Winx Club: From A Coming of Age Tale to a Reboot that Falls Flat
By: Michelle Weth
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Growing up in the early 2000s, Saturday mornings were for the girls. The Winx girls of course! Drawn like fashion models and dressed like them too, the Winx Club is full of hot fairies and the power of friendship. As the Winx Club grows and matures, their sense of style evolves right alongside them.
The animated show opens by following the story of Bloom, an ordinary teenage girl living on Earth. But she inadvertently becomes involved in a battle between a fairy (and her sidekick) and some witches. Though she’s confused by how a storybook came to life, Bloom protects the fairy’s sidekick and discovers she has powers of her own through a feat of accidental magic. Stella, the fairy, quickly befriends Bloom and convinces her to attend Alfea, a boarding school for fairies. Bloom has to leave her family behind and assume a false identity to practice magic.
As Bloom starts to learn more about magic, she becomes friends with a group of girls: Musa, Flora, and Tecna. Alfea students are studying to fight a school of witches, who study at the Cloud Tower--including a trio of witches called the Trix who often harass the Winx Club.
Winx Club deviates from a lot of traditional magical shows (like Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura) because it’s a coming of age story in which girls have to leave their families. Without their original support systems, the girls are placed in an environment where they start to develop their identities independent from their families. In the process, they create new support systems of like-minded young people that help them learn what they are capable of. As Bloom investigates the mystery of her past, encounters obstacles, and finds love, she grows as a person. And her powers and outfits do too.
Each Winx girl has two outfits: a casual one and a magical one they transform into when fighting enemies. Each girl has an outfit corresponding to their personalities, though there are some common elements. They each wear some variation of crop top, low rise jeans, mini skirts, and platforms/wedges. Stella is the self-proclaimed fashionista of the group, and the animators are sure to highlight this. Throughout the seasons, Stella is shown changing casual outfits depending on the occasion. The other girls tend to wear mostly the same outfits, outside of special events like dates or dances. As for their magical outfits, everyone has wings! In addition, each outfit is a sparkly monochromatic number, with each girl getting their own color. Bloom wears blue, Stella wears orange, Flora wears pink, Tecna wears purple, and Aisha wears green.
Typically, their casual clothes change each season. This is a reflection of the growth each character went through in the previous season, like how Bloom discovered the secrets of her past and developed confidence throughout season one. In season two, instead of wearing bell-bottom jeans, she started wearing a ruffled denim mini skirt with white knee-high socks, blue wedges, a yellow arm bangle, and a blue headband with a yellow heart. This demonstrates Bloom coming into her own identity and developing new confidence. It also serves to reflect the societal changes of the time, demonstrating how the show both influenced and was influenced by the fashion of its time.
This year, the Winx Club was rebooted with a live-action remake titled Fate: The Winx Saga. This show is targeted towards young adults, in contrast to the original’s target audience of children to teenagers—exposing a new generation to the beloved show; however, I think it rings hollow. I get that there’s a grimdark trend going on, but does every remake have to be a dark reimagining of the source material? It seems that network executives think that the way to make a hit TV show is to make a children’s show dark and market it to young adults. At least the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina featured the devil. Give me whimsy or unhinged chaos. Not what this reboot was: a shallow, statement-lacking attempt at remixing a nostalgic coming of age tale.
Plus, the Asian coded and Latina coded characters were whitewashed in the reboot. Musa’s character design was originally based on Lucy Liu and was clearly Asian coded in the show. Flora’s character design was based on Jennifer Lopez and was Latina coded in the show. In Fate: The Winx Saga, a white actress was cast for the role of Musa, and Flora was replaced by a new white character called Terra. How did they do diversity better in the past than in the present?
The new characters are dressed in darker but less revealing clothes. On one hand, this choice allows for a celebration of different body types. But on the other hand, a hallmark of growing up is experimenting with clothes and finding your style. By dressing the characters in dark clothing, it takes some of the fun, whimsicalness out of the show—and this takes away from the stories’ celebration of growing up.
At the end of the day, the Winx Club is about teenage girls who kick butt and try to find their place in the world. As they enter relationships, not all of them healthy (with a special mention for the toxic relationship between Musa and Riven), they start to develop their own identities and passions. As they grow up, their fashion reflects the characters’ journeys and also the development of trends in the real world—that is the real magic behind the Winx Club.