Little Women 2019 vs 1994 vs book: 3. Amy March

Amy March: 

When we think of Amy we tend to think of the spoilt little girl who loves beauty and art, and does not love her nose. ; )   However, the new 2019 version gave us a little more depth to her character, showing a spoilt girl who turns into a strong logical sensible woman - who knows what she wants in life and tirelessly works for it. You may think this is not what you see in the books and that she just wants to have a life of art and comfort but that is not what I see. To me her petty rants about having to wear her cousin's clothes and her determinedness to talk properly are a sign of an intelligent view that she wants to better herself in life. Unlike Jo who believes the way to getting what she wants it to not care what others think of her but strive hard towards genius at all costs, Amy actually has the more sensible view... she sees the way the world of her time works, bringing favour to those who fit in to the highest circles of society and works along with that to gain the things she wants in life (to be an art genius to begin with then to be respected latterly) for example the elegant kind of way she acts impresses Aunt March, who then decides to bribe her to be her companion with art lessons from the best masters. Anyway how does this relate to the costumes you may say? Well it is her desire to be elegant and carry herself with propriety that affects every fashion decision she makes. We see this especially in the chapter "Calls" where she takes Jo with her to pay visits and begs Jo not to disgrace her saying, "I'll do anything for you Jo, if only you'll dress yourself nicely, and help me to do the civil".     

In this image 2019 Amy is at school now the jacket she is wearing is suitably unfashionable for a schooldress... or is it? 

Here is a photo of a girls' school in Boston 1850s: as you can see none of the clothing items look like Amy's jacket. 

      Here is a girl in the 1860s; her outfit looks remarkably like this one below.

You see. All it needs is the fashionable wider sleeves and there you have it...

                                                             ohhh

                                                         

                                                            And THERE WE HAVE IT!!!!!

    Success, at last, a historically accurate outfit! The only thing ruining this now is the bangs on her hair: the only photo evidence we have for bangs in the 1860s is a photo ( pictured below) of this little girl in 1868! So she is either ahead of fashion or just weird but I get the reasoning behind it... It is something which child Amy has had since the 1940s versions even in the beloved 1990s adaptation with the only exception being the 2018 version which had OTHER hair issues.

Here in the 1994 version Amy is now in pairs and wearing what looks like a dress no older than 1872. Now several different timelines are issued as ideas for the storyline of Little Women but most of them have Amy in pairs over the late 1860s to the early 1870s however this dress reminds me more of the mid 1870s so it looks as if they have stretched their version of the timeline out a bit.

This dress from the 2019 version is lovely; it is very nice for about 1867-1870 and fits one of the suggested timelines well. I am pretty sure it is inspired by a painting but I'm not sure which...

The dress in this picture seems to have gone backwards in style with the flared sleeves of the early 1860s. 

The strange thing about Amy's late 1860s outfits is the bulge in the front. In the late 1860s, the fashionable shape moves from being bell-shaped all round to the elliptical hoop which was fuller in the back than the front. With Amy's dresses it seems like the dress itself is flat in front with a fuller back but she hasn't adapted the hoop to fit the dressmaking for a strange bulge which is visible even from this front view picture. Her little hat is quite nice and evokes the period but I haven't researched this style of hat yet. Though just a shoutout to the costume accessory department for actually giving any hats to wear outdoors because until the late 60s hats were a common part of a woman's wardrobe and in the Victorian era it was an essential sign of propriety to wear bonnets/hats when outdoors and indeed even gentlemen would wear hats outdoors. Notably many young gentlemen in movies are bereft of well-made hats.

Here is an elliptical hoop

and here is the earlier round cage.

1994 older Amy is dressed in decidedly 1870s gowns and this too is in keeping with a different suggested timeline. Her millinery is beautiful and really adds to the elegance of the outfit.

It reminds me of this 1871 dress from the MET museum...

From other gowns I would say the time is supposed to be later, though many of the suggested timelines suggest 1870-1871 for Amy coming home from Europe.

May I just say I love Amy's perky hat in this scene it has an artistic elegance, well-suited to her character!

In this scene those interested in costume may have at first been like WHAT WHY IS AMY WEARING WHAT LOOKS LIKE 18TH C STAYS. Well, my dear costume enthusiasts it is indeed actually accurate for the 1860s child to wear soft corded stays rather than the curvy boned corsets adults wore and while Amy seems too old to be wearing this style of stay it would actually have been rather helpful to the costumers in flattening Florence Pugh's curves to make her look younger for the role. Though the actress was rather too old to play Amy in my opinion.

I personally don't really like this dress on Amy; it looks like they've put a child dress on an adult (which is true)! Even with the stays instead of the corset you can see her curves are still showing that she's a mature young woman rather than a young girl and seeing as this is supposed to be 4 years on from the first part of the movie I can't see why they didn't just give her a grown-up style of dress because she would have been wearing it by now, especially as she is the more beauty-conscious of the sisters. Note I say beauty-conscious rather than fashion-conscious because it says when she is in France she does her hair in a "hebe like knot" rather than the fashionable style because she knows what suits her. So she has what I would call a healthy relationship with fashion, she is not a slave to it but rather a master of it.

Simply elegant, need I say more?

Babyish syle for babyish Amy but what is that knitted ruffled thing? Please comment and inform me if you know!

Ahh, nice age for Amy and nice clothes. Finge is a common thing with the Amy's of Little Women adaptations though not much of a thing in the real 1860s. I must say I am actually finding the 2019 version more fun to comment on because the problems provide many humour points.

I love her elegant hair; I can't really see the dress underneath well enough to comment on it.

Fairly nice... would like to see better tailoring perhaps with a smoother fit about the waist. She is in France after all. The dagged tails at the back are definitely in fashion.

Once again the dagged edges are very late 1860s I can find nothing to complain about here except that in the book when she goes to the Christmas ball in France with Laurie she wears white tulle not black and Laurie is definitely not so badly behaved!

Okayish not quite sure about the style of blouse with the lace insert strips.

Nice look goes underneath the tartan jacket I talked about earlier.

 Now I love this re-using of Meg's old dress; it looks really great on Amy and it shows the thrifty side of the family.

Anyway I think I began to get a little tired toward the end of this post. Amy is not really a hard character to analise, becuse she is quite conservative and keeps to the general trends of the era. 

   So. Until next time...