JKR

With the premier of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland comes the expected brand tie-ins and merchandising. Clipper are the “official hot drinks’ partner”. I think their design for a limited edition Alice blend works really well because it sticks faithfully to the brand’s house style. And it’s able to do this because Lewis Carroll and illustrator Tenniel created such a rich and recognisable stream of iconography in the first place. Which in turn made me wonder, do any of the brands riding the Alice film really require “official” status? What does such a thing cost, and what does it buy? Perhaps I’m being naïve – perhaps such tie-ins are free, generating publicity for the film studio and in return getting premiere tickets to use in competitions etc.

The visual cues of Alice (blue dresses with white pinafores etc) are presumably beyond copyright. Both Selfridges and Claire’s Accessories are running pop-up shops selling Alice inspired jewellery, much of which plays with the familiar devices (top hats and playing cards etc) rather than Burton-specific imagery. Could these designs have been created without Disney’s blessing? Would a more opportunistic/entrepreneurial use of the source material be wrong from a consumer perspective?

Either way, has any other British book been the wellspring for so much universally loved imagery? I think it’s testament to the original source’s quality that the fancy Alice jewellery (below) on sale in Selfridges is not, at a glance, much more arresting than some of the designs on sale a little further down Oxford street in Claire’s Accessories.