If you’re not familiar with Alphonse Mucha, I highly recommend checking out his work. His work is just lovely. In fact, if you think you don’t know his work, you’ve probably seen it but just didn’t realize. Go check it out, then come back here and finish reading.
Last summer my costume guild had a socially-distanced outdoor picnic inspired by Alphonse Mucha so I had to get together a costume. I had something rather elaborate planned involving some sage chiffon a friend had gifted me, but then life got in the way so I had to get something together much faster.
Fortunately I had decided to keep this satin overskirt I had made for another costume by simply draping it on my dress form, pinning it together and then attaching some wide gold glittery elastic. I was planning to repurpose it into a cape, but hadn’t gotten around to it and it worked splendidly. If you look at most of Mucha’s work, I’m pretty sure those ladies weren’t actually wearing dresses but were just draped in whatever fabric he had lying around the studio. So that’s basically what I did with this skirt. Stuck it diagonally over my arm (because it wouldn’t fit all the way across comfortably) and then pinned it up. Boom. Done.
Well almost. I needed something for my hair so I also made a flower crown. This was thrown together pretty quickly with a lot of hot glue on a headband. The headband was reinforced with some hair combs to make sure it didn’t fall off. The headband and flowers were purchased at Amazon. I bought one of those “make your own wedding bouquet” fake flower packs in an Autumn colorway and it came with a great array of flowers saving me a) money – I didn’t have to buy tons of different flowers, b) space – I didn’t have to store all the extra flowers, and c) time – I didn’t have to figure out a selection of flowers that went together. I love how it turned out. I count it as a win all around. And with the couple of extra flowers I had, I made little clips to attach to my dress/outfit/drapery/whatever you want to call my outfit.
The picnic itself was fun and it was lovely to see people I hadn’t seen in a while from 6 feet away. I had some fun with my new tripod/self-stick and did some self-potraits which then I messed around with in Photoshop. Unfortunately I was a bit far away (it was my first real time using the tripod) so I had to work with what resolution I had after the fact, but I’m still happy with the pics.
And here’s a group shot of my “pod” (we were all vaccinated) in our Mucha finery:
