Mickey Mouse top by Marc JacobsIMAXTREE.COM
For a special presentation during the spring/summer 2013 shows in London last fall, designers including Giles Deacon, Michael van der Ham and Richard Nicoll looked to an unusual muse – Minnie Mouse – as inspiration for one-off dresses and accessories that were later auctioned off to support a fashion arts foundation. During Paris Fashion Week this October, editor Anna Dello Russo got in on the game, hopping from show to show wearing a giant mouse-ear hat. And at Colette, the hip French concept store, Bambi has been reshaded deep blue to adorn the front of a T-shirt; it joins fashion brands both high (Givenchy, Comme des Garçons) and mass-market (Forever 21) in the appropriation of Disney characters as motifs over the past several months.
What the Donald Duck is going on? Have the people behind the Happiest Place on Earth adopted an expansionist policy? After years of dominating the kiddie sector through theme parks, branded toys and animated films, Disney appears to want to add some dimension to its image, an effort that includes sanctioning a warts-and-all look at its hallowed founder. In the upcoming movie Saving Mr. Banks, which chronicles Walt Disney's attempts to secure the screen rights to the Mary Poppins books from crotchety author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), Disney is portrayed by Tom Hanks not as the avuncular figurehead of common lore, but as a chain-smoking, Scotch-swilling tycoon who uses every trick in the book to win Travers over. The script, written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, was reportedly untouched by Disney, which not only didn't object to the demythologization, but also produced the film.
In the fashion world, the Disneyfication process gathered steam last spring, when Mickey and Minnie Mouse made cameo appearances in Marc Jacobs's and Meadham Kirchhoff's collections, the former presenting them in a polished way and the latter in a frilly and characteristically subversive one. As part of the festivities marking the 20th anniversary of Disneyland Paris, Lanvin creative director Alber Elbaz also dolled Minnie up in a sparkly royal-blue frock in place of her usual polka dots. "It's the first time an actual designer has come into the picture and designed a dress for her," he said after her makeover in March.
"It speaks to everyone," says Colette's Sarah Andelman, who is carrying Givenchy's Bambi sweatshirts as well as her own store's homage, of Disney's mystique, which involves both nostalgia and kitsch. The sentiment is borne out by the popularity of the Comme des Garçons SHIRT line, which features crisp button-downs bearing archival Mickey sketches. Another series of limited-edition tees featuring the cartoon rodent's head have already sold out in the U.S.
Last month, Colette also mounted an exhibition of James Franco's art in its gallery space. Called The Animals, the show included a 32-page zine littered with stickers and drawings of Disney characters overtop the polymathic movie star's provocative photography. Franco's vision of them as unhinged residents of a universe that also included ape-headed women in bikinis was altogether different from the one expressed by stylist and fashion journalist Katie Grand in the recent fifth-anniversary edition of Britain's LOVE magazine, which featured Minnie Mouse on one of six polkadotted cover versions. The other five were graced by various models du jour wearing high-fashion mouse ears custom-designed by Miu Miu, Gucci, Jake and Dinos Chapman for Louis Vuitton, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Loewe.
"She has been one of the most instantly recognizable figures in Western culture for 80 years, one whose image has been repeated and referenced probably more than any other," Grand wrote of Minnie in what she dubbed the Sweetie Issue. "But let's not forget that her full name is Minerva, the Roman goddess of art, commerce and wisdom." And here everyone thought she was just a pretty mouse.
According to Stephen Teglas, vice-president of licensing at Disney Consumer Products, most of the Disney-themed fashion tributes out there right now have more than just the company's blessing. His creative team, he says via e-mail, is involved throughout the development processes, from ensuring that "the right product idea [is] paired with the right character" to sharing sketches and artwork along the way.
Asked if the collaborations help re-engage people with Disney, Teglas says: "I think [fans of Disney] continue to stay engaged throughout their lives. The characters are a symbol of childhood, innocence and fantasy, which is a great resource for fashion designers and artists."
Of course, not all appropriations have been well received. Last Christmas, Barney's New York controversially morphed Minnie and her Disney pals into svelte, leggy versions of their former selves, presumably so they could fit into animated versions of Lanvin, Balenciaga, Balmain and Rick Owens designs. It is also safe to assume that Franco's work and that of Paul McCarthy (whose show last summer at the Park Avenue Armory in New York included a ribald, sexually explicit take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) doesn't play well at Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif., although artistic (re)interpretations are harder to stymie than purely commercial ventures.
On that score, Dot Tuer, a writer and curator who teaches at OCAD University in Toronto, likens Mickey and his gang to other "free-floating icons" such as Che Guevara, the star of many a T-shirt and college-dorm poster. And indeed, one person's nostalgic hero is another's political vehicle (see Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, from 1975).
For artist Darren Lago, whose Mickey de Balzac and Mondrian Mickey both sold at the recent Fiac contemporary-art fair in Paris, Mickey Mouse is the essence of modern pop culture, a potent aesthetic symbol that Roy Lichtenstein also enlisted when he painted Look Mickey back in 1961. According to Lago, who is based in London, Disney executives have increasingly understood this, balancing their role as guardians of the company's legacy with a tolerance of legitimate outside interpretations. "They want Mickey to be associated," the artist says, "with the highest form of visual language."
Does a Forever 21 tee count as such? Not really, but it does illustrate the Walt Disney Company's maturity (and sense of fun) and the enduring appeal of its characters across international borders and among a wide range of consumers. On those fronts and globalization notwithstanding, it is a small world after all.
Follow Amy Verner on Twitter: @amyverner.