It’s been a little while since 101 Dalmations was in the limelight, but thanks to Disney’s Cruella all of that has changed. But not as any of us expected.
How so? Well as the film’s name, Cruella suggests, it’s an origin story on Cruella de Vil herself, or as she was originally known, Estella. Essentially setting the scene of the early days before the 1996 classic came to be.
Fashion makes an appearance in Hollywood movies on the regular, regardless of genre. And this has been the case for decades now. And while there may be a lot happening in the film, fashion is a huge factor.
In an interview with The New York Times, Emma Stone who plays the film’s anti-hero elaborates on how fashion is used in the film to allow audience to get to know Cruella on a deeper level.
Stone said, “Fashion is written off in some ways as frothy or frilly or not very important, but I think for a lot of people, it really is an act of self-expression that can make you feel more like yourself. There’s a real importance to getting dressed — and I don’t mean highfalutin couture fashion, I mean getting dressed every day.”
She continued, “As a character, I think Estella has felt that from the very beginning: That’s her mode of self-expression when she didn’t feel she was in control of her life. She changes who she is every time she gets dressed, and once I was stepping into that hair and that makeup and those clothes, that was the only way I could really feel like Cruella, because it feels pretty silly at your house to be working over and over on that Tallulah Bankhead laugh and voice without being fully Cruella.”
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