Disney and Lefties wanted to launch a Disney Princess capsule collection. But the concern was clear: they wanted to bring the Princesses closer to both girls and boys, but without falling into the usual princess clichés. So we started where we always start, trying to understand the cliché. And very soon, we realized we were looking at it from the wrong perspective. As adults, we see all the codes around a Princess. The dress, the color, the hair, the story. But children's minds work a little differently. They accept that a lobster can talk, a carpet can fly and a Princess can live under the sea. They connect things much more intuitively. They see colours. They see shapes. They remember characters. And, most importantly, they want to play and become part of the stories they love. That changed the way we approached the collection. Instead of asking “how can we make a Princess collection?”, we asked “what makes each Princess a Princess?” And the answer was surprisingly simple. A value. A color. A character. Curiosity + red = Ariel.
Intelligence + yellow = Belle. Determination + blue = Jasmine.
Courage + warm yellow = Pocahontas.
Resilience + blue = Cinderella. We were essentially creating a synesthetic language where a value became a color, and that combination became a Princess. From there, the collection almost designed itself. We pitched a unisex tracksuits—the clothes children actually play, move and imagine in. Each one took the color of a Princess and paired it with the value she represents, embroidered directly onto the garment. The Princesses were still there. We had just translated them into a different language. “PRINCESS IS AN ATTITUDE”