How to Style a Geometric Print Skirt Outfit in Summer for SIA: Hao Ping + DIY Jewelry

Salazar at 14 Shades of Grey is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the 1993 oil painting "On the Way" by Chinese artist and printmaker Hao Ping, a figurehead of the Yunnan Art School. She picked this artist because she has recently traveled to Yunnan, China and liked that his artwork reflected the "colors and vibrancy of the people and the place"; she chose this specific piece "because the colors are more subtle but still vibrant, plus there's a yak!" Isn't that yak magnificent?

Source: 14shadesofgrey.wordpress.com

The color palette of this painting really caught my eye because it is so complex. There are the warmer tones of orange, yellow, green, and aqua blue in the figures, but the background of the painting has cool shades of blue-teal and purple-blue. I wanted to replicate that combination of warm and cool in my outfit. To represent the warm tones, I selected a skirt with a complicated geometric print in blue, aqua, green, orange, and purple as the starting point for the outfit. For the cooler background, I added a linen short-sleeved sweater in a muted shade of soft indigo. Without this style challenge, I would never have thought to put these two pieces of clothing together because the blue color in the skirt is so much more vibrant than the sweater, but I decided that the sweater has enough of that "denim-y blue" neutral vibe that it could work.

On top of the sweater I layered a utility vest that is pretty much the exact same color (even though it is a different brand) for a "modern twin set" look. I could have added a simple scarf or necklace...the woman in the painting has a beaded necklace that could be my guide...but decided to take advantage of the semi-neutral background of my top half to wear a colorful scarf that would really stand out. I chose this boldly striped silky scarf to represent the stripes of color in the painting's sky.

OOTD 7/29/24

I picked up the navy accent color in the skirt with my flats. This close-up photo of the skirt gives you a better idea of just how crazy and complex the pattern is.

Outfit total cost per wear (not including earrings and bracelets, which I don't track): $5.99. That's only a bit above my target of $5. The highest CPW item in my outfit is the sweater, which I like a lot but can be a bit awkward to wear because it's an open weave (so needs layering underneath) and has dolman sleeves that can sit kind of funny. Also this outfit is basically sponsored by the month of July 2020 and COVID shutdown online shopping. Here is the breakdown:

-Green/blue/orange geometric skirt, $13.76, thrifted Lularoe, 7/2020, 13 wears, $1.06 CPW

-Soft indigo pullover sweater, $14.97, Coldwater Creek, 7/2020, 9 wears, $1.66 CPW

-Soft indigo utility vest, $15.37, CJ Banks, 7/2020, 12 wears, $1.28 CPW

-Green/blue/aqua circle scarf, $6.99, thrifted, 7/2020, 6 wears, $1.17 CPW

-Navy pointy-toed flats, $60.00, Andrew Geller/Kohls, 9/2017, 73 wears, $0.82 CPW

My daily bracelet stack is based on a paper bead bracelet set I made to match this skirt using the color palette of aqua, blue, sandstone coral, and gold {page to bead details with the second outfit in this post}. This skirt has so many different colors that I could probably create a dozen bracelet sets and not replicate the same color palette twice. I liked that this particular set has a color scheme that works with the "subtle but vibrant" color story of the painting that Salazar identified. {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial}

I rounded out my jewelry with a pair of bead soup "3 beads on a stick" stack earrings that match the colors of the paper bead bracelet set. Technically, they have 3 focal beads (aqua oval glass, white glass pearl, warm blue faceted glass) and some bead caps/spacer beads in gold tone to finish them off.

Now for my favorite part of the post: choosing our Rabbit Imitating Art! It was such an easy decision this time, with this lovely grey rabbit of the Chinchilla breed volunteering immediately. "Chinchilla rabbit" is a confusing concept because these are two different species in different orders of animal: the chinchilla is a rodent and the rabbit is a lagomorph (which includes rabbits, hares, and pikas). "Chinchilla rabbit" makes it sound like a hybrid of the two...which it's not! This is just the name of the breed of rabbit, inspired by the fact that the rabbit has a heathered coat of fur blending from light grey through black that looks a lot like a chinchilla's fur.

You know how sometimes in a pair of children, the younger kid will try to emulate their older sibling? Little did the woman in the painting know that when she adopted a rabbit to join her family that the bunny would endeavor so seriously to emulate his "big brother" the yak! While his efforts to grow fur as long as his brother didn't have much effect, his study of Brother Yak's stance and facial expression paid off. He even learned how to position his long ears to mimic the wide, graceful swoop of the yak's horns. Fortunately the bunny was wise enough to know he'd never compete with his big brother in a grass-eating contest! The yak eats 1% of its body weight daily, which for a typical 1,000 pound male domestic yak works out to about 10 pounds...which is about the same as the body weight of a mature adult male Chinchilla Rabbit.

Artwork "improved" with rabbit

Thanks for joining me today for this Style Imitating Art + Rabbit Imitating (and Improving) Art post! I was an entire week late this time because I've been dealing with allergies and a sinus infection from the pollen, smoke, and other irritating particulates as I recently discussed. The headaches this past week have been tough to deal with!

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

Which colors from this painting would you wear together in an outfit? Do you ever struggle with pairing a non-matching color to a print (what Jodie calls the "color that isn't in the print" in her color recipe)? Do you ever treat a muted blue as a neutral? Did you have an older sibling you tried to emulate when you were young...and/or were you the older sibling who was emulated?

Blogs I link up with are listed here.