Plenty of people have included The Slipper and the Rose in their comparisons of Cinderella film adaptation dresses, so I probably don’t have anything new to say on it, but my thoughts are that it’s fine. It doesn’t stand out and that is its predominant problem. Given that people in the ballroom are meant to immediately see her and decide she’s the most beautiful person there (or perhaps simply the most influential, the most important, the richest, whatever), the dress has to do a lot of work. It should INSTANTLY draw the eye even amongst an entire ballroom full of people wearing their best, including royalty usually.
And it’s. It’s fine? it makes me think of the Barbie movie dresses mostly, weird as that sounds, I guess.
Like the shape around the waist is different, but the ¾ sleeve with frills at the end and the flowery bodice and the pale pink color is VERY Barbie. Which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just my immediate impression of it.
But the bigger problem, for me personally, is that it doesn’t stand out AT THE BALL.
You can tell just from this shot that everyone is wearing a gown similar to Cinderella’s. I can find at least 4 pink dresses in this shot alone. And everything is pastel.
It’s not the BIGGEST dress there, either, or the sparkliest, or the most extravagant. It just ends up feeling like another of the same.
And, as you can see in that last screenshot, the Prince himself is in a dark green. So she doesn’t match him to give some color storytelling. Very few people at this ball, including the men, are in dark jewel tones, so putting Cinderella intentionally in a dark green or a GOLD dress would’ve at least allowed her to match the Prince better and stand out in a crowd. This is something that the 1997 Rodgers and Hammerstein film did very well, by dressing all of the extras in the same colors, it allowed Cinderella (and the Prince) to stand out, even if her dress isn’t necessarily bigger or more extravagant than the rest. It also is just structured differently than the other dresses at the ball.
You can see most everyone here is dressed in darker colors, with a particular look to the skirts. They’re meant to feel interchangeable, even though, if you actually stop and look at each dress, they’re unique.
But Cinderella is wearing a very pale blue look with the off-the-shoulder sleeves and bodice flares around her waist in a way that’s different from the other dresses. It’s not any bigger than the other dresses and it IS still blue like the rest, but there’s just enough of a difference in color and shape for it to feel like it stands out from the rest of the crowd. It also matches to the Prince.
It can be really hard to see, especially if the quality of the image is low, but while his jacket and shirt are gold/white, his VEST is a very light blue. And it’s a blue that matches Cinderella’s dress pretty much exactly. This is also something the 2015 film did, putting the Prince in a white jacket to help him stand out in the crowd and then giving him some periwinkle accents on his collar and cuffs that match Cinderella’s dress, for visual storytelling.
The Slipper and the Rose dress isn’t bad at all, it’s just not that memorable and it does feel like the moment where they all stop dancing at the sight of her and part like the red sea so she can meet the Prince feels somewhat unearned.
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