Sometimes people say my style is fairy-book looking and I take that as quite the compliment as someone who love fairytales. Personally though I think my most fairytale outfits aren't those of long dramatic dresses, but rather something like today's outfit: a pile of retro knits in a mix of earth tones. This style reminds me of Elsa Beskow illustrations and documentaries on the Irish islands made in the 1960s and 70s. The knits are vintage-inspired from my cropped cardigan to my ascot scarf and my Aran knit hat which I actually bought on one of the Aran Isles (it was my first souvenir from Ireland and I like to think I chose wisely since I still wear it quite often).
My favorite autumn colors are reflected in my clothes from an evergreen tweed-y skirt to a dark pinecone printed blouse and copper beech leaf cardigan; natural colors and fabrics that will always look like they belong in this landscape. I guess that is the thing for me: a bit of history and fantasy all mixed together. I know that history was no fairytale, watching those documentaries on changing life on the islands and forced evacuations is incredibly sad. Places where people lived in thriving communities for generations are now uninhabited. I grew up moving quite often, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be forced to leave your home or to remain behind and watch a community slowly die and know that you have no option but to leave yourself. Mixed into this sadness though is the stories and legends that also thrived in those earlier communities when story-telling was such an essential part of life.
I'm always amazed by people who say they don't read books for pleasure because I can not imagine a life without those portable stories. When you study fairytales you find they are so much deeper than simple stories meant to entertain or even provide a moral lesson; they're studies in human nature, they ask questions about if we have control over our fates, and poke fun at the capricious nature of life. There are paupers that become princes, wild untamed women in the guise of seals that get tricked into domesticity, and villains are just as often family members or recognizable faces, and almost always there's some lone figure on a journey who succeeds not through flashy deeds but through looking after the humblest of creatures...
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