Cartoon style
Electric Holiday – Disney creates animated fashion film for Barney’s New York.
MINNIE Mouse’s Parisian fashion adventure features the regular cast of Disney favourites alongside some of the fashion world’s biggest names.
Nicolas Ghesquiere may have announced his departure from Balenciaga but his time with the Parisian fashion house has been immortalised in classic cartoon form, in the latest Disney release, a five-minute short featuring Minnie Mouse’s adventures in fashion-land, titled Electric
Holiday.
Minnie Mouse is launched into wonderland, this time a whirlwind fashion romance with the city of light and its style luminaries, after viewing a Lanvin dress in a store window.
Style editors Carine Roitfeld, Anna Dello Russo, and Suzy Menkes all get an animated Disney makeover. Blogger Byran Boy and photographer Steven Meisel also feature alongside designers, makeup artists and style mavens in the film.
However, the so-called “Skinny Minnie” that hits the runway in the film has caused a controversy in some quarters. The original images released by Barney’s prompted outrage with some commentators complaining of an “Anorexic Minnie Mouse”, slimmed down for a fashion-friendly silhouette.
Disney and Barneys released a joint statement back in October, saying they were “saddened that activists have repeatedly tried to distort a lighthearted holiday project in order to draw media attention to themselves,” according to the New York Daily News.
In the final version of the film it is Tinkerbell’s magic dust that transforms Minnie and Mickey into model mice, so they can appear alongside other Disney characters in a runway show featuring clothes by Rick Owens, Proenza Schouler, Dolce and Gabbana and Balmain.
With the release of the film, Barneys Creative Ambassadorat-Large Simon Doonan told
Fashionista he hadn’t even heard of the backlash: “I think it’s a celebration of the real Minnie because at the end she’s her real fabulous self,” said Doonan.
Barney’s and Disney have also collaborated on the store’s holiday windows, which were opened by Sarah Jessica Parker, who appears in cartoon form in the film.