Raya’s Costume Design Puts the Warrior in the Princess

Raya and the Last Dragon is a Disney Princess movie that reflects the time it was released. It is a film about a female protagonist driving her own narrative, not a story about a fugitive princess who accepts working as a housekeeper for small magical creatures for then to be poisoned and awoken by a prince, or a princess who doesn’t even appear in her movie for more than 18 minutes. Raya is brave and steadfast but stubborn and a cynic. She is flashed out with a development arch exploring her initial selfishness to her final sacrifice. She has her own goals that, even if not honorable at the beginning, become noble at the end. Raya is reminiscent of Disney’s more recent heroic-driven female royal characters like Merida, Vanellope, Anna and Elsa, and Moana. I am not saying that Disney Princesses in romantic-driven storylines are not strong or independent. Just look at Tiana or how the Aladdin live-action transformed Jasmine into both a lover and a potentially great and caring leader (this is my favorite change from the animation, coupled with the song Speechless). Still, Raya’s story is different and empowering, and it is not only because she is the first Southeast Asian character of renown in the Disney slate.

Firstly, is Raya a true Disney Princess? Disney hasn’t yet mentioned anything concrete about it. There is no information regarding a coronation and Raya appearing in any of the parks, and the Disney Princess official website does not feature her in their list. Usually, after the Disney Princess brand was created in the 2000s, Disney movies’ newest princess characters like Tiana and Rapunzel have to fit criteria modeled after the unifying characteristics of the prior Princesses such as Mulan, Belle, and Cinderella. The SuperCarlinBrothers youtube channel has made several videos explaining those rules, so I recommend watching the Raya and the Last Dragon one so you can see how Raya may fit in the Disney Princess mold and if she may ever become one. Thus, from the company itself, Raya’s ultimate royal status is still unknown.

However, inside the movie, she is the Chief of Heart’s daughter, much like Moana is the daughter of Tui, the chief of Motunui Island, making her a defacto canonic princess. She is even called by the “princess” title at the beginning of the film. Still, there are characters like Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Giselle from Enchanted that are also canonical human princesses in their respective installments without being Disney’s favorite children. So, what did the writers intend Raya to be when they wrote her? Interestingly, they have provided conflicting answers. (Just as a side note, if you did not understand before, I use the capital “Princess” to refer to the official Disney Princesses and the lower cases “princess” to refer to the title.)

Adele Lin, who worked as a writer for Crazy Rich Asians, and Vietnamese playwright Qui Nguyen penned Raya and the Last Dragon’s screenplay together. Nonetheless, this does not mean their perception of the character they created is the same. They have mentioned in previous interviews that Raya was not originally intended to be a princess. Raya is the protagonist, yet she does not sing because the animation was not planned as a musical, a deviation from most recent female-led Disney films. (I would like to intervene and say that the movie would be much more remarkable to fans if Raya was a singing heroine, but the creators thought that songs would stuff and convolute the action scenes, which the film is chock full off). Every single official Disney Princess sings at least once, even Aurora, and some of the world’s most remarkable songs are from Princess movies (A Whole New World and How Far I’ll Go, to name a few). Thus, the writers thought of her more as a guardian warrior than a princess that could fit the Disney criteria from the get-go.

Adele Lin says in an interview with Showbiz Cheat Sheet that the change into making her royalty then came from “the feeling of leadership, that she was brought up to be a leader and she takes on that mantle of leadership happily. For that to be the inspiration for a lot of young kids watching this movie.” In other words, Raya became canonical royalty to fulfill the position of a role model to children, something that Disney has always attributed to the idea of a princess. Nonetheless, Qui Nguyen still does not feel that Raya should have been portrayed as royalty. For him, based on an interview with Den of Geek, the heroine sees herself only as Guardian of the Dragon Gem and that “the princess thing was by proxy, or by the simple fact that she’s the daughter of the chief. I guess that does make her a princess, but I don’t think she necessarily identifies as that. She’s much more of an aspirational kind of warrior character.” Nguyen has an interesting point about looking at Raya as an inspiration not because she is necessarily in a position of leadership as a princess, but because she is a fighter, a hero, a person who learns kindness and the power of sacrifice through experiences, something that Disney has established as part of their brand through Marvel.

Therefore, there is no real consensus out there to categorize Raya as a Disney Princess (it will be funny if, between the time I write this post and the time I publish it, Disney announces the official royal status of Raya and everything I wrote about the dubiousness of the situation becomes null). So, at the end of the day, she will become an official Disney Princess if audiences see her movie en masse and she sells enough merchandise to prove she is famous and memorable amongst Disney fans. It is not for nothing that Disney created the Princess line mainly to sell toys and clothing. Still, even if Raya hasn’t yet gotten her ultimate title, she remains canonical royalty, and one of the most exciting aspects of her character that distinguishes her from every other Disney Princess or princess is that she is a warrior in both how she moves and looks.

Disney is known as a company that spends careful attention crafting stories that are culturally sensitive, inclusive, and celebrative, something that has roots in the conceptualization and construction process behind the Animal Kingdom park. Part of the company’s faithfulness to cultural representation (not appropriation) comes from their research trips to their “target countries.” For Raya and the Last Dragon, crew members traveled to the Southeast Asian countries of Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and Malaysia to learn about Southeast Asia in a more personal manner so the movie could feel genuine and grounded to their real-life traditional practices. Producer Osnat Shurer mentions in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that the “community that [directors Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada] encountered, the sense of 'we,' the importance of 'we' over 'I,' was so deep and so complete,” that it inspired the story of Kumandra and the idea of unifying all Southeast Asian countries and cultural practices into one state, which when separated into clans, shares bits and pieces from all real-life countries. Moreover, like Moana’s Oceanic Trust of scholarly advisors of Polynesian traditions, producers created the Southeast Asia Story Trust to keep all the film’s cultural representations accurate and respectful, defined by Shurer in an interview with IGN as “a coalition of specialists in various fields, including visual anthropology, linguistics, botany, choreography, architecture, martial artists, and others.”

In short, what I want to say when talking about Disney Animation’s thorough development process is how detailed and well-thought-out Raya and the Last Dragon’s visual and narrative conceptualization were regarding its connection to Southeast Asia. The creative team even took a new approach to animate costume designs in terms of fashion, using a draping-based process of arranging fabrics in an animated model rather than a previous pattern-based one with predetermined shapes and textures. Therefore, you could imagine that Raya was no exception to the rule.

Focusing on her fashion, audiences are presented to her in her clan outfit that features aquatic greens and blues to symbolize water’s importance as a symbol of life and purity, and the water dragons, deities inspired by the Naga serpents of various Asian folktales. Every single clan wears different colors as representations of their identities, from Talon’s purples and pinks to Fang’s whites, reds, and beige, but I believe Heart’s colors are more significant to the story. But after the Druuns take over the Heart clan, part of Raya’s identity and positive outlook in life disappear, and thus, as production designer Paul Felix mentions to The Hollywood Reporter, “she wanted to be incognito, so we took the palette away, but gave more subtle allusions.” Audiences can perceive those allusions on her salakót bolero hat, which has a stupa-shaped base (a Buddhist celebratory mound-like spherical structure housing sacred relics) and a curved top designed to resemble a teardrop, a clear representation of her connection with water.

Still, Raya’s main design focuses more on making her move like a fighter. She wears practical, flexible, and breathable garments that consist of a red and yellow cloak, a yellow sabai top, and a Cambodian brown sampot dress made of a rectangular cloth worn around the lower body to allow Raya to be agile and adequately demonstrate her martial arts skills. Moreover, in an interview with D23, simulation supervisor Avneet Kaur explains that “her cloak was devised to give her a sense of mystery, almost like acting as a shield” as a way to mimic Raya’s more skeptical, reticent, and unsociable personality while also showing that she is hurting from her father’s demise and doesn’t want others to see her sensitive self. Finally, her hairstyle was designed as a top-of-the-head doubled braid pinned back look so as to frame Raya’s face in a way audiences could clearly see her expressions and so the hair would not move in front of her sightline while she was fighting. Unlike other princesses with restrictive exuberant garbs, even Moana, Raya’s costume is both culturally sound and created to support her combat abilities.

Lastly, regarding Raya’s fighting knowledge, screenwriter Qui Nguyen, also credited for additional fight reference choreography, mixed primarily Indonesian Pencak Silat with a bit of Muay Thai and Vietnamese Đấu Vật (wrestling) into the protagonist’s array of skills. He also weaponized her with Arnis or Eskrima sticks (in the movies’ first scenes) and a wave-like Kris sword that used to belong to her father. The care for the accurate representation of actual combat styles both exists as a tribute to Southeast Asian cultures and a demonstration of how unique Raya is as a Disney character, especially a princess. From all Disney animated feature films, Raya and the Last Dragon is the main one to depict a fighting choreography that feels grounded, real, and exciting when watched. The combat is one of its features that makes it stand out from any other Disney movie, and writing Raya as a warrior princess that spends her early days learning how to fight to become a guardian and spends the rest of the movie applying her knowledge grants her a quality no other Disney royalty has from the get-go (not even Mulan or Merida have the same level or variety of acquired skills Raya has). To watch her fight so well makes sense, and looks fantastic.

Conclusively, as Raya’s name translates to “celebration” in Malay, a language spoken in most Southeast Asian countries, Raya and the Last Dragon is a film that celebrates Southeast Asian cultures in ways few movies have ever done. More than that, it presents to audiences a character that is representative of such cultures with a costume design that is different from any the garments worn by previous Disney Princesses and princesses, one that maximizes her fighting potential and the audience’s ability to enjoy her martial arts skills, an essential aspect of her characterization. In turn, that singles her out from any other previous Disney Princess as a heroine born out of royalty that chose to become a guardian, chose to learn how to fight, and saw herself becoming a leader before thoroughly enjoying the influence of being royalty. In the end, even if Raya and the Last Dragon is not as popular as Disney Animation’s previous movies, Raya and the characters in her world will stand the test of time as unique new entries to the Disney collection of stories.

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