Barneys and Disney paired up to create a holiday campaign incorporating well-known Disney characters. (Creative Commons)

The project, composed of several cartoon ads, beautiful window displays, and a short film that has been called a “moving-art short,” is the brainchild of Barneys CEO Mark Lee and Disney CEO Bob Iger. Fashion icons such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and many more attended the unveiling event.

Last year, Barneys teamed up with Lady Gaga to create a window campaign called Gaga’s Workshop. According to Barneys' creative director, Dennis Freedman, it “was a hard act to follow,” yet it seems that this year's window display is receiving a lot of, if not more, attention. But not all of this attention has been positive.

The controversy over the display comes as a response to the short film associated with the campaign, which offers viewers an animated look at the world of high fashion as seen through the eyes of Minnie Mouse. The short film follows Minnie Mouse’s daydream to be at Paris Fashion Week. She finds herself sitting in the front row at a show alongside some of fashion's most elite names, looking beautiful in a Lanvin dress. But it is on the runway that she and her fellow Disney characters get the model treatment and turn into a more fashionable, yet noticeably skinnier versions of themselves. With the help of some pixie dust form Tinker Bell, Minnie and her friends become tail, thin models and strut the latest couture down the Parisian runway. While the product of the collaboration between Disney and Barneys is truly incredible, it is hard to get past the creepy and startlingly thin images of the characters.

Freedman related how difficult it was to capture the details and essence of both the fashion industry and the Disney characters. He said:

“When we got to the moment when all Disney characters walk on the runway, there was a discussion. The standard Minnie Mouse will not look so good in a Lanvin dress. There was a real moment of silence, because these characters don’t change. I said, ‘If we’re going to make this work, we have to have a 5-foot-11 Minnie,’ and they agreed. When you see Goofy, Minnie and Mickey, they are runway models.”

Negative reactions to this new campaign deemed it unhealthy and unacceptable to manipulate a well-known children’s character into something urecognizable. While the change in the characters' appearances is all part of Minnie’s fantasy, that doesn’t override its provocative and unsettling nature. 

Although it is made clear that the two worlds in which Minnie stars are completely separate, that does not change the fact that as a whole, the short film draws attention to and virtually validates the unhealthy nature of the fashion world. To many, ideal beauty is epitomized by the women who model the high fashion brands advertised in the film, which is why there has been so much backlash against it. Girls have grown up with an image of Minnie Mouse as a healthy, normal-looking character, and to now see her with a significantly altered look is troubling. Our society already bombards girls with enough images of figures and beauty impossible to attain, so this new skinny Minnie just seems unnecessary and only compounds the problem.

It is disappointing to see that Disney played a role in creating a video that implies that viewers need to be a certain weight and height to be accepted as beautiful. While it is reassuring that the video ends on a positive note, with Minnie strutting her new Lanvin dress at a healthy weight while boasting a confident attitude, it would have been nice to see Minnie and her friends walk the runway looking like their normal, healthy selves without having undergone a dramatic body transformation.

So, what should we think of this new campaign? Is Minnie’s time on the runway a harmless daydream? Or does it reiterate the unhealthy culture of the fashion world? Either way, it is undeniable that Barneys' and Disney’s campaign is provocative and controversial, giving both companies a commercial edge over the others during this holiday season. 

Reach Contributor Lugene El-Harazi here.