My First Crush Had a Fin

Ariel had red hair, blue eyes, and a tail fin where her legs should have been, and I was completely gone on her by age eight. I was aware, on some level, that the logistics would be complicated. I had already decided I didn’t care.

British designer Bobby Abley has been building a reputation for Disney-inflected fashion, and his The Little Mermaid collection is exactly the kind of thing that shouldn’t work as high fashion and somehow mostly does. Ursula, Sebastian, Flotsam—all rendered on shirts priced between €250 and €700 a piece. That’s a significant amount of money to spend on feelings that probably belong in therapy, but here we are.

What I find interesting about Abley is that he doesn’t do Disney ironically. There’s actual affection in how he handles the imagery, the same affection that anyone carries toward the pop culture that got into them before they had taste or defenses. Wearing Ursula on a €400 shirt isn’t cheap nostalgia—it’s closer to a serious statement about what shaped you, made expensive enough to force the question of whether you actually mean it.

Seven hundred euros for an Ariel shirt. I’m not buying it. But I understand the impulse completely, which is probably worse.