Lee Randall: Fairytales may be lies but their promises are still irresistible

Published on Friday 30 October 2009 19:54

WHILE I pride myself on being exceptionally hard-bitten, every now and then something so unexpectedly lovely comes along that it knocks me for a loop. Knocks me right back to my days of reading fairytales, in fact – when I devoured them just for kicks, and not for "Run With Wolves"-style epiphanies.

This week, that something was Ivanka Trump, a young woman possessed of the holy trinity: brains, beauty and bucks – and now also a husband.

What stopped me in my tracks, brought a tear to my glass eye and inspired swooning were pictures showing her to be the most glorious example of an old-school-style beautiful bride I've seen since Princess Diana.

Sure that dress looks silly now, but back in 1981 it was precisely the girly puffiness of it, and the way it evoked Snow White, that made young women everywhere tingle to the vicarious thrill of seeing the last page in the picture book come to life, the one where the heroine plucked from obscurity marries Prince Charming. Even if she wasn't, and he wasn't, and it all went sour in the end.

Trump's dress, designed by Vera Wang (whose work I can ordinarily take or leave), was stylish and classy. Feminine without the frou-frou.

I've spent an age admiring the sheer, embroidered overlay, with sleeves so gossamer light and finished sans hem, appearing, therefore, to float along her arm, merging with her skin. Acres of veil form a gauzy cocoon around her body, reinforcing a decidedly old-world notion of the bride as a delicate creature in need of protection by her strong, capable groom.

This is all the more amusing when you remember that Trump is a driven businesswoman, and nobody's idea of a pushover.

Given that her parents are Donald and Ivana, it's all the more noteworthy that Ivanka opted for less, rather than more (though I'm sure the ensemble cost a bomb). Her make-up is subtle, her hair soft and unfussy, and even her mega-carat diamond jewellery refuses to call undue attention to itself. Trump's princess bride moment made my brain take a funny turn. I thought: "That's how I want to look the next time I get married."

This is silly on several levels. First, because I loved wearing a tuxedo the first time, and nothing on Earth would entice me to strut my stuff in a white frock. But a more fundamental point is that any return trip up the aisle would, by necessity, find me wearing a straitjacket – because agreeing to such a foolhardy undertaking would prove that I'd finally, irreversibly, gone insane.

But of course it's not about a particularly pretty frock. Nor is it that I reckon the marriage stands better odds for longevity than any other. I know next to nothing about Trump and Jared Kushner's relationship and, realistically, they could wind up in divorce court quicker than I could learn to spell Czechoslovakia.

I do know that the transcendent beauty of this gorgeous bride aglow on her wedding day hauled a wealth of emotions out of cold storage, and I'm shocked by how powerfully they sucker-punched me.

I reconnected with the goofy optimism and the nave excitement I knew as a kid, when all the world appeared to stretch out before me and when my dreams for the future – nurtured by picture books and moving pictures – included a Prince Charming who'd drop romantically to one knee, begging me to marry him, and then promptly whisk me up the hill on his white charger to a well-appointed castle that I'd never have to clean. Ivanka reminded me what it was like to have a child's innocent belief in happy endings.