How to Start a Colorful Fall Outfit with a Scarf for SIA André Derain

Marsha at Marsha in the Middle is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the 1906 painting "The Turning Road" by French painter André Derain. She chose this artwork because she kept coming across the term Fauvism and didn't know anything about it; when she asked ChatGPT for famous painters who were Fauvists, this artwork came up. Although I am unfamiliar with this artist's work, I know a bit about Fauvism because I have read a couple of books about Henri Matisse, who was the other leader of this art movement along with Derain.

Source: https://marshainthemiddle.com/

Wikipedia's description of how the "Fauves" got their name is interesting:

Matisse and a group of artists now known as "Fauves" exhibited together in a room at the Salon d'Automne in 1905. The paintings expressed emotion with wild, often dissonant colours, without regard for the subject's natural colours. Matisse showed The Open Window and Woman with a Hat at the Salon. Critic Louis Vauxcelles commented on a lone sculpture surrounded by an "orgy of pure tones" as "Donatello chez les fauves" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage.

If you saw my Thrifty Six post this week, you'll understand why there was a part of me that wanted to use this outfit and call it a day.

OOTD 11/12/2025

But I decided to look at my print clothing to see if I could interpret the painting, and nothing was quite right...so I went to my scarf collection, where this old multi-color scarf with an abstract print (Target, 2013) caught my eye. It's more purple than blue but otherwise, a good match for the color palette of the painting.

I identified red and blue as the two dominant colors in the artwork, to my eye at least, and created a base outfit for the scarf with that in mind. I flipped around the denim-blue top + red jeans from my Thrifty Six outfit for this look: a red "modern twin set" and dark wash blue jeans. Although the easiest way to get matching colors for things like this T-shirt + cardigan combination is to buy the pieces at the same time from the same store, you sometimes can put items together that just happen to be the same/similar color, even for tricky colors like red. In this case, the long-sleeved T was purchased from JCP in 2017, and the cardigan was a thrifted Target piece I bought at Goodwill in 2018. It was entirely serendipitous that they are both the same shade of bright neutral red that I call "candy red" in my wardrobe. Weirdly enough, this is the very first time I have worn the two red pieces together! Who knew it would take a style challenge to finally make that happen?!

OOTD 11/17/25

I used one of my favorite super-easy techniques with my scarf (method #4 here: loop to the front with ends loose) that does a good job of showing off the scarf's print and leaves some room in the center to add a long necklace. I used this simple pendant from JCP (bought in 2015) that added on another touch of red.

My rainbow striped sneakers made another appearance because the colors were just too much like the painting to ignore; this also meant I had a subtle print mix in my outfit as well, which felt in keeping with the everywhere-all-at-once chaotic color of the artwork.

My bracelet is a fittingly colorful and exuberant DIY memory wire bracelet that I made to coordinate with my circus striped skirt. This may be the piece of my outfit that most jibes with the artwork because it is a big, bold combination of colors, shapes, sizes, materials, and finishes that is almost overwhelming to look at (and yet amazingly fun to wear).

As with the pendant, I kept my earrings relatively simple but large enough to be noticed: a pair of red leather earrings I got in a set of 9 colors on Amazon (in 2021, so they are no longer available).

I was a bit inspired by this figure in the lower right section of the painting, who seems to be wearing a red shirt and dark blue denim pants not dissimilar to mine, so I slicked my hair back in a ponytail to emulate his 'do.

Now for my favorite part of every SIA post: selecting our Rabbit Imitating Art! Since the painting is a riot of color, I thought that our eyes needed a place to rest, and what could be better than a trio of rabbits with very little color at all. The Californian rabbit, which is descended from the Himalayan rabbit, has the so-called "Himalayan gene" that has an interesting effect: while the rabbit is overall lacking color (hence the white fur and the red-pink eyes/ears from their blood vessels), they also develop dark markings on their "points" (the ears, nose, feet, and tail).

But the odd thing is, the darkness of the points is dependent on the temperature! Only the extremities get cold enough for the particular enzyme that allows the dark color to function - that's why you only see dark "points" on the edges of the rabbit; the main body of the rabbit is too warm. And the colder the external temperatures are, the darker those points get. So strange!

Earlier, I shared the commonly told story that the "Fauves" got their name from an art critic calling the paintings by Derain, Matisse, et al., in that October 1905 exhibition "wild beasts." As usual, the history that we think we know is not accurate. It turns out that the "beasts" in question were more literal than metaphorical!

In the summer of 1905, Derain and Matisse worked together in the Mediterranean village of Collioure creating paintings in their new emotionally expressive and colorful style. That much is well-known. But an important fact has been lost to history: the artists did not work alone!

For in that village, a trio of gigantic, not-quite-entirely-albino rabbits haunted the streets day and night - an almost ghostly presence that created chaos and confusion wherever they trod. Their true names have never been known to humankind, but they were called many things, including "The Wild Beasts."

And on sunny days, an effect most bizarre and mysterious occurred: when the sunlight hit the white rabbits, it passed through them as though they were a convoluted prism, creating not the neat division of color in rainbow stripes all were familiar with, but a mad patchwork of contorted color never seen before! Derain and Matisse painted what they saw, and as long as the strange visions of rabbit-refracted color derangement were retained in their memory, so were all manner of real and imagined things and places overlaid with riotous color in their artwork. And as the two rabbit-influenced artists met and spoke with others, the color craziness spread to them as well, expanding the number of painters working under their sway.

Artwork "improved" with rabbit

Fauvism was a short-lived art movement (roughly 1905-1908) that is viewed in retrospect as transitional and experimental for the artists as they gained new influences, developed more cohesive philosophies, and grew as artists. But why? French artist Georges Braque, Fauvist turned Cubist, came closest to revealing the truth with his quote: "You can't remain forever in a state of paroxysm" (spasm, seizure, intense and violent outburst or fit). The color-convoluting effect of "The Wild Beasts" wore off after a time, and the artists began to see the world differently, leading to the end of the Fauvist era in art.

As for era of The Wild Beasts themselves, who can say? Only the people of Collioure...and like the trio of haunting rabbits, they say nothing about it. Most wisely indeed.

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 the wild colors of the Fauvist paintings such as the one in this challenge appeal to you? Do you like to wear outfits with a lot of different colors - prints or colorblocked? Were you familiar with the Fauvism art movement or either of its two best-known practitioners, André Derain or Henri Matisse? Do you ever pick a scarf first in putting an outfit together? Or another accessory?

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