Start an Outfit with a Scarf for SIA Edward Burne-Jones

Salazar at 14 Shades of Grey is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the circa 1870s painting "The Garden of the Hesperides" by English Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. She chose this painter because she loves the Pre-Raphaelites, and she picked this particular artwork because of the "spring-like subject matter (the Hesperides are the nymphs who tend to Hera’s orchard, where the Apple of Discord that started the Trojan War came from) and the winter-appropriate color scheme, which makes it perfect for these gray February days."

source: 14shadesofgrey.wordpress.com

Our weather in Minnesota has alternated between blinding sun and dull, dreary grey, but in a stroke of luck, the day I wore my SIA outfit was exactly the kind of blah February day that Salazar referenced. And with a temperature above freezing (!), there was indeed a sense that spring is, eventually, coming.

I have to say that I wasn't feeling the sumptuous fabrics, flowing dress/robes, or overall romantic vibes of the artwork when putting together a casual winter outfit, but there was still plenty of on-point sartorial inspiration in this artwork. I zeroed in on the color combination created by the nymph's rust-toned robe, the dark blue snake/dragon, and the brown tree as a promising avenue for my interpretation. When I added in the rounded shapes of the apples, I had the perfect excuse to wear a lightweight, silky polka dot scarf that I purchased from ThredUp at the very end of the 2025 (a just barely premature celebration of the end of my 2025 shopping break).

Having chosen a color palette and a particular scarf to wear, how did I create the rest of my outfit?

In this case, I quickly decided on one of my go-to casual winter outfit formulas:

Sweater + Jeans + Quilted Vest + Boots + Scarf

Then I thought about how I wanted to allocate the colors of my palette (Rust, Dark Blue, Brown) to specific pieces. The scarf already has all three colors, and my jeans are a dark blue. (Standard blue denim is an interesting case because it can be treated either as a type of blue or as its own "ultimate neutral" color. I chose to treat the jeans as a neutral in creating this outfit.)

This gave me these three items - Sweater, Quilted Vest, Boots - and these three colors - Rust, Dark Blue, Brown. That meant I would need to use the colorblock color formula with each of the sweater, vest, and boots in different colors, tied together with the bridge print scarf that includes all the colors.

Since I don't own a sweater or ankle boots in a rust color, that meant the quilted vest would be my only choice for that color. (Note that the "rust" of the scarf is more orange and the "rust" of the vest is more red; that's perfectly okay! They will still coordinate well in the context of the completed outfit.) That left me with two options for my sweater and ankle boots:

(1) dark blue marl sweater & dark cognac ankle boots

(2) dark brown sweater & navy ankle boots

I thought that option (2) looked very dark, with the dark brown and navy being hard to distinguish. I preferred option (1) with the lighter and more distinct blue and brown colors.

There are many different ways I create outfits, but this method is one I use pretty often, especially for the Style Imitating Art challenges.

1 - Select a color palette for the outfit

2 - Select a specific print piece in the color palette as a bridge piece

3 - Select an outfit formula

4 - Allocate colors in the palette to specific items in the outfit formula

When I'm not working from a particular piece of inspiration, I am more likely to flip the first two steps around, though:

1 - Select a specific print piece (or multiple) I want to wear

2 - Create a color palette from the print piece

3 - Select an outfit formula

4 - Allocate colors in the palette to specific items in the outfit formula

You can probably imagine how I might have ended up with the same pieces if I'd started my thought process with "I want to wear my new scarf."

This sounds very formal and structured when written out, but it happened quite quickly in my mind because I have some go-to outfit formulas and I know what colors of sweaters, vests, and boots I have in my wardrobe (without having to actually look in my closet). Once I had chosen the scarf to build my outfit around, it took me less than one minute to decide on the rest of the pieces.

So how did the outfit turn out? I was quite pleased with it! The two different "rust" colors of the vest and scarf coordinated well as I'd hoped, and I liked how the boots bookended the darker tones in my hair. Because of the dual nature of blue denim as a color and as a neutral, you could also call my sweater + jeans combination an inner column of color because they are both blue (and I thought the slightly faded rinse of the jeans and the marl knit of the sweater looked really great together since both pieces incorporated multiple blue tones).

OOTD 2/9/26

I was quite happy with the mix of textures in the outfit: sweater knit, denim, quilted, silky, and leather. Layering and mixing textures are two styling techniques that are easiest to do in cold weather, so for those of us in the northern hemisphere, right now is our last, best chance to play with layers and textures in our looks.

Am I the only one who feels a little weird styling ankle boots under straight leg jeans? I've worn the combination before, back in the era before skinny jeans became dominant, so it feels a bit like - wait, this is just the normal jeans & ankle boots thing so it must be totally out of style, right? But I think I have just been around long enough that something like the "normal" of my youth is in style again. (I say "something like" because the style never looks exactly the same when it cycles back around again.)

For my daily bracelet stack, I started with a paper bead bracelet set that I made to coordinate with a blouse I own that shares the rust, dark blue, and brown colors of today's outfit. Then I supplemented with some simple beaded bracelets in coordinating colors. I wear the rusty carnelian bracelet with the silver rabbit charm (a gift from my husband) and the DIY blue lapis lazuli bracelet quite often; the DIY dull orange stone bracelets come out less frequently, so it was a pleasure to wear them in this stack. {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial} {tube paper bead tutorial}

The design of this paper bead bracelet set was pretty interesting! I went to my paper stash looking for pages that coordinated with my fall foliage blouse, and I found two copies of this page from Coldwater Creek catalogs. I liked the colors of the pants, but that section of the page was definitely too small to make my bracelets. So I chose to color over the surrounding white areas and text on each page before cutting out my strips.

For the top, mostly beige paper bead bracelet, I painted over the white area with beige colored acrylic paint then cut the strips for 1" wide bicone beads. I covered the text with a navy/indigo marker, and since I liked the look of it, I added some stripes of marker across the beige sections of the strips (so that the rolled beads would not be as overwhelmingly beige). This gave the finished beads some additional bits of the navy/indigo color (which I liked because the background of my inspiration blouse was navy).

For the bottom, mostly olive paper bead bracelet, I painted over the white background and the text with olive acrylic paint. I cut the strips for 0.5" wide bicone beads and rolled them without adding any marker, which resulted in a very different looking finished bead.

The olive color and brushstroke texture of the paint are quite prominent on these beads. Because both sets of strips are the same length, they have the same diameter (how big around they are at the middle of the bead) at 6mm. But since the triangular strips were cut with different widths (1" for the beige, 0.5" for the olive), the exposed edges of the strips are wider on the beige beads than on the olive beads; this makes the stripes of color on the beige beads larger than the stripes on the olive beads.

This is a good example of how you can take the same page of paper and end up with very different looking beads based on how you color them and how you cut your strips. If you look at my bracelet stack, the beige and olive beads coordinate with each other, but I don't think you'd guess they started with the same paper!

The middle, mostly navy and orange paper bead bracelet was much more straightforward to make. I selected this gorgeous photograph that combined a dark blue night-time sky exploding with stars and a rising/setting sun, and I cut my strips cross-wise so that the strips differed in being mostly night sky, mostly sun, or a mixture of the two. (If I wanted each strips to have the entire range of dark blue to orange, I would have cut strips up and down instead of across.) I did absolutely nothing to the paper before I rolled the beads for a spectacular result. On the rolled beads, I can see that there were more shades of color on the paper than I originally realized, including some beautiful burgundy and greenish-teal tones where the night sky and sun areas overlapped.

My earring choice was a bit of a wild card in this outfit - I decided I wanted a pop of color for my earrings, and took inspiration from the orange beaded bracelets I added to my stack to choose this pair of bright orange leather earrings (part of a set of 9 pairs from Amazon) that are definitely a statement earring. The orange feels part of the same color family as the vest and scarf but is a brighter and bolder color with a lot of visual impact. Picking a brighter "cousin" color for your pop of color instead of a completely different color from a different color family (for example, yellow or purple in this outfit) is a good option when you want your pop to seem harmonious rather than contrasting. Neither option is wrong - it's just a matter of your personal style and what you are in the mood for in a given look/on a given day. I default to harmonious outfits so the "cousin" pop of color works well for me - the pop is noticeable but still related to the rest of the outfit.

Now for my favorite part of the post: our Rabbit Imitating Art selection!

For this artwork, I didn't even need to audition any rabbits! Because the painting depicts a garden, there were already rabbits in it; it was simply a matter of waiting until one of the bunnies showed himself in the specific scene. I did not have long to wait before this beautiful lop rabbit ventured into view.

Looking at the artwork, the abundant presence of rabbits in this garden might seem a bit contradictory at first. Sure, it's a garden without humans, which is kind of a bunny paradise, but there are no carrots or lettuce or strawberries or other wonderful fruit and veg to eat at rabbit mouth level! This is most definitely not a Mr. McGregor's garden type of garden. How would a rabbit even reach the golden apples way up in the trees? There must be some other factors at work here, and one of those factors is the Hesperides.

You may recall that I discussed in my last Style Imitating Art/Rabbits Improving Art post about the "Harlem at Night" painting that contrary to popular belief, rabbits are not creatures of the night:

Rabbits are "crepuscular," meaning that they are most active at dawn and dusk. For the European rabbits from which domestic rabbits like this one have been bred, this means spending most of the day and night in their underground warrens, emerging in the twilight for their main meal. They do this to avoid both diurnal (daytime) and nocturnal (night-time) predators. Rabbits have evolved to be able to see well in the low-light conditions of dawn and dusk when predators are less likely to be hunting.

Now consider that the Hesperides are "the nymphs of the evening and the golden light of sunsets, who were the 'Daughters of the Evening' or the 'Nymphs of the West'." For rabbits, the idea of living in a garden of endless twilight has a huge appeal! It's their safety zone where it's always dinnertime!

As for how the rabbits manage to eat the apples...well, as anyone who has heard the story of Newton coming up with the theory of universal gravitation when an apple fell from a tree to hit him on the head...or anyone who's had an apple tree in their yard knows...apples will fall to the ground, and the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides are no exception. (Yes, even in the lands of myth, some of the laws of physics still apply!) So it is possible for rabbits to feed themselves directly from these fallen apples.

--While a diet of apples might seem quite limited, any garden that has grass, flowers, trees, etc., is well set up to offer rabbits the kind of high-fiber, low-calorie food that makes up the majority of their diet. After all, wild rabbits in Minnesota get through the long, snow-covered winters by eating "twigs and bark, especially of fruit trees" so the bunnies in the Garden of the Hesperides have everything they need and more.

--But wait, are the golden apples merely gold in color or are they actually made of metal? Sorry to disappoint you, but though legend claims they are pure gold metal, they are actual apples. It is not recommended that humans eat golden apples or other forbidden fruit, but rabbits can eat them just fine.

In addition to the endless twilight and the force of gravity, there is a third factor that explains the appeal of the Garden of the Hesperides to rabbits: the complicated nature of the serpent-like dragon Ladon who is wound around the tree. You see, the Hesperides nymphs were not fully reliable guardians of the golden apples:

The Hesperides were given the task of tending to the grove, but occasionally picked apples from it themselves. Not trusting them, Hera also placed in the garden an immortal, never-sleeping, hundred-headed dragon named Ladon as an additional safeguard.

And in that role, Ladon was 100% trustworthy; he absolutely, positively never would allow one of the nymphs or any trespasser in the garden to pick, take, eat, or even touch one of the golden apples! But no one had given him instructions on how to behave when a perfectly adorable resident bunny rabbit hopped up to the tree and positioned himself in a sweet shape and looked at him with a gentle gaze.

The Hesperides were no help in this respect; when Ladon queried the opinion of the nymph on the left, she visibly recoiled from him and said nothing (she was, quite naturally, very, very afraid of Ladon's formidable appearance and what he was empowered to do to her if she crossed a line, even though he had never actually done anything to her).

So Ladon was left to make a decision based on his own monster honor...and according to the mysterious ways of love. For though Ladon was not created with love in mind, love in the form of warm, soft, furry little bundles of cuteness found him.

And so Ladon would occasionally pluck perfect, ripe apples from the tree and give them to his rabbit friends. He couldn't do this routinely without over-harvesting the apples, but through a combination of scientific experimentation and logic that would make Newton proud, Ladon determined that thinning the trees of apples once per year led to improved tree health and more, higher-quality apples in the future. Due to the unusual "always dusk, always spring-summer" nature of the Garden of the Hesperides, there was no particular point of the year when this celebration of love and the giving of delicious treats need occur, so Ladon chose the anniversary of the day when the first rabbit approached him at the tree: February 14.

Artwork "improved" with rabbit

And the irresistibly adorable shape of that rabbit's pose became an enduring symbol of love.

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 more often start an outfit from a color combination, an outfit formula, a category of item (e.g., a dress), a specific item, or something else? Do you have a good memory for what pieces of clothing are in your wardrobe? Were you familiar with the Hesperides before now (I was not!)? What do you love as much as Ladon and I love rabbits?

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