Inspiration from Super Kawaii Mama: Imagine a New Wardrobe

A couple of weeks ago I'd come across this post on Super Kawaii Mama and was inspired to join in! The basic idea is that you select four images representing your dreamscape, then create an outfit inspired by those images, using only items you already own.

As a performance artist/designer, I tend to keep "image banking" folders on my computer full of inspirational images I've come across (though often these images are tragically source-less! Someone needs to develop an image saving program that makes it really easy to capture source information as well. Or please tell me about one, if it exists already...I've had no luck searching for such a thing.)

In any case: I started with these images:








Some of the things that I really loved about these images and wanted to try translating into clothing were the color palette (especially the deep red and yellow/orange on top of black backgrounds), flowing/draping/fluid materials, a sense of play (the umbrellas), gold lace-like metal, and dangling rich-colored items (like the lanterns).

And this is what I came up with, and wore to work over a week ago on the last day before I left on my crazy opera adventure (more on that later...)

I'd say this was definitely successful as a wardrobe reworking...it's an outfit I would not have come up with on my own, but that came together from the colors and textures I was trying to find. (I only own one really yellow item of clothing, it seems, and it's this shirt. Who knew?) The necklace and earrings took care of the gold chain and dangling orange orbs, I wore the black skirt and tank for the mostly-black base, then layered the closest colors I had over that.


Yellow shirt: Forever 21, thrifted. Red wrap shirt: thrifted. Black skirt: thrifted. Black tank: Ann Taylor, thrifted. Sandals: Miz Mooz, thrifted. Necklace: handmade from vintage/upcycled parts and a vintage brooch. Earrings: handmade. Bag: thrifted.


Hope everyone has been having a good week! (ah, I guess the week's just starting...with rehearsals all weekend, I forgot that fact. Only a few days to go until the show!)