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Fashioning Alice: The Career of Lewis Carroll's Icon, 1860-1901
150 years after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published, Lewis Carroll's eponymous heroine has become one of the most familiar figures in the cultural landscape. The enduringly iconic figure of the Victorian child, Alice has inspired countless fashion designers, illustrators and stylists. The 'Alice Look' has been embraced across the world, by young and old alike, and by both the feted and the forgotten.
Fashioning Alice is the first book to chart the emergence of Alice as a style icon. Kiera Vaclavik traces the evolution of Alice's visual identity in the nineteenth century and explores the myriad ways in which she was dressed – on the page, on the stage, and in the home. The book also draws on historical sources to examine amateur performance and play not just in the UK but in the USA, Japan and Australia. Illustrated throughout, Fashioning Alice is a ground-breaking exploration of Alice's visual career that offers a compelling case study of the intersections between fashion and fiction.
Fashioning Alice is the first book to chart the emergence of Alice as a style icon. Kiera Vaclavik traces the evolution of Alice's visual identity in the nineteenth century and explores the myriad ways in which she was dressed – on the page, on the stage, and in the home. The book also draws on historical sources to examine amateur performance and play not just in the UK but in the USA, Japan and Australia. Illustrated throughout, Fashioning Alice is a ground-breaking exploration of Alice's visual career that offers a compelling case study of the intersections between fashion and fiction.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published February 7, 2019
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March 27, 2023
Kiera Vaclavik, quoting Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy Carlson, argues “attention to literary fashioning can contribute to a significantly deeper understanding of texts, their contexts, their innovations—even challenging, in some cases, traditional readings” (19). Challenging traditional
readings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is exactly what Vaclavik hopes to do in her book Fashioning Alice: The Career of Lewis Carroll’s Icon, 1860-1901 (2020) by deconstructing
perceptions of Alice through analysis of the ever-changing ways she has been presented and interpreted by the public. Vaclavik explores Alice’s presentation from Carroll’s conception of her through the early 20th century, utilizing Carroll’s journals and letters as well as a plethora of
now-digitized images from the 19th century to illustrate Alice’s wide-ranging physical interpretations as well as frequent uses of Alice on material objects by advertisers.
In the first two chapters, Vaclavik focuses her time analyzing author, Lewis Carroll’s deep interest in fashion—especially children’s clothes— as well as Alice’s character, and
illustrator, John Tenniel’s, original Alice artwork. These chapters predominantly discuss Carroll’s long and well-documented obsession with fashion and his aesthetic interests which predominantly revolved around “the figure of the girl child” (33), showing how he imposed this
aesthetic on Alice as well as his friends in real life. Vaclavik then turns to John Tenniel’s creative choices for Wonderland’s illustrations. A former illustrator for Punch, Wonderland was the first and only children’s book Tenniel
illustrated during his career. With little known about the collaboration between Carroll and Tenniel, Vaclavik points instead to the outcome: Tenniel’s well-known illustrations, which diverge somewhat from Carroll’s original conception. Although Tenniel’s images remain uniform throughout Wonderland, minor changes to Carroll’s artwork, such as making Alice’s hair blonde instead of brunette, or adding a pinafore to her dress, contribute to Alice’s image
instability despite her status as a stable cultural icon. Without Carroll’s and Tenniel’s correspondence though, Vaclavik spends much of this section speculating who approved what,
leaving more questions than answers.
However, despite Tenniel’s “first publicly available and still widely recognizable image of Alice” (29), Vaclavik effectively demonstrates how later incarnations of Alice also played a part in developing her image. As Vaclavik states, there is no “original” Alice (74), but rather a series of images whose hair and clothing underwent many changes throughout different publications. The beginning of Fashioning Alice serves to center Alice as a recognizable character despite this fragmented nature before turning its attention to the neglected incarnations whose role was just as important as Carroll’s written character or Tenniel’s artwork, such as the
images used by advertisers, whose “‘evocative illustrations’ were being used widely… to promote all manner of products” (132). Finally, Vaclavik further cements Alice’s fragmented
nature by exploring theatrical and amateur performances of Wonderland which had a broad range across dress, age, and gender. In particular, interpretation of Alice’s age from the young child in Wonderland, whose age would have been obvious from the style of her clothes, to the women cast in her role, the oldest being twenty-seven. Vaclavik even includes photographs of productions put on at boy’s schools, to illustrate Alice’s fluidity in style and cross-dressing throughout the 19th century.
Fashioning Alice could have gone one step further in addressing Alice’s diverse appeal. In all reality, the variations to Alice’s dress during the 1800s were meant to conjure “a
nondescript Everygirl” (46). Although her roots lay in an English Victorian image, Vaclavik states “Alice’s appeal has clearly always been extremely diverse…crossing borders of gender, age, and nationality” (263). While Fashioning Alice is predominantly past-focused, the brief mention of Alice’s diversity throughout her history sparks further questioning for how Wonderland’s past informs our present. The constant reimagining of Alice suggests a cross-cultural, universal appeal, evidenced by her popularity not only in the Eurocentric world, but also in Japan. Why this popularity exists given that Alice’s character is now rooted in the image of a classic Victorian child is a subject worth further exploration, which Vaclavik unfortunately does not get to in her text.
Meanwhile, Vaclavik also claims that amateur Wonderland performances served not only charitable acts, like raising money for hospitals, but also moral ones, making “the ultimate image of Alice within an idyllic olde worlde England” (214). This image of Alice as a virtuous figure conflicts heavily with Wonderland’s reputation as a “nonsense” book. Wonderland was, in fact, one of the first non-didactic children’s novels to be published. Fashioning Alice touches on this only briefly and further discussion would have been useful since Vaclavik was attempting to “[provide] insight into the ripple effect of literary works in the lives of (young) readers” (21). This directly ties into her argument that Alice’s identity is fractured, supporting the ever-growing schism between Wonderland as an object and Alice as a character and providing further support for Alice’s diverse appeal.
Fashioning Alice, which remains almost completely in the 19th century, serves as visual history of the early incarnations of Alice. Although it explores Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland through a newer method of literary fashion analysis, both contributing to the field of children’s literature while posing further questions to be answered, the text itself is quite dense and loaded with excessive examples. The images do it a credit by providing visuals along with Vaclavik’s highly detailed accounts of dress. Because the text relies so heavily on the niche literary fashioning, Fashioning Alice serves a great purpose but in a small field.
readings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is exactly what Vaclavik hopes to do in her book Fashioning Alice: The Career of Lewis Carroll’s Icon, 1860-1901 (2020) by deconstructing
perceptions of Alice through analysis of the ever-changing ways she has been presented and interpreted by the public. Vaclavik explores Alice’s presentation from Carroll’s conception of her through the early 20th century, utilizing Carroll’s journals and letters as well as a plethora of
now-digitized images from the 19th century to illustrate Alice’s wide-ranging physical interpretations as well as frequent uses of Alice on material objects by advertisers.
In the first two chapters, Vaclavik focuses her time analyzing author, Lewis Carroll’s deep interest in fashion—especially children’s clothes— as well as Alice’s character, and
illustrator, John Tenniel’s, original Alice artwork. These chapters predominantly discuss Carroll’s long and well-documented obsession with fashion and his aesthetic interests which predominantly revolved around “the figure of the girl child” (33), showing how he imposed this
aesthetic on Alice as well as his friends in real life. Vaclavik then turns to John Tenniel’s creative choices for Wonderland’s illustrations. A former illustrator for Punch, Wonderland was the first and only children’s book Tenniel
illustrated during his career. With little known about the collaboration between Carroll and Tenniel, Vaclavik points instead to the outcome: Tenniel’s well-known illustrations, which diverge somewhat from Carroll’s original conception. Although Tenniel’s images remain uniform throughout Wonderland, minor changes to Carroll’s artwork, such as making Alice’s hair blonde instead of brunette, or adding a pinafore to her dress, contribute to Alice’s image
instability despite her status as a stable cultural icon. Without Carroll’s and Tenniel’s correspondence though, Vaclavik spends much of this section speculating who approved what,
leaving more questions than answers.
However, despite Tenniel’s “first publicly available and still widely recognizable image of Alice” (29), Vaclavik effectively demonstrates how later incarnations of Alice also played a part in developing her image. As Vaclavik states, there is no “original” Alice (74), but rather a series of images whose hair and clothing underwent many changes throughout different publications. The beginning of Fashioning Alice serves to center Alice as a recognizable character despite this fragmented nature before turning its attention to the neglected incarnations whose role was just as important as Carroll’s written character or Tenniel’s artwork, such as the
images used by advertisers, whose “‘evocative illustrations’ were being used widely… to promote all manner of products” (132). Finally, Vaclavik further cements Alice’s fragmented
nature by exploring theatrical and amateur performances of Wonderland which had a broad range across dress, age, and gender. In particular, interpretation of Alice’s age from the young child in Wonderland, whose age would have been obvious from the style of her clothes, to the women cast in her role, the oldest being twenty-seven. Vaclavik even includes photographs of productions put on at boy’s schools, to illustrate Alice’s fluidity in style and cross-dressing throughout the 19th century.
Fashioning Alice could have gone one step further in addressing Alice’s diverse appeal. In all reality, the variations to Alice’s dress during the 1800s were meant to conjure “a
nondescript Everygirl” (46). Although her roots lay in an English Victorian image, Vaclavik states “Alice’s appeal has clearly always been extremely diverse…crossing borders of gender, age, and nationality” (263). While Fashioning Alice is predominantly past-focused, the brief mention of Alice’s diversity throughout her history sparks further questioning for how Wonderland’s past informs our present. The constant reimagining of Alice suggests a cross-cultural, universal appeal, evidenced by her popularity not only in the Eurocentric world, but also in Japan. Why this popularity exists given that Alice’s character is now rooted in the image of a classic Victorian child is a subject worth further exploration, which Vaclavik unfortunately does not get to in her text.
Meanwhile, Vaclavik also claims that amateur Wonderland performances served not only charitable acts, like raising money for hospitals, but also moral ones, making “the ultimate image of Alice within an idyllic olde worlde England” (214). This image of Alice as a virtuous figure conflicts heavily with Wonderland’s reputation as a “nonsense” book. Wonderland was, in fact, one of the first non-didactic children’s novels to be published. Fashioning Alice touches on this only briefly and further discussion would have been useful since Vaclavik was attempting to “[provide] insight into the ripple effect of literary works in the lives of (young) readers” (21). This directly ties into her argument that Alice’s identity is fractured, supporting the ever-growing schism between Wonderland as an object and Alice as a character and providing further support for Alice’s diverse appeal.
Fashioning Alice, which remains almost completely in the 19th century, serves as visual history of the early incarnations of Alice. Although it explores Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland through a newer method of literary fashion analysis, both contributing to the field of children’s literature while posing further questions to be answered, the text itself is quite dense and loaded with excessive examples. The images do it a credit by providing visuals along with Vaclavik’s highly detailed accounts of dress. Because the text relies so heavily on the niche literary fashioning, Fashioning Alice serves a great purpose but in a small field.
March 16, 2025
This book explores how Alice’s image has evolved beyond the pages of Lewis Carroll’s books. Focusing on fashion, illustration, and cultural adaptations, the author examines how Alice became a style icon, influencing everything from Victorian dress to high fashion and pop culture. Rich in historical detail and visual analysis, the book sheds light on how Alice’s iconic look has been continually reinvented. While academic in tone, it’s a good-read for fans of Carroll, fashion history, and literary studies.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews