A dress that's pretty, merry, and warm enough for dancing out in the snow.
"It may snow all night, but I'll never feel cold!"
— Cinderella, "Dressed for the Ball"
A grand, old-style dress designed to clearly look as though intended to be worn during the holiday season.
The standard form is a dress with a tasteful bodice (though it can include an Impossibly-Low Neckline or a Navel-Deep Neckline), a full-length (usually) bell-shaped skirt, and a generous amount of trimmings such as fur (that's often snowy white), jewelry, ribbons, winter symbols, like snowflakes, Sparkles, sprigs of holly, etc. Best designed to wear during a formal dance, lounging around the fireplace, or walking around on a clear night after the snow fell.
Red is the most common color, followed by white, silver, blue, (those three are especially worn by a Winter Royal Lady to give her a wintry appearance), green, and even gold.
This is meant to equate the lady wearing it with Mrs. Claus, even though that character's typical outfit is of the homely 19th century grandmother type, while these dresses can be quite extravagant.
This trope may date back to Victorian times (especially if royalty dressed up for Christmas).
Side-Story Bonus Art, particularly with anime and manga, often has holiday pics with female characters wearing these dresses (just not as often as sexy Christmas dresses), as does a majority of chapters/episodes that take place in December. It's also common in Christmas-themed Virtual Paper Doll games.
A Sub-Trope of Pimped-Out Dress and Costume Porn.
A Sister Trope to Sexy Santa Dress, Fairytale Wedding Dress.
Compare Sexy Sweater Girl, Homemade Sweater from Hell, Costume Porn, Stylish Protection Gear, An Ice Suit.
Contrast Exposed to the Elements, Fur Bikini.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In the Christmas episode of Chrono Crusade, Rosette wears a Santa suit while delivering presents to a local orphanage. Chrono was forced into a reindeer outfit.
- In Digimon Adventure 02, one of the international Digidestined is a French girl named Catherine; she's seen wearing a fur trimmed dress that's red and, compared to most other characters' outfits, very fancy. She goes out with her Digimon to destroy a control spire near the Seine River on Christmas Eve thinking it will be quick and easy, but they're captured before she can change out of the dress.
- Pretty Cure:
- The main heroines of Suite Pretty Cure ♪ don Santa-like outfits for their Christmas episode.
- The Cures of Go! Princess Pretty Cure wear Santa-style dresses for a Christmas concert.
Comic Books
- Katy Keene had had several she models. One cover shows her in a red, holly-trimmed dress when she's under a mistletoe and two guys are trying to kiss her.
Film — Animated
- Barbie in A Christmas Carol has several. The Ghosts of Christmas each wear one (Present has the skirt looking a bit like a Christmas tree), Barbie wears a white one with lots of lace, and Eden wears one with a gold waist ribbon and a fur-trimmed cape.
- Belle wore a red and gold holiday dress for Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.
- "Olaf's Frozen Adventure":
- Elsa has a darker blue version of her ice dress from Frozen and "Frozen Fever". In this one the snowflake motif is more visible, and the neckline is trimmed with white fur, giving her a festive snow queen look. It's topped off with a sprig of holly in her hair.
- Anna's outfit isn't as grand as Elsa's, but still has several subtle decorations, such as white fur lining on her jacket and hat, hair decorations that look like leaves with cranberries, and a bells & goats motif on the hem of her skirt.
Film — Live Action
- The red Christmas morning dress worn by Julianne Moore in Far from Heaven.
- The "Miss Merry Christmas" in Steel Magnolias wears a long, red dress with a white faux fur neckline and muff.
- White Christmas: As seen in the picture of the film's page, the last performance has Betty and Judy in these kinds of dresses, matching their Love Interests' Santa outfits. That sequence also includes some children in matching colors, including ballerinas in either red or white outfits.
Literature
- The American Girl dolls' outfits in their Christmas books are always special-occasion outfits, sometimes with a religious significance (such as Kirsten's St. Lucia dress in "Kirsten's Surprise") or meant for a fancy party. Felicity Merriman's blue dress with white lace is a justified case, because she actually lives in the Colonial era. The outfits accompanying the sixth book ("Changes for [Name]") will comprise the hardier, more practical winter wear.
Live Action TV
- In The Christmas Toy (the precursor special to The Secret Life of Toys), one of the toys was a Captain Ersatz of Barbie, and she wears a grand dress until she decides to get changed for the rescue mission.
- Mad Men: Some episodes in the fourth season, and the Season Six premiere, featured some variations: Joan's
curve-hugging red dress with the waist ribbon, Peggy's Pine Green dress with the Season-Appropriate brooch, Megan and Trudy's coral pink dresses (an actual seasonal color at the time), Betty's red dress with the white fur stole and her gold tapestry dress with the large ribbon. In that latter episode, Sally wears a lace collared blue dress.
- In the Christmas Episode of Pee-wee's Playhouse, Miss Yvonne wears one that also includes long High-Class Gloves, white feather trim on the gloves and dress neckline, and her hair done up like a Christmas tree.
- Exaggerated in the RuPaul's Drag Race episode "The Queens Who Mopped Christmas" with the competitors making holiday-themed outfits from Christmas items purchased at dollar stores.
- On Schitt's Creek there's a flashback to one of the Roses's lavish holiday parties, and Moira is resplendent in her holiday dress, which is Black & White like all of Moira's clothes but sparkling and topped with a gigantic and festive bow.
Professional Wrestling
- Molly Holly tended to wear these in Santa's Little Helper matches instead of a Sexy Santa Dress like the other WWE Divas would.
Toys
- Barbie is the Trope Namer, as the the "Happy Holidays" line put her in fancy, Christmas themed dresses. This is only one such line. There are others, like the "Winter Princess" line.
- The Disney Princess merchandise shows them in various holiday dresses, usually made from the base design of the canonical dresses the princesses wore in their movies, but also with a shared theme (white fur-trimmed dresses and white fur muffs, gold dresses, Gem-Encrusted dresses, etc.). Often they have matching capes.
Video Games
- NiGHTS into Dreams… has the Holiday Mode called "Christmas Nights", and Claris has a short holiday dress.
- The Sims 2: The Mrs. Claus outfit in the Holiday packs are a long red dress with white fur trim.
- Male example: Every December, 100 Sleeping Princes and the Kingdom of Dreams has two Christmas-themed events, each featuring 5-6 princes in fabulous holiday costumes, in their unawakened forms and at least one of their awakened forms, if not both.
- Guild Wars 2 has an event called Wintersday, and one of the lady outfits is a blue dress trimmed with white fur.
Webcomics
- Girl Genius: In a Christmas filler strip, Agatha, Tarvek and Gil are all wearing Christmas themed outfits trimmed in fur while a dingbot carrying mistletoe hovers overhead.
- Sleepless Domain: In an interstitial, Anemone explains that the City's equivalent of Santa Claus is a magical girl named Holly Jolly, who wears a festive Santa-style dress and cap. To demonstrate, Anemone dons such an outfit herself, though she's less than enthused.
- Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki: Yuuki and Chiaki wear grand dresses as part of a seasonal job.
Western Animation
- In American Dad!, the Ghost of Christmas Past (formerly a tooth fairy), wears a blue dress with snowflake decorations.
- In the first Christmas episode of The Cleveland Show, Kendra wears a Happy Holidays Cape.
- In the video Princess Sydney Christmas: Three Gold Coins, Sydney wears a red Christmas dress with a thick, white fur hem and neckline.
