Drawing from “Alice in Wonderland”, movie by Walt Disney

“Alice” by Beatrice Brandini

All of us know, through the book or the movie, Alice in Wonderland, the novel written in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. It ‘s the story, along with that of Pinocchio, perhaps the most famous in the world, a children’s novel and more.

“Puzzle” by Alice-Blythe 

In fact, just like Pinocchio, its importance lies in the fact that narrates and describes, through its history and especially its characters, human psychology, emotions, vulnerability, puns, figures of speech,  a metaphor for life itself.

Poster “Alice in Wonderland,” Disney movie directed by Tim Burton 

More than 20 adaptations of film and television (the most famous in the cartoons of Walt Disney in 1951, and the recent Tim Burton, 2010, again produced by Disney). In music Gwen Stefani, Robbie Williams, L’aura, Piero Pelù, Franz Ferdinand, Avril Lavigne, Marilyn Manson, Syria and many others have written and performed songs influenced by her.

In fashion, it is very easy to be inspired by this poetic and imaginative icon. I remember a beautiful photo shoot for Vogue U.S. in 2003 with photos of Annie Leibovitz, in which a beautiful Natalia Vodianova played Alice and some designers various fairy tale characters.

Foto Annie Leibovitz for Vogue USA , Nadia, Stephen Jones e Christian Lacroix

Foto Annie Leibovitz for Vogue USA , Nadia e Jean Paul Gaultier

Foto Annie Leibovitz per Vogue USA , Nadia’s Alice

Foto Annie Leibovitz for Vogue USA , Nadia e Viktor and Rolf

Crazy characters and fantastic scenarios contain deep meanings, all the protagonists of the story lie complex psychologies. Alice herself is a child who wants to be free and live in a different world (we are in the Victorian age in which the prohibitions were very strong). The contradictions and prohibitions to which she is subjected in the world of fantasy and dream-like, for example, by the Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar, represent parental figures. The freedom which is hampered continually aspires, Alice does not understand that world, as she did not understand the real one, that is the meaning of “non-sense”, she do not understand and can not accept the rules and moral rigidity.

Photo Tim Walker

Alice, like many of us, wants another point of view, another world, a “wonderland” in fact. The become small, then small is huge and again the metaphor of growth, of growing up, adults, trying themselves.

Image taken from “Alice in Wonderland”, a vintage book 

Finally Alice testified that the only time we really free, fascinated by the world, amazed before his show, innocent bystanders, is the world of childhood. Where life is still illusion and dream. The journey of Alice is the discovery, awareness, the shift in maturity.

Amanda Seyfried plays Alice, Photo by Mark Seliger for Vogue Italy

   

   

I imagined how Alice would dress today, always romantic, curious, and a bit eccentric. The stripes, to get lost like in a maze, the animals, like imaginary friends.

Original drawing by Walt Disney Alice

To dream, to imagine, to think …. it’s the only freedom that we have and that hardly anyone can take from us. 

“Alice with her Pandarancio” by Beatrice Brandini

Good life to all!

Beatrice