Any time a lady carries a parasol as a sign of high class grace and femininity, and sometimes as a sign of demureness and innocence.
The parasol has been used in cultures all over the world for at least 2,000 years, from Egypt to Greece to China, before making its way to Europe and the United States in the 18th century. This trope basically kicked in during the 19th century, when it was almost always proper for a well-to-do lady to carry one to keep from getting sunburns on her delicate skin, whereas poor women had to grub in the fields. Now that having a suntan isn't seen as so gauche anymore, it's just symbolic of the lady having aforementioned traits. Plus, it just looks...well, pretty.
Bonus points if she is also wearing a white, lacy dress, and even more points if she is on an Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date.
Of course this means the trope is prevalent in The Gay '90s, and Southern Belles. Also of course, this can set off Real Women Don't Wear Dresses.
It can overlap with Parasol Parachute, Parasol of Pain, Kicking Ass in All Her Finery.
Compare Umbrella of Togetherness, High Class Gloves, Princess Classic, Southern Belle, The Ingenue, Elegant Gothic Lolita.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- One of Usagi's disguise dresses in Sailor Moon came with one of these. She was infiltrating a high class affair and the disguise wouldn't be complete without it.
- Tot's parasol in Weiß Kreuz is both of prettiness and of pain, being a lacy and frilly one with a hidden blade.
- Momo the Lolita from Kamikaze Girls is always twirling a parasol that matches her elaborate outfits.
- Miss Valentine of One Piece. Thanks to her weight-changing powers, it doubles as a Parasol Parachute. Perona has a parasol as well.
- Evangeline of Mahou Sensei Negima! sometimes uses this to complement her Elegant Gothic Lolita attire.
- Quon from RahXephon carries a prettied up parasol on occasion.
- For the first few pages of the Rosario + Vampire manga's obligatory Beach Chapter, Mizore holds a parasol. Justified, in that it's blocking the hot sun from causing any damage to her. Although, she has no qualms about dropping the parasol and donning a stripy bikini later on.
- Maruga, the white dragon Empress from Dragon Crisis! almost always walks around with a parasol, sometimes even at night.
- Ranma ½: Played for laughs when an old, dying man starts to haunt Ranma's dreams, because "she" reminds him of his first love. In these recurring dreams, Ranma is dressed in girly clothes and sporting a parasol to further accent the femininity of the look. He has to use an equally feminine parasol
later on, which only adds to his annoyance with the situation.
- Juvia of Fairy Tail used to carry a parasol during the Phantom Lord arc, due to her being the bringer of bad weather.
- K has a Rare Male Example in Yashiro "Shiro" Isana, who is never seen without his pretty red parasol. Which he later on starts using as a variation of a Parasol of Pain in regards to channelling his power in it to block attacks - but ''only'' to block.
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Anthy carries one while watching a duel.
- In Kill la Kill the "royal couturier", Nui Harime (a cutesy psychopath of immense strength and foil to the lead character Ryuko Motoi) first enters the narrative sporting a lacey parasol accompanying her generally high-fashion-meets-frills attire. However she soon ditches the parasol to reveal Nui prefers to sport half of a massive pair of scissors as a weapon, proof that she is the killer of Ryuko's father that the protagonist has been seeking, although she is still frequently seen with the parasol later, particularly when effortlessly dodging a hail of attacks, which the stylized animation of the show often represents by showing her and the parasol as a Paper Person rotating along the vertical axis.
Comic Books
- Golden Eyes gets to carry one in installment 3 of the World War I serial "Golden Eyes" and Her Hero "Bill", as she was knitting in her garden before she had to detain a German spy.
Film — Animated
Film — Live Action
- In The Sound of Music, one of the Von Trapp daughters wanted a pink parasol, possibly for this reason.
- Many posters for My Fair Lady have Eliza Doolittle using one while Henry Higgins watches on.
- Mary Poppins' standard umbrella doesn't qualify, but her parasol in the chalk painting sequence sure does - complete with lacy white dress.
- In Tombstone, Josephine carries one when she first appears.
- In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Mrs. Lovett has a light parasol with red polka dots during her "I Want" Song "By the Sea" — she would like to be a lady and have a happy family.
- Master and Commander. When HMS Surprise stops off at a Brazilian port, the natives come out in longboats to trade with the sailors, including several women implied to be prostitutes. A rather pretty Brazilian twirling a parasol catches the captain's eye; he's clearly tempted, but as he's married Aubrey walks away instead (though he can't resist turning for one last look at her).
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. When outlaw Tuco is Crossing the Desert on horseback he's not only wearing a sombrero, he puts up a pretty pink parasol as well. Blondie, however, is bareheaded and on foot, as Tuco wants him to die a slow death of heatstroke or thirst.
- Summer Magic. At the lawn party in which Julia and Nancy are competing over Charles, Julia carries a delicate parasol that matches the dress she made.
Literature
- In Little Women, Meg wants a white parasol with a black handle to take to a wealthy society friend's house, but Marmee gets her a green-and-yellow one by mistake.
- In Welcome to the N.H.K. and its adaptations, Misaki is introduced with one of these - though she is something of a subversion of the Purity Sue archetype.
- Aw, look at Jessamine's parasol in The Infernal Devices! It's so pretty and pink and it even has flowers on it...and then she stabs and kills a minor "monster" to death with it.
Live-Action TV
- Kaylee from Firefly carries a parasol when she is first introduced, to show that despite being a Wrench Wench, she still likes some pretty things (a trait we see more of in "Shindig").
- Kari of MythBusters works the occasional parasol if she's dressing up for an experiment.
- In NCIS, Abbie wore a lacy dress (but a black one), and had a matching parasol that she twirled around.
- Worn with a matching dress in the opening of That Girl.
- In an episode of Unhappily Ever After, Jennie wanted a picnic like that in a film she watched (didn't work out), and wore a white dress and a parasol.
- In the 1999 miniseries adaptation Wives and Daughters, lots of ladies can be seen with a pretty parasol. It's especially noticeable with free-spirited Lady Harriet (emphasis on high class and beauty) and the heroine Molly Gibson (emphasis on gentle disposition and femininity).
Theatre
- In Lestat, Claudia mentions how cute people think she is with a parasol in "I'll Never Have That Chance".
- Parasols are featured prominently in the opening number for Ragtime. In fact, they're presented as one thing that separates the upper-class whites from "Negros" and "Immigrants".
- The young ladies who perform the foot juggling act in Nouvelle Experience not only carry Chinese parasols, but use them as their primary props!
Theme Parks
- In The Haunted Mansion at the Disney Theme Parks, the ballerina in the stretching paintings, to help the contrast with the grim situations in the full paintings.
Video Games
- Princess Peach from Super Mario Bros. being the sweet, feminine lady she is, often gets a parasol. She gets one in the first Paper Mario game that lets her disguise herself as anyone she points it at. It overlaps with Parasol of Pain in Super Mario RPG and the Super Smash Bros. game.
- Princess Peach has access to Perry again in the fan game Super Mario Fusion Revival as her answer to Mario's Raccoon Suit. Perry can be used to fly, to slow her fall, and to attack.
- Lady Rachel Alucard from BlazBlue. Being a vampire, she has an entirely different reason for keeping the sun off her skin. Being a Fighting Game character, hers doubles as a Parasol of Pain, and a cat.
- Several of the Touhou girls can be seen with umbrellas, including Yukari Yakumo, Yuuka Kazami, Remilia Scarlet (who is a vampire, and uses it for sunlight protection), and Kogasa Tatara (the last one has it as a result of actually being an umbrella youkai).
- The parasol is also a mark of power in Touhou. The "seemingly" weakest character of those mentioned is "only" the Final Boss of her game. Everyone else is either a Bonus Boss or stated to be the World's Strongest Youkai.
- Should be mentioned that only Yukari and Remilia fit the trope exactly as "parasol as a symbol of high class and grace". Yuka is kind of messed up and in Kogasa's case, she IS the umbrella. An unused umbrella.
- Yuuka might be a bit protective of her flowers, but when she goes Ax-Crazy she's very elegant about it. Flower-petal bullets, letting people watch her battles 'cause they are so beautiful etc etc.
- Princess Agitha from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess isn't really a princess, but she sure acts like one, and when outside she uses a parasol that matches her dress.
- Okuni from Samurai Warriors is a travelling performer who is incredibly refined in both tastes and fashion, as is evidenced by her use of one of these, but it doesn't stop her from using it as a Parasol of Pain.
- Josephine, the "fop" character of Suikoden V, fought with one.
- According to a note in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Daniel had to use one when he went to the desert. He didn't want to, since he would invoke this trope.
- Selphy, an Eligible Bachelorette in Rune Factory Frontier has one of these when she's outside in the sun; she twirls it a lot, and since it's heavily hinted at that she's a Rebellious Princess this definitely counts.
- Sofia of Rune Factory 3 carries a parasol, mostly for the shade it grants, as she admits it's made of silk and is useless in actual rain. (You can craft a duplicate of her umbrella as a fairly-powerful shield item).
- Yamato from Kantai Collection carries a small one. The shaft is modelled after her namesake battleship's distinctive inverted-tripod mast.
- The Parasol Zombie from Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time. Aside from making her look somewhat elegant (for a zombie), it also makes all lobbed-shot attacks bounce off harmlessly, protecting zombies near her from them.
- In the mobile phone game Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen, an outfit called Umbrella Memory that requires spending real money to obtain has a special pose with Nikki holding a parasol. The outfit evokes blue and white Chinese porcelain.
- From the Soul series, we have Setsuka, who wields a parasol (and a blade hidden within it).
Visual Novels
- Mio from Little Busters! always carries a lacy white parasol with her whenever she's outside. This emphasises her traditional, elegant beauty, as well as implying a great physical fragility. The fact that she's never seen in direct sunlight also hints at there being more to her than what people see on the surface, while her nickname 'no shadow' refers to the way she seems as though she doesn't belong to this world. The parasol is so integral to her character, in fact, that her default battle title is 'Parasol-holding Silent Beauty' and her credits sequences involves a stylised, slowly-spinning parasol. It's very important to her plotline - she carries the parasol to hide the fact that she literally no longer has a shadow.
- Dahlia Hawthorne from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has a parasol with a shade of light pink and ever-present personal butterflies. Until she burns them up with her demonic gaze as part of her Villainous Breakdown.
- As part of her elegant, traditional appearance, Kakuya from Spirit Hunter: NG carries a red parasol when confronting Akira in the underpass. It'll make an appearance in some endings where Kakuya was supposedly locked away, signalling that she might not be gone for good.
Webcomics
- A male example (assuming the gender of this character is stated) is the Monster in the Darkness from The Order of the Stick, who is ordered to stay in the shadows until the right time to reveal him. When going outside, he has to stay in the shadows of a parasol, which is Hello Kitty pretty, to show his gentle nature.
Web Original
- Clemence Ceillet de Rousseau of Survival of the Fittest infamy owned one such parasol. She quickly abandons it, though, considering "She had no time to bother with petty things".
- This picture◊ by Anand Duncan is a winter princess carrying a parasol, and it's trimmed with white fur to match her Pimped-Out Dress.
Western Animation
- Penelope Pitstop has one mounted on the back of her car, on Wacky Races.
- Bridget in An American Tail has one when she first meets Tony, but loses it during the cat attack that follows.
- Katrina van Tassel in the "Sleepy Hollow" segment of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad is seen with a parasol in many of her scenes.
- In an episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks, Brittany and Jeanette took part in a beauty pageant where, at one point, the contestants dressed in Victorian costumes and handled parasols.
- Minnie Mouse has one in the 1890s-themed Classic Disney Short The Nifty Nineties.
- Cindy Bear of Yogi Bear fame.
- In Mickey's Christmas Carol, Isabelle has a parasol that is purple, like the rest of her outfit.
- The "Stormy Weather" episode of Miraculous Ladybug features wannabe weathergirl Aurore Beauréal carrying one. Becomes Parasol of Pain when she turns into the Monster of the Week.
