Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) - Character Outline

Character Outline

Alice is popularly depicted wearing a pale blue knee-length dress with a white pinafore overtop, although the dress originally was yellow in The Nursery "Alice", the first coloured version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass her hair is held back with a wide ribbon, and in honour of Alice, such hair bows are sometimes called Alice bands, particularly in the UK.

As Alice was first drawn in black and white her colours would vary from artist to artist; however, in the early coloured works by John Tenniel, her dress was blue, her white pinafore outlined in red, and she was blonde. This look has, perhaps, become the classic and most widely recognized Alice in Wonderland dress in later works, notably Disney's. Tenniel drew Alice in two variants: for Through the Looking-Glass her pinafore is more ruffled and she is shown in striped stockings, an image which has remained in much of the later art.