Fashioning the fashion princess: mediation—transformation—stardom

Abstract

Is she looking as royal as can be? Dressing the part of a princess? Popular media texts, such as magazines completely devoted to celebrity matters, dealing with reports on who is wearing what at which occasion, provide the empirical outset for this textual study on the representations of the Scandinavian princesses of today: Mary (Denmark), Mette-Marit (Norway), Victoria (Sweden) and Madeleine (Sweden). In this article the princesses are, on a theoretical level, considered stars with their own images, images constructed in a similar way as film stars, with fashion and appearance as the focal point. In popular media texts, such as the Swedish woman's magazine Svensk Damtidning, the styles of the princesses are scrutinised, compared and evaluated. These mappings are in this way further examined, and the topics surrounding the representations are surveyed. The themes selected for supplementary examination are personal style and Cinderella narrative, as they emerge as intimately interrelated with fashion. The epithet princess, in the sense “what a princess ought to look like”, is given in terms of aestheticised appearance: body, fashion and personal style, is thus discussed and theorised throughout the article. Hence, the purpose of this article is to examine the roll of dress and the matter of appearance concerning the representations of the Scandinavian princesses, relating to the themes of style and consumption, as well as the transformation narratives. How are these royal styles constructed, on a designer level as well on a thematic level?Therése Andersson, Ph.D., Cinema Studies, currently employed at the Department of History, Stockholm University. Her doctoral thesis is entitled Beauty Box: Film Stars and Beauty Culture in Early 20th Century Sweden. She has recently finished her post doctoral research project Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, granted by Anna Ahlström and Ellen Terserus Foundation, and is currently working on the research project Velcro, Button, and Zip: Power and Materiality during Styling and Dressing, funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. She has published several articles on popular- and visual culture.