Why didn't Cinderella's slippers vanish?

Question

In Disney's Cinderella (1950) , The fairy god mother transforms some objects and animals into other forms. Also she transforms Cinderella's old dress to shiny ball gown. Her regular slippers into glass slippers.

Watch the scene here.

The Fairy God mother's words are:

You must understand my dear. On the stroke of twelve, the spell will be broken.

As said by the God mother, all the creatures and objects change their forms. But glass slippers don't.

• Why didn't the glass slippers of Cinderella disappear after the clock has struck twelve when all the other things changed their forms?

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_{I have already seen this question and related post on SFF.SE. My question is not a duplicate of that one. It is about 2015 movie where the god mother creates the slippers from no where while SFF post is about the book.}

Answer 1

Disney was true to its source material.

In the Grimm's Brothers story, the clothes don't vanish, they are just taken away by the animals helping Cinderella. In Perrault's version,

Cinderella in turn becomes so enchanted by him she loses track of time and leaves only at the final stroke of midnight, losing one of her glass slippers on the steps of the palace in her haste. Meanwhile, Cinderella keeps the other slipper, which does not disappear when the spell is broken.

When Disney did the movie, they based it on Perrault's material. In it, there is no specific reason why the shoes wouldn't vanish with everything else, it just happens. You could say that it's either a plot hole from the author, or simply a way for the story to have a happy ending, manipulated by Cinderella's fairy god-mother. I personally tend for the second option, since Perrault was trying to convey the following moral to the story:

Without doubt it is a great advantage to have intelligence, courage, good breeding, and common sense. These, and similar talents come only from heaven, and it is good to have them. However, even these may fail to bring you success, without the blessing of a godfather or a godmother.

Answer 2

This is not a unique plot point from the movie, as it also appears in the source material (Charles Perrault's retelling of the classic folk tale).

In all versions of the story that I am aware of, Cinderella leaves some item of jewellery or clothing behind, and she can later be identified by the fact that she is the only person that the item fits. Some authors have the slipper being gold, or leather, and there are even versions where it is a ring that was left behind.

So, the out-of-universe explanation is that it's true to the original folk tale to have Cinderella being identified by means of her lost slipper.

I'm not aware of any in-universe explanation for the slipper not vanishing after midnight. However, I like to think that the fairy godmother's magic can last for a long as she wants it to. Perhaps the midnight curfew was an artificial limitation, designed to get Cinderella to leave the ball, making her more mysterious and desirable to the prince.

Answer 3

I doubt Fairy Godmother did it on purpose. In Cinderella III: A Twist in Time we see Fairy Godmother can do way more with her magic than transferring stuff for a limited time. With her wand, Lady Tremaine was able to reverse time and manipulate people memory, so why then the 12 o'clock limitation?

So I feel like it was all Fairy Godmother's plan. And I was not alone in thinking that, this YouTuber came to same conclusion: