How to Combine Different Outfit Aesthetics Using the Fashion Plates Concept for SIA Willard Wigan

Salazar at 14 Shades of Grey is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the micro-sculptures by contemporary British artist Willard Wigan. He creates sculptures so tiny that they fit inside the eye of a needle! She selected this unusual artwork as a chance to feature something unique for April Fool's Day. Rather than picking a specific sculpture for the challenge, she urged us to choose whichever one we would like from his entire body of work for our inspiration. I chose three pieces whose subject matter spoke to me:

• The Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice in Wonderland (of course!)

• Albert Einstein

• Robin Hood

Source: https://14shadesofgrey.wordpress.com

I decided it would be fun to create an outfit that included elements from all three of these artworks. Since the subjects of these pieces have very different looks, it would also provide an interesting opportunity to experiment with combining multiple aesthetics in one outfit in a (hopefully) harmonious way.

Do any of you remember the Fashion Plates toy that let you put together different plates representing elements of an outfit, place a paper over it, then rub over over the paper with a crayon to create an outfit sketch you could color? My sister and I had this exact set in the early 1980s (which were apparently from 1978, hence that amazing flared trousers and heeled boots, haha). I'm taking some additional inspiration from this modular outfit creation concept to treat my 3 sculptures as 3 Fashion Plates that I will put together to make an outfit. The Mad Hatter's tea party will correspond to the head (top plate). Robin Hood will correspond to the upper body (middle plate). Albert Einstein will correspond to the lower body (bottom plate).

Since I built my outfit from the bottom upwards, I'm going to share my personal Fashion Plates in the same order.

Fashion Plate #1 - Lower Body: Albert Einstein

The sartorial features of the Einstein sculpture include a retro menswear aesthetic, black print suit, black lace-up shoes, white shirt, black tie, eyeglasses, and wild hair. I wear glasses every day, so that element is realistically moved to the the third Fashion Plate. But it was very easy to translate Einstein's trousers and shoes directly into my outfit using my black pants in the "micro geo" print (yes, that was the official and perfect name of this print) and the same black Oxfords I wore for the recent White Rabbit SIA challenge.

OOTD 4/7/25

Fashion Plate #2 - Upper Body: Robin Hood

The sartorial features of the Robin Hood sculpture include a medieval aesthetic, nature/woods/the outdoors (those are flowers he's standing on, right?), close-fitting clothing, the color green, and black boots. I quickly selected the color green and the flowers as the elements I wanted to focus on for my outfit. I wore a tonal "modern twin set" of an emerald green cardigan with a lighter emerald T-shirt and topped it with a floral scarf in shades of green and blue that were reminiscent of the flowers he is standing on. I did tie the scarf so that it hung down straight like a tie as a nod to Einstein's look.

I think the first two Fashion Plates worked nicely together to create this retro-menswear-meets-The-English-Woods mixed aesthetic outfit. If you've read my blog frequently, you might have guessed that it snagged a bit at my brain that I didn't repeat the black color from the lower body in the scarf of the upper body...and since Robin Hood had black leather around his torso, choosing a scarf with black in the print would have been fair game. But I wanted the scarf to really represent the flowers themselves, and this scarf just fit the bill too well to pass over. Even so, I think the combination works.

It helped that I selected a memory wire bracelet that includes blue and green shades as well as black, helping tie the two color palettes together. As you can see in the lower photo, I created this bracelet with two different print items in my wardrobe in mind (the jacket contains some beige, hence that color appears in small amounts in the bracelet too) rather than for this outfit. But that's the thing about color combinations: they tend to repeat themselves. So it's not unusual to design a piece of jewelry to coordinate with a particular item in your wardrobe and later find that it works well with other pieces/outfits too.

Fashion Plate #3 - Head: Mad Hatter's tea party

The sartorial features of the tea party sculpture include a whimsical aesthetic, bright colors, Victorian dress for men and girls, a big hat, a rabbit, blonde hair, a black headband, and tea paraphernalia. Since both Robin Hood and the Mad Hatter are sporting big green hats, that could have been an obvious direction to go (and I could have dug up my dark green Tyrolean hat if I were wanting to go in a costume-y direction). Rabbits are always a favorite of mine, but since I had just done a White Rabbit-y menwear look, I left out the bunnies this time.

It's pretty clear that of the three characters at the Wonderland tea party, I'm the Alice, so I wore my hair long with a black DIY braided headband. (And yes, I was glad to have a black headband since it creates a bookending effect with the black pants and shoes.) But I also brought in the whimsical tea party flavor with a super quick pair of DIY earrings: a pair of little silver teapot charms (from an Alice in Wonderland themed charm collection I bought on Amazon) hung on earring hooks. I love that the connection point on the teapots is the handle, so they hang sideways...which feels appropriate for the Mad Hatter's tea party.

While the idea of using the Fashion Plates concept to put together a multiple aesthetic outfit seems like an April Fool's Day joke, I'm actually happy with how it worked with these three tiny sculptures!

Now for my favorite part of a Style Imitating Art post: selecting our Rabbit Imitating Art! I challenged myself to find a rabbit that combined features of all three inspiration artworks, and this wild-eared Magpie Harlequin with the black and white striped fur auditioned successfully for the job.

Rabbit Imitating Art interview: Magpie Harlequin, aka Harley

Harley: "Hello, I'm Harley, and you need look no farther for your Rabbit Imitating Art! I am a lagomorph with ears posed outward, wearing an Einstein suit and standing with an air of bravery. I am as smart as Einstein, as generous as Robin Hood, as eccentric as the Mad Hatter, as curious as Alice, and as absurd as the March Hare."

Sally: "But how about your size? We are looking for a 'micro' rabbit to fit the theme, but you are in the range of 6-9 pounds. I'm worried that you won't fit into the photo."

Harley: "Yes, that's true - well observed! I am a solid 8.5 pound rabbit, much too large for the role...except I have previously served as understudy to the White Rabbit role in an off-off-off-really-very-far-off Broadway production of Alice, and I learned a most excellent technique there! Please join me down this rabbit hole and I will show you."

Inexplicably, a rabbit hole appears in the ground of Sally's second floor apartment. Both Harley and Sally tumble down it to Wonderland.

Mad Harley: "See this little bottle?"

Salice: "Yes, it's marked 'DRINK ME.' How curious! What does it do?"

Mad Harley: "I shall elucidate. No, I shall demonstrate."

Mad Harley drinks the liquid from the bottle and shrinks to just larger than the size of the eye of a needle.

Salice: "Oh yes, you are now the perfect size! If only I'd brought my camera...Why here it is! It was sitting on this little three-legged table the entire time. Curiouser and curiouser! Are you ready for your close up? I believe I shall need to get very close indeed."

Artwork "improved" with rabbit

Thanks for joining me today for this Style Imitating Art + Rabbit Imitating (and Improving) Art post!

To see other outfit interpretations of this artwork, check out the review on 14 Shades of Grey.

Can you imagine producing artwork this tiny? Did you ever see or play with Fashion Plates? Do you like to combine multiple aesthetics in your outfits? Which of Wigan's artworks would inspire an outfit for you? Do you like April Fool's Day jokes?

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