But between Snow White and Cinderella, a new feminine ideal emerged, thanks to the so-called “New Look” of 1947. After a decade of wartime clothing rationing and restrictions on fabric-wasting details like pockets, pleats, and ruffles—still in effect in much of Europe—Christian Dior’s debut haute couture collection brought back the hourglass figure, ditching shoulder pads and abbreviated hemlines in favor of cinched waists, shawl collars, and (most decadent of all) full, calf-length skirts in shimmering silks. Some of these skirts were pleated, scalloped, or ruffled, gobbling up as much as twenty yards of fabric. Dior described his ideal customers as “flowerlike women, with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts and hand-span waists above enormous spreading skirts.” He could have been describing Cinderella—and the countless Disney heroines who followed.

The media frenzy surrounding Dior’s landmark collection announced that the French fashion industry was back in business, and a generation of women who had become accustomed to wearing Rosie-the-Riveter coveralls and mannish military uniforms were suddenly transformed into ultra-feminine, fairytale princesses. Even in America—where clothing was never formally rationed the way food and fuel were—the New Look was welcomed as a return to the luxury and elegance of the 1930s, as if the war hadn't intervened at all.

Production on Cinderella began in 1948 and, when it premiered in 1950, its debt to the New Look was lost on no one, least of all Dior himself. “Now that Cinderella’s fairy godmother no longer exists, the couturier must be the magician,” he wrote in his 1956 autobiography, Dior by Dior. The film even inspired a line of Cinderella-branded bridal wear.

But Cinderella was more than a fashion statement. The entire movie can be read as a parable of postwar consumerism, with Dior as the fairy godmother. The Axis Powers of wicked stepmother and ugly stepsisters are vanquished and humiliated. Underemployed farm animals benefit from a sudden job boom, and victory garden pumpkins become slick new rides. What better metaphor for this fragile peace and prosperity than a glass slipper?

No Disney film is more wardrobe-driven than Cinderella, and most of the plot elements involving clothing were added by Disney, fueling criticism that the studio turned the classic fairy tale into a bourgeois, capitalist fantasy. Indeed, a cursory overview of the plot reveals that virtually every twist centers on Cinderella’s clothes. At the outset of the film, Cinderella—orphaned and forced into a kind of domestic slavery by her stepmother, Lady Tremaine—appears in a straight, knee-length skirt that perfectly conforms to the Utility Clothing Scheme, Britain’s restrictive wartime style specifications. As her fortunes continue to plummet, her clothes become more tattered and patched. She adds a torn apron and a headscarf—a staple of female fashion during World War II, when hat-making materials were in short supply.