A Print Mix Outfit with Unexpected Proportions for SIA Walter Westley Russell

Salazar at 14 Shades of Grey is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected 1910 painting "Tying Her Shoes" by British artist Walter Westley Russell. She chose this artwork for a September style challenge despite it being "a rather summery/springlike image" because it's still hot where she lives and she wasn't ready "to bust out [her] fall palette yet"...and I hear that. It's still warm and more summer than fall in Minnesota too, so I was happy to continue creating outfits in summer mode for this challenge.

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

Where Salazar and I differ is in the assessment of this painting as "something simpler this round" compared to her other recent selections. I do understand that interpreting this painting is simpler in the sense that it already features a woman's outfit and some easy-to-find prints like stripes and florals that naturally suggest a route for creating a look. But as a woman with only 5 dresses in my wardrobe, none of which are even remotely like the striped dress or flora sofa, styling an outfit for this challenge required a bit more creative translation than many of the more "out there" picks Salazar has come up with!

I knew I wouldn't get all the elements from the artwork into my outfit, so I identified my top two priorities that I could work with:

(1) Blue and white stripes like the woman's dress;

(2) A full skirt, preferably woven fabric, with a ruffly feel.

I had not thought about my blue and white striped peplum tank when I looked at the painting, but I liked the colors, the stripes, and the fact that the long peplum section added some extra volume to the otherwise close-fitting top, so that was my selection for priority (1). I thrifted this Target brand top in 2018 for under $3 and haven't worn it a lot, in part because it's one of those one-off items where I don't have anything else in the same/similar color to create a column of color or a modern twin set with it. But it keeps making the cut when I clear out my closet, in part because it's a lovely shade of blue that is different from my usual that is great for summer and the striped print looks good with white. So the color is both a bit of a minus and a bit of a plus for my wardrobe! I was glad to have it for this challenge because I have nothing similar to it.

My new-in-2024 frond print midi skirt in a woven fabric coordinated with the colors of the top and had the full-and-flouncy quality that I was looking for to meet priority (2). The leaf/frond print didn't totally align to the sofa floral print, but at least it had a plant motif. The baby blue color of the top isn't actually present in the skirt but it feels like it could be because both lighter and darker blues are there; I refer to this kind of color coordination as a color being "in the span" of the other colors. I think the two pieces together create a really nice print mix that is obvious but not overwhelming.

With these two pieces as my base outfit, I topped it with a white long-sleeved cardigan (a hand-me-down from my mom) that has a bit of a sleeker fit to help reign in the volume from the peplum and the skirt. (No doubt the woman in the painting had a tightly fitted waist on her outfit but yeah...no, I like to breathe freely.) Normally I would have played a bit with the top to improve both the vertical top-to-skirt proportions and the volume-over-volume issue, but I left it long and ruffly to create a flouncy overlay on the skirt, which felt true in spirit to the voluminous quality of the woman's dress.

OOTD 9/19/25

What about the shoes? you may ask. After all, the painting is called "Tying Her Shoes." Well, I don't have any tie up shoes that I would wear with this outfit so it didn't make the priority list. Instead I wore my trusty navy blue flats to repeat the "dark shoe color" aspect of the painting rather than the typing aspect. However, I think a light shoe could have worked here as well (and would be my default); in that case, I would be using the same bookending strategy as the woman in the painting, only with light hair and light shoes instead of her dark hair and dark shoes.

I could have worn a scarf with this outfit, inspired by the woman's neckline ribbon bow, but I definitely wanted a layered necklace look instead. I selected a strand of white pearls with sparkly beads for my short strand, a DIY white bead soup necklace for the middle strand, and a DIY seed bead wrap necklace (four times around) for the long strand. Unsurprisingly, I made the seed bead necklace specifically to match the colors in this skirt. I don't have a photo of my bracelet but it was a simple gold-and-silver bracelet that I bought several years ago.

My earrings are a DIY pair of the "skinny stack" design (see #4 in this post) that I also made to wear with the skirt. For each earring, I stacked four beads on a head pin with spacers: a green glass pearl, a navy glass cathedral bead, a light sapphire blue rondelle, and a 1/2" long bicone paper bead. These two paper beads were made from the leftover ends of paper from cutting 1" wide paper bicone strips - the diagonally hashed sections on the drawing in this tutorial (that I had labeled as "extra cone strips"). You absolutely can roll those extra right triangle strips as cones, but I've discovered that with a small amount of finessing, it's easy to roll them into bicone beads as well! This is the first time I have used a pair of two extra little bicone beads in a project, but it won't be the last! I see many more pairs of DIY earrings incorporating my extra little beads in my future.

Now for my favorite part of the post: selecting our Rabbit Imitating Art! With all the print mixing in the painting, and the popularity of polka dots as a trend for 2025, I couldn't resist the opportunity to choose the English Spot rabbit this time! He's a print mix in his own right, rocking both spots/dots on his sides and a stripe down his back. It's the English Spot's "go-faster stripe": a decorative line, intended to be suggestive of high speed (source).

It's interesting that go-faster stripes, aka racing stripes, were first used on cars in 1951 so that the cars of the American Cunningham team would be identifiable during races like Le Mans. But the go-faster stripe has been part of the English Spot rabbit breed (which is indeed from England) since its development at least 100 years earlier. (In standard rabbit fancier English, the stripe down the back is called a "herringbone" but you tell me: does that stripe look like a herringbone? I think not!)

And while English Spot rabbits lived in England since the mid-1800s, and were shown for the first time there in 1890, the breed did not arrive in the United States until 1910...which is the same year as "Tying Her Shoes" was painted! Coincidence? I think not!

Both Marsha and Shelbee were unable to uncover much information about this painting other than its measurements (36.3 x 28.9 inches), its creation date (1910), its current location (Gallery Oldham in Manchester, England), and how it got there (bought from the artist in 1912). But no one seems to know who the woman is or why the artist painted her...

UNTIL NOW! Making use of technology so cutting-edge it hasn't even been invented yet, I was able to restore the painting to its original form in 1910, before the artist changed it and sold it in 1912. This restored painting shows that the title "Tying Her Shoes" was fraudulent, applied to the artwork after it was modified. The original painting clearly shows that the mysterious woman was giving her beloved English Spot rabbit a massage!

Artwork "improved" with rabbit

Bunnies gain many benefits from massage, but in this particular case, the massage was part of the English Spot's warm up for the Le Buns race held on May 6, 1910. In this race, the fastest rabbits across England gathered at the western coast to speed across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. Most people thought that such a race was impossible to complete, mistaking the fact that only the Son of God could walk on water as a reason to believe that no rabbit could run on water. But of course, rabbits run on water and grass, so the organizers of the Le Buns race had strewn the ocean with hay in preparation for the event. It was a tense and exciting time, waiting as the contenders dashed across the ocean. After an extremely close race between the English Spot and his main rival, the English Spot arrived first in the United States.

So why the literal cover-up of this soon-to-be-victorious massaged rabbit from Russell's painting? And why has no one currently living even heard about the Le Buns race? Because the triumph of the English Spot rabbit came at a great cost to Britain.

King Edward VII was a famous enthusiast for horse racing and the only reigning monarch to own a Derby winner, the only member of the Royal Family to win the Triple Crown, and the only person to have owned a Grand National winner and a Triple Crown winner in the same year (source). When he learned about the Le Buns race, he became obsessed with the idea that one of his horses could win it, since after all, horses also run on water and hay. Undeterred by his horse trainers' adamant advice to reconsider, Edward demanded that his horse Which of the Hare enter the race.

To Which's credit, he ran the race better than anyone could have predicted, but in the end, he was no match for the thoroughly-massaged and inherently-go-faster-striped English Spot rabbit. Tragically, it also turns out that higher body weight is not an advantage in ocean running. At over 1,000 pounds - compared to the rabbit's 7 pounds - the horse overwhelmed the amount of hay available and drowned within sight of the eastern shore of the United States. Upon hearing the news of Which's loss of the race and his life, the king suffered several heart attacks and died later that same night.

No one among the Royal Family or the Royal Household could countenance the king having died a "loser," so the official story of his death reports a different set of events: The king was informed that his horse, slightly renamed to Witch of the Air, had won that afternoon at the Kempton Park horse racing track, and the king replied "Yes, I have heard of it. I am very glad" as his final words. Of course, in truth, the king had responded to news of Which of the Hare's death with the words "I am very sad."

The very existence of the Le Buns race was erased from history, and even with the most advanced technology, we may never learn the name of the English Spot rabbit who raced across the Atlantic and became the first of his kind to hop onto American soil. But thanks to this artwork and technology so advanced that it's indistinguishable from fictional magic, we can all see this bunny's beautiful face and form and his go-faster stripe...from before he let his victory go to his head. But that's a rabbit tail for another day.

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 have very many dresses in your wardrobe? Do you prefer stripes or floral prints...or both? How about polka dots? Would you wear prints together in a print mix? Does the "true story" behind the artwork and King Edward VII's death surprise you? Have you ever given a non-human animal a massage?

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