Empress New Clothes Views
The idea of the empress trendsetter in the fashion world does not hold up under close scrutiny since the vast majority of Japanese women continued to wear kimono well into the twentieth century To the limited extent that Western dress for women was popular in the 188%, the empress was no trendsetter. More important, however, the empress never abandoned her new clothes. Even in the 1890s, when formerly ardent Westernizers became nationalist conservatives and condemned social intercourse between men and women, the empress and her ladies continued to wear Western clothing.(3)
The empress' Western clothes represented the importance of women in the transformation of Japan into a strong and wealthy nation. Her new clothes were a uniform that she wore as consort to the monarch and as the leader of a new upper class in need of a new dress code. Like Western monarchs, the Japanese emperor and empress were highly visible. Their admiring public left written accounts of their clothing, and painters, photographers, and woodblock artists captured their images on paper. The empress' modern dress was consistently associated with the contributions of women to the economic and political life of the nation.
The woman whose new clothes were of such importance was born in 1850 into one of the five families from which the empress was traditionally chosen. The third daughter of Ichijo Tadaka, she took the name Haruko when she was proclaimed empress in 1868. She thus shared with her husband, the Meiji emperor, whom she outlived by two years, the transformation of the imperial institution into a symbol of the modern state.
Young audiences will love this twist to the well-known tale The Emperorl’s New Clothes. The clothes-conscious empress is constantly demanding that her talented seamstress, Carlina, devise ever-fancier and gaudier costumes in hopes of making the best-dressed list. But her costumes are in such terrible taste, nobody can stand to look at them. Enter Lucinda, the jealous lady-in-waiting who wants to overthrow the kingdom. Lucinda disguises herself as Madame La Belle Mimi Fifi and offers the empress an imaginary fabric that only i“honesta” people can see. When the empress parades in front of her entire kingdom in her long red underwear (instead of the gorgeous Paris gown she thinks she is wearing), she learns an important lesson about vanity. The flexible cast makes the play ideal for touring, or additional characters and a chorus may be added for an expanded production.
Empress New Clothes Images
