In Toon Town, Nothing Is Ironic

The Philadelphia Orchestra played the Fantasia soundtrack inside Disneyland while models walked through Toon Town. That’s either the most surreal thing you can imagine or the most perfectly logical conclusion to a lifetime of watching Disney films. Humberto Leon and Carol Lim staged their Opening Ceremony collection for Mickey Mouse’s anniversary exactly there—in the cartoon streets where Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald supposedly live—under the banner "Mickey the True Original."

I grew up on Disney films the same way everyone did. The same tapes worn thin, the same Saturday rituals. What stuck wasn’t really the plots—it was the worlds. The graphic clarity of those animated spaces, everything exaggerated just far enough past real to feel more real than real. I would have given a lot to live inside almost any of them. Probably still would.

Leon and Lim leaned hard into that visual language: Mickey silhouettes, block lettering, iconic shapes translated into streetwear. Nostalgic without being precious about it. The clothes moved like actual clothes rather than costumes, which is harder to pull off with this kind of IP than it sounds. And the setting did the rest—when the Fantasia brass swelled through Toon Town, the whole thing stopped being a fashion show and turned into something communal. An entire crowd remembering the same childhood simultaneously.

I went back and watched the films that weekend. Sat with them longer than I planned, and didn’t feel bad about it.