Marsha at Marsha in the Middle is the curator for this round of Style Imitating Art (SIA), and she selected the 1897 painting "The Boulevard Montmartre at Night" by the French Impressionist Camille Pissarro. She says she wanted to feature an artist who isn't a person's first thought when hearing "Impressionist," which led her to Pissarro. She liked the variety of colors and textures in the painting as inspiration for an outfit.
I really like the navy, yellow, and orange color scheme of this painting, and I knew that was the dominant element of the artwork I wanted to capture in my outfit. I dawdled about thinking of different options, but the ones I came up with first were either too heavy for the current warm spring weather or too lightweight and summery. I wasn't sure which way to go until it occurred to me to add a second level of inspiration to the challenge by thinking "What Would Marsha Wear?" The immediate answer was: a pretty print dress. And even though I only have 4 dresses, one of which is actually a nightgown I wear around the apartment on summer weekends, I have one with just the right color scheme!
Even more surprisingly, I have only ever worn this dress with layers over it, not on its own...which makes sense because I wear it more often in the fall than any other season due to the leaf print. I figured this was the perfect time to give this dress the "one and done" styling treatment. I drew my inspiration for accessorizing from the abundant glowing reflected light in the painting and finished my outfit with pieces in bright gold-tone metallics. I like the metallic option when wearing a print that I want to be viewed in a holistic way, rather than having certain colors from the print gain prominence by being repeated within the outfit.
With the warmer weather comes layered necklace season, so I incorporated three gold necklaces into a layered look: a chunky chain link necklace (Ann Taylor, 2014), a herringbone chain (a hand-me-down from my mom), and a crystal/tassel pendant on a box chain (thrifted from ThredUp).
I also wore my not-favorite cheap-looking gold flats from Amazon in this outfit...which has made me think again about finding a nicer replacement pair. But I definitely did like this gold color of shoes with the dress and necklaces.
My all-DIY daily bracelet stack is based on the paper bead bracelet set I wore for Marsha's last SIA challenge with a painting of Venice. The bracelet set was inspired by the colors of this dress and a full-page drawing of a Venice building in a magazine. In my previous stack, I supplemented the two paper bead bracelets with stone bead bracelets in soft blue and yellow. In this stack, I kept the yellow one and added orange stone bead and gold spacer bead bracelets.
If you're astonished to learn that I didn't wear DIY earrings with this outfit, you couldn't be more astonished than me! But I just really thought these subtly multi-colored resin hoops with gold-tone details from Loft coordinated really well with the outfit. And while this would have been a good challenge for wearing my hair long and wavy to mimic the rippling golden lights in the painting, I had just washed my hair that morning and put it in braids to dry. (The rainy spring weather has hit St Paul so my hair would air dry loose into a mega mass of frizz.) So we have the darker, wetter, braided hair look instead.
Now for my favorite part of the post: revealing the Rabbit Imitating Art selection! I wanted a lighter colored rabbit that would stand out well against the dark painting, and I loved how the dark orange broken pattern on this Mini Lop's rump matched the varied shapes of orange light in the windows of the buildings.
Our rabbit was very cooperative about joining our scene (there may or may not be a carrot waiting at the far end of this road) but was a bit confused to find everything so small. I have to confess: Bunny, I shrunk the street.
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 like wearing dresses in summer? What are your favorite options for accessorizing a "one and done" piece?
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