Mouse Couture: The Fashion Industry’s Mickey and Minnie Obsession

The fashion sphere can’t seem to get enough of Mickey and Minnie these days, and not just the expected corporate collabs like OPI cosmetics or Barney’s Electric Holiday, but actual couture showstoppers stomping the runways in fashion capitals and captured in the pages of high fashion editorials (like the above Peter Phillips mask for 2005 US Vogue). And even after having revisiting the subject a dozen times over the last five years, designers are still finding new inspiration to cut and sew a pair of mouse ears into their fashion stories.

Marcel Gerlan’s spring 2013 collection “Gerl Power” for Gerlan Jeans featured a girlie assortment of bow-veralls, polka dots and Minnie-maxi skirts as means of alleged expression of feminism for the current generation of young women.

Fashion photographer Prasad Naik’s severe and somewhat abstract analysis of the subject was the star in his 2012 fashion editorial.

Iceberg’s spring/summer 2010 collection brought impractical play suits and gimmicky mouse eared shoulders to Milan fashion week in 2009.

And Jeremy Scott, who arguably began this specific cartoon-y trend with his fall 2009 ready-to-wear collection showcased head-to-toe tributes to the cartoon icon, including his now famous Mickey Mouse sneakers for Adidas.