The real world and fairytale collides?

In today’s term, Princess in the real world and in fairytale has kind of merged into a single entity. Regardless of appearance, costumes, roles, or lifestyle, they become a subset of each other. We now live in a contemporary world where things are no longer defined clearly. What is black and what is white.

How about a fusion of real-life Princess with fairytale Princess? The emphasis will be on what is important to us - the general impression of Princess. Besides this, the history or rather stories of Princess is also what people should know.

With this fusional concept, what comes to my mind is an illustration book. How about telling stories or archiving information about Princess in the essence of fairytale books. Like all the myths and folklores, the traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth.

Will the Legend of Princess live on?

There are various definations for Princess, it can be possitive or negative, traditional or modern, real-life or fairytale. It all depends on how one sees it.

The theme itself is feminine, thus targeting mainly on female audiences. By using elements that females can relate, to create interest in the topic. An approach of adapting paper dolls into the concept of how people have different (changing) perspective of Princess.

Fabric will be used in replaced of paper, since costumes are made of fabric and why not “archived” the type of textile material used for Princess costumes. Also targets on the emotional aspect, inwhich people uses their sense of touch.

In the spirit of a time capsule, textile is one of the material that can lasts. Since hundreds years ago, fabric was invented and how the exchange of luxury textiles was predominant on the Silk Road, a series of ancient trade and cultural transmission routes that were central to cultural interaction through regions of the Asian continent connecting East and West by linking traders, merchants, pilgrims, monks, soldiers, nomads and urban dwellers from China to the Mediterranean Sea during various periods of time. This shows the “sustainability” of textile material, thus probably thousands years later, people might still be interested in fabrics and the texture.

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Swatches can be texture-based: e.g. fabric

It should be a communication piece, which requires to include text and descriptions.
Probably I should focus abit more on the content.

Barbie dolls are always an icon of a princess, parents always dress up their little girls like a barbie doll to portray them as princess...

See how Chris Jordan used of Barbies in an artwork skewing more toward social commentary than environmental.
These 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the US in 2006 and waits after the jump.

Read more here: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/chris-jordan-ted-running-the-numbers.php

Back in 1984, curator Ann Yonemura purchased the first-ever artifact for the Sackler Gallery of Art. It was an antique Japanese palanquin. Palanquins were used as transportation during the Tokugawa period of Japanese history, which ended in 1868. High-ranking Japanese nobility sat in the fancy compartments, and as many as six bearers carried it through the streets.

Yonemura knew that the palanquin belonged to a high-ranking noblewoman, since only the elite were permitted such ostentation. But it wasn’t until this year, as reported in the January issue of Smithsonian magazine, that she figured out who the palanquin was made for.

Yonemura received a call from Shin’ichi Saito, a curator at the Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum. A document he’d found in the Japanese National Archives listed the items that had been made for the 1856 marriage between shogun Tokugawa Iesada and Princess Atsuhime. He was sure the Sackler’s palanquin was made for Atsuhime. She would have sat in it, and six bearers would have carried her through the streets from her parents’ home to her new husband’s.

But Atsuhume was more than just a shogun’s third wife. Her husband died two years after their marriage, making her a widow at 23. Undaunted, Atsuhime renamed herself Tenshoin. When the Tokugawa clan resigned the shogunate and imperial rule resumed, Princess Atsuhime remained a force in politics, advancing her family’s position. Her life spanned the birth of a modern, powerful Japan. Atsuhime’s fascinating story is the subject of a 50-episode drama, currently airing on the Japanese public TV network NHK.