Cinderella: Students create costumes for the new age fairy tale heroine

Students of Fashion Design, Fashion Styling & Image Design, Fashion Media communication from Pearl Academy Delhi, Mumbai, Jaipur and Bangalore created the costumes for the new-age Cinderella, out of which three were chosen as the winners

Amazon Original movie Cinderella, starring Camila Cabello in the lead, has been making all the right noises since its premiere on the streaming service. Directed by Kay Cannon, Cinderella is the modern-day retelling of the fairytale where the movie takes a feminist turn with a fresh spin to the story. The new-age Cinderella has dreams and ambitions and doesn’t want to get stuck in a basement, nor a royal box. Our modern Cinderella is the embodiment of female empowerment and individuality who has “dreams that I have to chase.”

It’s not just Camila Cabello’s Ella who is ambitious, but also the youth of today. Taking this thought ahead, Amazon Prime Video collaborated with the students of Pearl Academy to create Cinderella’s iconic ball gown in their own different ways. The students drew inspiration from the Amazon Original movie Cinderella in which Camila Cabello, who plays a dressmaker and is keen to set up her own business. Participants were asked to retain the outfit colour of the poster, represent strength, fearlessness and comfort in their garment and style the outfit with a shoe for the Cinderella of today.

Out of the many that participated, the top 3 were selected unanimously. These winners were - Yin Yang Fantasy by Mahak Bhatia, Manvi Goel and Harshit Sharma, The Astria Dress by Disha Gupta and Nishita Singhal were the first runners-up and Avyanna by Rohit Mane and Sanskriti Jha were declared the second runners-up. The winning team says that the major part of their inspiration comes from Billy Porter’s Fab G. “Billy Porter’s dialogue, ‘Magic has its limits’ stayed with us. This convinced us to create something genderless—we believe there’s a Cinderella within everybody. So we clubbed this idea with the Yin and Yang theory which is about opposite forces coming together to find a balance. Our outfits featured flowy fabrics to portray yin and structured detailing to convey yan. Combining the two, we created an ensemble for the Cinderella we believe in today—she’s strong and forges her own destiny. Our outfit also has detachable sleeps and waistcoats and pants with pockets! Accessories feature an embellished briefcase as we wanted to break the notion of it being only carried by men,” said the winning team.

Written for the screen and directed by Kay Cannon with covers of songs written by some of the top-selling musical artists of all time, Cinderella has an all-star cast that includes Idina Menzel, Minnie Driver, Nicholas Galitzine, with Billy Porter and Pierce Brosnan and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.