How to Wear Soft Pink and Brown in a Fall/Winter Outfit for SIA May Belfort Portrait

Marsha at Marsha in the Middle is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the 1895 oil painting "May Belfort" by French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, a portrait of the Irish singer, actress, and comedian. Marsha describes the portrait as "rather strange," and certainly the actress has a lot of makeup and oddly poofy clothing, which I take to mean that she is depicted performing on stage in this painting. I do agree with Marsha that this artwork gives us a lot to work with!

Source: marshainthemiddle.com

Although the most obvious style inspiration would be a pink dress, I don't have one. And anyway, the dominant colors of pink, brown, and teal in the painting put me immediately in mind of a wardrobe pairing that I've wanted to wear for a couple years but had never got around to trying: my soft pink Loft sweater with a leaf print skirt in shades of brown, teal, orange, and blush pink (thrifted Target). I picked out a light pink scarf, pink Edelweiss stud earrings, and a DIY teal and rusty brown fox pendant as accessories, creating almost an entire outfit upon seeing the inspiration artwork...which I think is a first for me.

This outfit seemed to come together all by itself. I so often wear contrasting scarves, but a scarf in the same/similar color to the sweater is a very pretty option. I bought this scarf new on mega sale at Walmart almost 10 years ago for $2.50, and I think it's a nice color on me.

OOTD 12/2/24

When pairing brown with pink, these soft dusky pink tones make for a beautiful combination. There is some value contrast between the dark brown and the lighter pink, but both colors share a muted quality that makes them a natural pairing.

I have just started wearing tights and ankle boots, but since I don't have any brown short boots, I wore my simple leather flats to match the brown tights.

I like to style a short infinity type scarf with a long pendant necklace for some vertical integrity, and this foxy paperboard pendant is one of my favorites.

I actually spent some time leading up to the Thanksgiving day weekend cutting out more circles of paper as a start to expanding my paper pendant collection. It's fun looking at magazines, catalogs, junk mail, greeting cards, etc., with an eye toward paper that would make a good pendant (or earrings). I used my heavy-duty paper punch to punch the right size of circle out of a piece of soda can box; then I can move that open circle around on top of paper to pick out the best section to cut out for my pendant. I hope that makes sense! It's basically like looking at the paper through a round stencil to isolate what a particular section will look like if it's cut out. I call this "auditioning the paper" (as a reference to jewelry-maker Kate Richbourg's term "auditioning the beads"). {paper earrings or reversible pendant from upcycled paperboard tutorial}

My all-DIY daily bracelet stack is based on a paper bead bracelet set I made in a cheerful teal, peach, orange, and gold color palette. I rounded out the stack with two teal AB glass bead bracelets, one magenta agate bead bracelet, and a pink aventurine/brown wood bracelet I made from an Annie's beads kit. {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial}

Both of the paper bead bracelets involved adding color to catalog pages to get the vibrancy I was looking for in this set. The top bracelet with the tree of life charm started out as this image of a row of sweaters from a Coldwater Creek ad. The sweaters had the perfect set of colors for my palette, but there was a lot of extraneous white space and some text I didn't want. So I just covered all that with teal acrylic craft paint. (This is the perfect project for someone who enjoys the experience of painting but doesn't have any talent or skill for painting anything in particular.)

I cut triangular strips to make 0.5" wide bicone beads, and they rolled up into really colorful and nicely textured striped/colorblocked beads.

For the second paper bead bracelet with the gold swirl focal bead, I doctored this page from a Lands End catalog in a different way. After cutting the 1" triangular strips, I applied colored marker in orange, teal, and magenta along the edges of the strips to add extra color. Note that I cut the strips from the two ends of the image rather than the center so that the blue swimsuit and the orange/pink swimsuit appeared in my beads but the yellow/black one, which was well outside my color palette, did not.

You may be surprised that I didn't wear DIY bead soup earrings with this outfit, but I just really thought these pretty crystal Edelweiss-shaped stud earrings from my mom would look great with the pink scarf and sweater.

It's possible this leaf print skirt leapt to mind so quickly for my SIA outfit because I had just worn it less than a week earlier (the day after Marsha revealed the May Belfort portrait for this challenge). In this outfit, I wore the skirt with another Loft sweater in a bright color that I call "neon coral/peach marl." This was purchased for a mere $8 during a pandemic online sale (final sale is great except when it's not, right?). It's perfect with the skirt, and yet I'd never worn this combination before either.

OOTD 11/26/24

I love the low key print mix of the colorful leaf print skirt and the neutral polka dot scarf...and this is one I've worn several times, including with the brown tights and leather flats combo. Definitely a Pleasing Pairing.

I enjoyed wearing a scarf and layering necklaces all together for a maximal look. I have two purchased pieces: (1) the famous Slothlórien necklace and (2) the long gold tassel necklace, my all-time VIP necklace at 103 wears. I supplemented these with two DIY pieces I made specifically to wear with this skirt: (1) a paper bead and brown wood bead necklace and (2) a long (approx 90") seed bead wrap necklace plus wrapped chains in gold and rose gold.

For the paper bead necklace, I used a wonderful Audubon magazine cover featuring a photograph of ducks from their yearly photography contest. I applied teal marker along part of the edges to add some extra oomph to the colors and covered the white paper core with silver metallic marker. (It would be funny if the ducks were teal but they are actually northern shovelers.) The finished beads have amazing visual texture from the feathers, and the pops of teal marker jazzed up the color just as I'd hoped. Because I used a thicker magazine cover for my paper, the 11" long strips rolled up into 8mm beads, which is a good size for a necklace.

I made the long seed bead wrap necklace as described with the black botanical skirt-inspired necklace in this post. It's funny, I have actually made over 30 of these necklaces to coordinate with different items in my wardrobe, but after wearing the one for my black botanical skirt last summer and then getting involved in different jewelry-making projects, I kind of forgot about them! Why? I hadn't added them to my spreadsheet. Facepalm. But they're all in my spreadsheet now, and I have specific planned outfits for each of them!

One of my recent jewelry-making obsessions is memory wire bracelets! I initially wasn't into memory wire because with a 7.5" wrist, I found the beads would press into my wrist; some people don't mind a close or even tight fitting bracelet at all, but I need some space there to feel comfortable. Then I discovered the extra-large bracelet sized memory wire that lets me string good-sized beads with enough room between the beads and my wrist to easily tuck my index finger in between (my desired breathing room), and that's been a game changer! This bracelet, inspired by the colors of my skirt, was not my first memory wire creation but it's my chunkiest! I've done a colorblocked pattern with about 7 beads in each color family before moving to the next color. The beads range in size from 11/0 seed beads (approx. 2mm) to 10mm beads. With 7 coils of beads, this is a really big bracelet - definitely a statement piece!

And I'm back with some whimsical DIY earrings I made using textured brown wood beads that look like tree stumps, spacer beads in a variety of metal tones, and very cute silver sloth charms. I had the sloth necklace already, so clearly I needed some sloth earrings to coordinate, right? I wore this outfit a couple days before Thanksgiving, so I told my husband that I was dressing in anticipation of a long slothful weekend. (Turns out my weekend wasn't entirely slothful, but it was slothful enough!)

Now let's move on to the best part of the post: our Rabbit Imitating Art selection! I knew we needed a rabbit that could match the paradoxical look and enigmatic energy of the performer May Belfort. With a little research, I discovered that "her slightly disturbing and thinly-veiled erotic act was performed wearing the dress of a little girl with large puffed sleeves and an enormous bonnet. Often she clutched a cat which referred to her most famous song 'Daddy wouldn't buy me a bow-wow.'" (source) As for the lines in question - "I've got a little cat / And I'm very fond of that" - apparently "it has been suggested that the references to a cat may not be as innocent as they appear" (source). Ahem.

This absolutely adorable short-eared Netherland Dwarf rabbit, sitting in a perfectly puffy loaf position, has exactly the right sweet-but-devilish vibe to share the stage with May Belfort.

Imagine her surprise and dismay when a couple minutes before the curtain went up, May Belfort was told that nobody could find the little black cat that she paired with in her "Daddy"/pussycat act. On the bad days, May recognized that it was awful enough for an adult woman to dress up like a baby and sing ridiculous songs of barely disguised innuendo with her feline partner on stage for support, but to have to carry the act alone was just too much! Especially with the absinthe hangover she had.

But before she lost it and told the music hall manager to stick this bonnet where the sun don't shine, her eye caught on a gorgeously fluffy ball of fur loafed down under a backstage bench. The manager followed her glance, and..."Why it's a rabbit! A bunny! A veritable coney! Oh, a coney, a conny, what could be better than to add that visual pun to the act? Grab it, May. Grab the rabbit." Eh, screw it, May thought, calming herself. And, behaving like the professional that she was, she pranced onto the stage, carrying a sleepy rabbit that she settled nicely in its loaf onto a handy pedestal.

After the performance, the manager declared that the rabbit was a "distraction" and that "someone better track down that damn cat" before the next show. And that was the end of the Netherland Dwarf's performing career, but he didn't mind at all. In fact, he probably never realized he made it on stage at all because he slept through the whole thing! In any case, he happily spent the remaining years of his life drowsing backstage, leaving the limelight to May Belfort and the black cat.

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 Marsha in the Middle.

Do you have a pink dress? Do you like to wear brown and pink together? Do you have any outfits ideas that you've been meaning to try but haven't gotten around to yet? Do you ever forget that something is in your wardrobe? Do you have a favorite between the pink and orange sweater outfits in this post?

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