Childhood style idols
“The wild horses gallop across the plains as they did in our childhood; the charcoal-burner still sings the old songs that we danced to as children. Here is our native ground, the place that will always bring us back.”
Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans
Illustrations © Angela Barrett, 1984. All rights reserved.
Illustrations © Jonathan Hunt, 1991. All rights reserved. http://huntillustration.com/
The Mapmaker’s Daughter courtesy of Bradbury Press, New York, NY.
Illustrations © Michael Martchenko, 1992
The Paper Bag Princess, courtesy of Annick Press.
Before the days of fashion magazines and endless stylish bloggers to distract me, my style heroins were Elisa, the handy young princess from Andersen’s The Wild Swans, Suchen, the adventurous Mapmaker’s Daughter, and of course Elizabeth, the Paper Bag Princess (pictured in descending order).
Interestingly enough, fashion is pivotal to each of their stories. Elisa is tasked with creating 11 shirts made from stinging nettle in order to free her brothers from the spell of their evil stepmother, who turned them into swans. Though she is ostracized and nearly burned as a witch for her strange behavior, she refuses to stop until she finishes, freeing her family. Suchen inherited her mother’s cape and her sense of adventure. She is the only person to successfully return from Turnings, a treacherous land enchanted by a witch who is holding the local prince captive. The cape is also enchanted, as it turns out, and helps Suchen and the prince ford a river on their way back to safety when it transforms into a giant fish. Elizabeth loses her wardrobe and her fiance to a dragon, whom she outsmarts in order to rescue the prince. When she shows up in nothing but a paper bag, however, he tells her to “come back when she’s dressed like a real princess.” She leaves him in captivity.
With the exception of Elizabeth, who has little but her wits about her, how turned out are these chicks? In addition to their integrity, spirit, and other qualities, I also think that they would make amazing muses for couture collections. (I love Eliza’s feather earrings and paisley scarf and Suchen’s boots and coat.)
Some substance. Some style. Some social commentary 