Fairies and Feathers

When I was small, what I wanted to be way more than a Cinderella or Snow White, was an American Indian princess. Not Pocahontas mind you, though I do have the cherished barbie doll . It was Tiger Lily from Disney's Peter Pan film that I aspired to! I had a jumper with a little native american girl's face on the front, with real plaits made of wool. It was amazing, I wish I could get a bigger version. I went through a phase of only wearing plaits and refusing to leave the house without a favourite necklace round my forehead.

But I digress. The point of that introduction was to say that these memories, along with a general fascination with flappers (began when I read the Great Gatsby and grew as I slowly realised I would never have the correct figure for quite a few other eras of fashion) made me think about feathers recently. I wear hairbands as crowns as opposed to headbands due to the ahem comparative length to width of my head and the knowledge that headbands only emphasise my long face. So I've been thinking about sticking feathers on these makeshift crowns for quite a while, to get a sort of Tiger Lily slash 20s feeling.

But over the last few seasons seeing all the amazing feather dresses has brought to mind yet another obsession. Has anyone else ever read the book "Fairie-ality"? It is a thing of beauty. I got it for my 15th birthday and ever since have kept it in a special box...that is how much I love it. The book is full of photographs taken by the artist David Ellwand who spent months making tiny tiny fairy outfits out of natural materials such as feathers and leaves. It is so pretty it makes me want to cry and/or dive into the pages.

When I read that (obviously) all these outfits decay rather quickly and are only preserved on the page I seem to remember going into mourning for quite a while. And also being very impressed. I got upset about leaving my gap year apartment in France and having to take down my perfect poster collages of magazines (that was after three months,god knows how I'll deal with leaving this overly adorned halls room). I can't imagine how it must feel to have your art work just fall to pieces before your eyes. Now I am older and think about it more, I suppose it may count as some kind of a comment on the transient nature of fashion, but really I just love the book for the shallow reason of how amazing it looks. I want to dress in fairy outfits and drink tea in the sun.

Truly I now want every ridiculously over the top feathered ballgown I see. But Christopher Bailey's Burberry Prorsum dresses are the ones I can see most
realistically fitting into my wardrobe...

Realistically if I had the money that is, hmmmm

Occy