Why do Disney heroines always wear blue?

Elsa from Frozen. Photo / YouTube

What do Sleeping Beauty, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Elsa from Frozen, Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Jasmine from Aladdin all have in common?

They're all female leads in Disney films - and they're usually seen dressed in blue, reported The Daily Telegraph.

Now, US beauty site Allure thinks it's got to the bottom of the reason for this sartorial similarity.

Allure's Calin van Palis spoke to Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, who suggested the reason the characters were given blue to wear is down to what the colour represents - namely, the sky.

via GIPHY

"It's something to look forward to, to see that blue sky," says Eiseman. "It's dependable. It's reliable. It might cloud up, but we know it's there."

By dressing female characters in blue, says Eiseman, Disney are imbuing them with power: "It's a very subtle way of saying, 'Yeah, but young women, young girls, can be empowered, too.'"

It's not only Disney characters. Think also of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Mystique in X-Men, Lara Croft in the original Tomb Raider games, and countless others.

Jasmine from Aladdin. Photo / YouTube

Costume designer Jacqueline Durran, who devised Emma Watson's blue outfit in the new live-action Beauty and the Beast, said that the a blue wardrobe was full of "active strength", adding: "There is a sort of refinement and crispness to light blue, but there's also blue in workwear.

Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Photo / YouTube

"It is a practical colour, and a colour that you can work in."

Belle's clothes are also one of the few blue things seen on screen in her character's home village.

"Though we didn't completely take blue out of the village, Belle is distinct within the town as the only one who wears a column of blue," says Durran. "She stands out as different than her environment."