Salazar at 14 Shades of Grey is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected a colorful 1925 London Underground poster by Mary Koop. She picked this artwork because the vibrant umbrellas are a perfect source of inspiration for summer outfits.
While print mixing is an obvious sartorial direction due to the variety of patterns on the umbrellas in the poster, that isn't much of a stretch for me; I mix prints all the time. But I was quite struck by the idea of combining a black print with two of the solid colors of the umbrellas. With yellow, blue, orange, pink, magenta, and mint green to choose from, I decided on a combination that I haven't tried before: a green-teal tank (that resembles the mint green) and dusky rose cardigan (for the soft pink).
I doubled down on the novelty by pairing them with a black-based botanical print skirt that has a lot of different colors in it. The green-teal is in the span of the various green tones of the skirt, but the dusky rose is a bit of a wild card; there is a slight bit of a very pale cool pink but it really doesn't match the cardigan. I was pleasantly surprised by how well these three pieces worked together!
I accessorized with that summer styling staple: the layered necklace. I started with the 3-strand faux pearl necklace with sparkly rose gold/rhinestone spacers because it's a piece that I haven't worn very often, and I thought the rose gold would be pretty with the cardigan (Kohls, 12/2020, $13.26, 10 wears, $1.33 CPW). My gold tassel necklace, which is by contrast one of my most worn necklaces, served as the long pendant layer (Kohls, 12/2014, $20.00, 20 wears, $0.22 CPW).
That left the middle length open, so I decided to try something very new: a DIY seed bead wrap necklace I had just made to coordinate with this skirt. I will go into more detail about this project in a later post, but it's an approximately 88" necklace strung with 11/0, 8/0, 6/0, 3mm, and 4mm seed beads and bugle beads on Chinese knotting cord. I had chosen a color palette that drew on the black, white, and warm colors (yellow, rust, green) from the skirt's print plus a mix of metallics. I felt a little weird about adding this right next to the soft and muted dusky pink cardigan, but it looked just fine, of course. One nice thing about seed beads is they're small, and even with the necklace wrapped into 3 loops, you don't really notice any kind of dissonance between the yellow-based colors and the dusky rose. To bulk up the wrap necklace, I made two quick chain necklaces to wear with it: a two-wrap in rose gold and a three-wrap in gold. I think you'll be seeing more seed bead wrap necklace + metal chain combinations this summer!
I chose a simple pair of black flats to repeat the skirt's background color, though gold or a nude-to-me color would have been a great option too. These shoes are ones I have often chosen to wear into the office on warm rainy days because they are a faux patent leather that repels water well, and that seemed fitting for the summer rain implications of the artwork's umbrellas motif.
Outfit total cost per wear (not including earrings and bracelets, which I don't track): $5.70. My outfit CPW target is under $5, so I came pretty close. The cardigan and faux pearl necklace both have a CPW over $1 so that put me a bit over target.
My daily bracelet stack is based on a DIY paper bead bracelet set in green and orchid tones that I made to coordinate with a different skirt. The colors aren't a perfect match for my outfit but are in the same general color families so I figured that was close enough. I supplemented my stack with a rose gold bracelet from Amazon (that is really started to show some wear but somehow I don't mind that) and several beaded bracelets I made from glass (the two pink ones) and quartz (the dark green one). {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial} {tube paper bead tutorial}
The top bracelet with the flower charm started out as this full-page ad on the back cover of The Economist. Some judicious application of permanent marker in dark green, light green, and pink on the paper strips covered up the white text, the grey concrete, and the blue hat, resulting in rolled beads fully within my desired palette. The juxtaposition of the solid pink against the leafy green pattern looks really cool.
I made the bottom paper bead bracelet from this mostly orchid/lilac page from an old calendar. I covered up the rusty-orange with a gold marker, which I also applied along the cut edges to cover the white paper core. I love the irregular striping of gold and green against the dominant pinkish color of the beads.
My earrings are another DIY bead soup pair in my go-to, dead easy stacked bead style. I used a very simple color palette of pink and green with gold, to coordinate with the paper bead bracelet set, but the different sizes, shapes, materials, and finishes of the beads add visual interest to a very basic design.
Now for the main attraction: making our Rabbit Imitating Art selection! Given the various black and white prints on the umbrellas, I knew I wanted a rabbit with a black "broken" pattern, and this luxuriously soft (and shedding) lady mini rex with her perfectly plump dewlap and delicate paws was absolutely impossible to resist. Summer elegance at its finest!
She looks upon this scene with interest because finally the humans are being sensible - they are going underground, like any reasonable creatures should. Pet rabbits are the domesticated version of the European rabbit, a wild breed of bunny that lives communally in underground warrens (just like in Watership Down). Interestingly, it's the female rabbits who do most of the digging work! "Big burrows are complex excavations which may descend to depths of several feet. They are not constructed on any specified plan, and appear to be enlarged or improved as a result of promiscuous activity of several generations" (Wikipedia). Groucho voice: And the digging's not the only promiscuous activity in those warrens, if you know what I mean...
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.
Do you like the soft pink + green-teal/mint color combination? How would you have interpreted this poster in an outfit?
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