You never know where heroes or villains might develop, but Robert Maxheimer, Exhibitions Manager at The Walt Disney Company, saw it happen at the D23 Expo in 2019.
At that year’s fan expo, Disney had assembled a display of costumes from their archives, with 20,000 people passing through the exhibit over three days. Among them were a mother and daughter, dressed as Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother. The pair studied the costumes on display, Maxheimer recalls, so that they could go back home and tweak the designs of their own outfits.
That’s just one slice of the magic to find in the exhibition that just opened at MoPOP — Heroes & Villains: The Art of the Disney Costume, an evolution of that 2019 D23 exhibit. Disney and the museum have assembled over seventy costume pieces spanning decades, from Mary Poppins’ original outfit to the costume to Whitney Houston’s Cinderella gown to 2019’s Dumbo.
It’s a treasure trove of inspiration for cosplayers, but it’s also a treat for any appreciator of fine art or pop culture. Leaning in close to the outfits, you can make out some amazing tiny details that will expand your appreciation of the films from which they came — or, in the case of some of the more obscure items, inspire appreciation anew. (Bless its heart, but I can’t imagine there are that many diehard fans of 1979’s The Black Hole out there.)
