Guest Blog by Stacy: Alice’s Breaking Dawn: Part II Battle Boots

Hi, ladies:

As you may or may not know, Alice’s Breaking Dawn: Part II battle boots were spotted on Coolspotters, listed as the brown version of LD Tuttle’s The Weave combat boots. Or are they? Stacy, one of my Alice partners in crime, has her own theory…

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So, ever since I joined the admin team over at the Alice Cullen Costuming Facebook page, Vee, and Anna and I have been trying to determine what boots Alice wears for the Breaking Dawn battle. It’s actually proven to be one of the hardest items to find, since there are so few quality still shots of the lower half of that outfit. We basically resorted to screen capping everything we could get our hands on to try to ID them, and we’re still not 100% positive… but we have a theory. And since the boots were just recently ID’d on Coolspotters, I think it’s an opportune time for a discussion! 🙂

So, Alice’s boots were ID’d as the LD Tuttle “The Weave” boots… like the ones Bella wears in the same scene, but in brown. I actually thought these might be correct at first: they lace up, the height is about right, and the heel has a really specific curved shape. It would also make sense that Alice might have these boots, too: she basically bought Bella’s entire vamp wardrobe, so maybe she picked up a pair for herself as well.

These really look very similar! And it almost looks like Charlotte could be wearing them, too… but I later came across a behind-the-scenes segment for the battle scene stunt work, and I was able to get some better screen caps of her boots that showed a little more detail:

As you can see, these are very much not the LD Tuttles: the heel cuts in straight at the back instead of curving in, the seaming on the leather is different, the laces are different, and these only look like they have one layer instead of the two layers on the LD Tuttle boots. On a side note, Alice is wearing big socks/leg warmers over her leggings. 🙂 But, anyway, the search was back on.

At this point, it shouldn’t be news that the starting point was a Google search for “Anthropologie brown boots.” Fortunately, that seemed to be a success, or at least get me very close. Again, I’m still not sure on these, but I came up with the Anthropologie Ally Booties, also called the Grafton Boots from H by Hudson.

It’s a really adorable fold over-style boot with vintage-look seaming that comes in a few colors. It’s also the most comfortable pair of heeled boots I own; I can walk around in them all day like I can in a pair of flat boots (yes, I went ahead and bought a pair, even if it turns out that they’re just a really good alternative).

So, now to make the case for and against these boots:

For:

– This is an Anthropologie-retailed them, as is the case with most of Alice’s clothing.

– The heel shape is exactly the same.

– They both lace up and have the same number of lacing holes.

– The shaft height is similar.

– The seams match up upon ridiculously rigorous inspection.

Against:

– Alice’s look like they could be lighter in color, and H by Hudson did make the shoe in this color, not sold on Anthropologie’s website. Could the Ally booties have been a starting point, and then the costume designer searched for the boot from another retailer and found them in a different color?

– Alice’s shoelaces look lighter and are flat woven instead of round. Some of the other colors in this boot have flat laces and one pair looks exactly the same, so Alice could again be wearing this alternate color boot with the correct laces. Also, if the boots came from Anthropologie, laces break, especially during stunt work and the like, so production could have replaced the laces if they broke (or for aesthetic or functional reasons).

– Alice’s boots look like they have a shorter shaft height when the fold over part is flipped up. When I wear my boots this way the tongue falls short of the rest of the boot, unlike Alice’s. That’s not to say that wardrobe couldn’t have futzed with the shoes, i.e. cut off a little bit on the top to make them even with the tongue when worn not folded down. This theory is kind of a stretch, I realize, but not unfounded: they altered the shape of the collar on her Banana Republic leather jacket, too.

In conclusion: I’m still not sure on these, but they’re definitely closer than the LD Tuttles, if not an exact match. At this point, though, everyone at Alice Cullen Costuming has looked over these and searched everything we can think of to find a closer match (other styles from Anthropologie, H by Hudson, and LD Tuttle, other brands that Twilight characters have worn in the past, and every sort of brown heeled lace-up boot), and these boots are the closest we’ve found.

And now we’d all like to know what the rest of the Alice costuming realm of the Internet thinks: are these boots it? Has anyone else found anything closer? Does anyone have any alternate theories?

Cheers, guys! And thanks to Vee for letting me guest blog… my official debut 🙂

– Stacy