class is also a big factor on what any one person would wear and I have no idea what would be Mulan's class. In this period because of all the turmoil, lessening of the Confucian influence and nomadic influences, the differences between men's and women's dress became lesser. As mentioned, there's not much visual representations left (and certainly not extant garments) from Northern Wei because it was so long ago, but even with the ones there are (and I was able to find) there's so little information on what they specifically represented (at least in English). Especially with figurines which seem to be most common visual representations, since there's no visual context like in a painting or illustration.

So instead of trying to figure it out with my limited understanding of Chinese history, I decided I would rather rely on someone who actually knows about Chinese history. Thankfully I found a Taiwanese PhD researcher for V&A, Laurence Wen-Yu Li who specializes in Chinese dress history, does historical reconstruction and has made some very well produced and easily digestible videos on Chinese dress history. Specifically she has made a video on Mulan (or rather on the intersection of dress and gender during the Northern and Southern dynasties, which includes Mulan a lot) and made a reconstruction dress for her. I highly recommend that video. It's very interesting, discusses gender during Northern and Southern dynasties and is only 9 minutes long. In the video she identified Mulan as Xianbei (Xianbei didn't have last names and they were known to have women fighters as well) and presents a reconstruction dress and couple of related primary depictions of relevant fashions. I'm not sure what type of dress this is specifically (like what period of Northern Wei, is it class specific etc.), since I have seen also depictions of very different styles from Northern Wei. I tracked down some more of the depictions of this particular style and based my redesign on them and the recreation by Laurence Wen-Yu Li.

Here are several figurines from Northern Wei.

These depict the ruqun clothing system, which was typical during this period. It's a two piece outfit, with separate upper body garment and a skirt worn on top of it. Cross-shaped hairstyle was popular. In Northern Wei make up with yellow powdering on forehead, red lips and red dots on forehead, cheeks and chin were fashionable.

Here's my main sources in addition to the video by Laurence Wen-Yu Li.

China’s early clothing system intertwined with social hierarchy

The Princess and the Frog has probably the most explicit and clear settings of any Disney animation (beside Pocahontas of course) - 1920s New Orleans. So no ambiguity there. I do like Tiana's blue dress much more, but the green is one that's in all the Disney Princess merch and it is nice to have some variety among the colour of the dresses in the full set, so I went with it. It really has nothing to do with 1920s fashion, but 1920s robe de style is close enough to the silhouette. Robe de style was a dress with full skirt combined with the fashionable low waist silhouette. It especially references Rococo fashion and often was especially full at the sides, sometimes including something like panniers for structure. Layered styles for robe de style were fashionable too, which fits surprisingly well with the leaf look.

Here's some references I used.

Hair relaxers were invented by a Black man, Garrett Augustus Morgan, in 1909, and were very popular among all Black people in 1920s. Black women relaxed their hair to achieve the fashionable wavy bob cuts.

Circlets, diadems and "crowns" were very fashionable, but they were worn very low, very close to the head, often covering the forehead and even brow.