Update Alice's Victorian look with these beautiful blue dresses

Don't get the blues, work them into your summer wardrobe!

Tim Burton has re-invented so much in his version of children’s classic, Alice in Wonderland, currently riding high at the box office. The story has been re-jigged, a novel new fusion of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There; the Red Queen has a giant head and many of the characters are purely CGI. Yet there’s one detail that harks back to the popular 1951 Disney animation – Alice’s blue dress.

Our heroine hasn’t always worked the blue look, early illustrations of her offered up all number of colours, yet her screen style was confirmed when the House of Mouse styled her in blue and it’s stuck since then. Not that Oscar-winning costume designer, Colleen Atwood didn’t experiment with other shades when she joined Burton for their eighth big screen outing. It just seemed like she was delaying the inevitable.

“We played around with other colours," she reveals, “but came back to blue because it seemed the right thing and it also looked really pretty on Mia [Wasikowska, the Australian actress in the role]. It was her colour.” And even as she shrinks and grows, the colour remains throughout much of the movie, despite a fun foray into scarlet when the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) fashions the now-gigantic Alice with a dress made from her curtains! It’s a constant in the ever-changing and bizarre Underworld Alice finds herself in, whether it’s the original dress she wears when she disappears down the rabbit hole, the more ruffled Underworld alternatives or the full-length frock coat she dons at the movie’s end.

A delicate powder shade of blue, Alice’s original dress is a beautiful example of Victorian elegance. With its close-fitting bodice and full skirt, it’s flattering and feminine, the corset not pulled in too tightly for saucy cleavage (she is only 19-years-old in the movie) and in-keeping with this girly innocence are the short puffed sleeves, lacy neckline and low-heeled lace-up boots. But to really appreciate the finer points, look closely. Her petticoat is stripey, her shell buttons boast flowers and best of all, the black embroidery around the hem of the skirt features rabbits!

And as with so much of Alice in Wonderland, the fashion world has been carefully cribbing notes. A number of top designers set about creating bespoke Alice-inspired dresses for a window display at Parisian department store, Printemps and, as you’d expect, there were quite a few bursts of blue. London-based designer, Charles Anastase, who loves taking inspiration from the Victorian era and is a self-confessed devotee of Lewis Carroll, gave us a grand asymmetrical gown with full white petticoats in a dusky blue.

Avant garde Belgian, Maison Martin Margiela strayed down a less conventional path, turning a long ball gown on its head – literally. The bustier was restyled into a miniskirt and the many-layered petticoat became a draped top partly worn over the head as a veil. Novel and unusual – yes, but still in blue? Check. As was the equally eccentric foam mini-dress with attached playing cards by Manish Arora known for his kitsch campness and the less daring pleated sleeveless dress with a handkerchief hem from the Chloe design team. All proving that Alice can be remodelled in all sorts of ways, but the blue remains.

So if you’re looking to work an Alice-inspired style, away from the merchandise and more in-keeping with her romantic, dreamy personality, we’ve got some stunning blue dresses for all budgets. The subtle sapphire shade complements all skin and hair colours, doesn’t clash too violently with other colours and gives a timeless yet on-trend quality that works with so many other hot looks right now such as florals, frills and pastels. Perfect to wear to your next tea party!