Go For Baroque!

This is ever-so-slightly belated, but probably one of my faves, which makes it kinda worth posting a month or two late:

Hello Spring/Summer-ish Screaming Mimis ad!

Probably one of the things I love the about fashion illustration in general and the Screaming Mimis ads in particular is creating cute imaginary locales for cute imaginary kids to live in, and when in doubt I tend to go for Baroque, thus the French Provincial by way of the 1970s teenage bedroom, which is probably just about what my dream office would look like, given a) a house of my very own to wallpaper to death b) a teeny-tiny budget and c) a couple of summertime weeks of decor scouting roadtrippery!

First on the my wishlist would be this altogether perfect pink and green velveteen number, found whilst scouring the internets for the perfect furniture to draw for this very ad, but sadly already sold for a song:


I also love love love how the ad fit right in with this super adorable editorial which just so happened to be in the very same issue of Paper Magazine:

Styled by super cute Los Angeles based Wardrobe Stylist Shirley Kurata and shot at one of my all time favorite places in the history of the world, the Madonna Inn!

Which was also one of our all time favorite photoshoot locales when we lived in LA, as seen in these outtakes from a Gravy Train!!!! album cover shoot from oh-so-many years ago, which also involved smuggling in a carload of stuffed poodles, googly eyed plastic bunnies, big eyed kids and giant furry gonks from ye olde prop library:


If you've never been, I highly recommend you pay a visit to the Madonna Inn immédiatement, if only for a quick slice of Pink Champagne Cake and a mug of pink sugared coffee on your way up or down the California Coast, but one look at the magical rooms and pink vinyl boothed and gold bedecked steakhouse and you'll pretty much have to stay the night:


PS. On a semi-tangentially somewhat related note, see that hair, way back up there, in the ad? That's basically my summer dream hair & any tips on how to achieve such a look would be greatly appreciated! I'm desperately in need of some Spring/Summer hairstyles as I seem to have sprouted a spectacularly unruly and extravagantly overgrown mane of waist length Manson girl hair over the Winter months and need all the help I can get!

❤ Fawn

Past Tents...

It's practically sweater weather now in Portland, and though I'll be super excited to access the 99.9% of my wardrobe that is made up of tweeds and heavy wool and sweater vests, I will be sad to see our weekly outdoor expeditions fall by the wayside until next year. I was kind of just getting the hang of this nature thing again! Last weekend we went on an epic stroll in the Columbia River Gorge that should have led to a super secret swimming hole which we never quite found. Along the way we were menaced by a tiny hissy silver snake, and, at one point, I could be found quite comically clinging to a mossy rock for dear life in knee deep rapids... But, the trail through old growth redwoods was insanely beautiful and dotted with a couple of cute little campsites tucked into the foliage that we swore to pay another visit to before the rains start for a couple of nights around a fire with toasted marshmallows and owl calls...

But first, the task of figuring out how and where to acquire the makings of a cute camp!

As someone who is both secretly mortified of modern day sporting gear and not so secretly a fan of historic re-enactments, I'm kind of hooked on the idea of strictly vintage camping gear, and actually have a folder full of reference photos and ebay searches but absolutely no idea where to start! Wandervogel lutes and a cute 60s campstove, anyone?

I do know exaaactly where I would acquire my very first tent if I could so afford it, however!

For as long as I've had the internet, I've been obsessed with Past Tents, home of ridiculously adorable historically accurate vintage reproduction stripey tents; medieval, napoleonic, civil war, tudor and yes, even teepees, if you so desire!

My imaginary shopping cart is forever full of the pavilion tent in all sizes, in every combination of every sherbet-y shade in the book:



This is basically the campsite of my dreams:

By Etrusia UK via Flickr.

Oh hello camping dreamland! It really doesn't get much more picturesque than candy colored tents set up inside crumbling castle walls, which is what I imagine it would have looked like if I had made it to Tapestry Goes West last year, which fell on both my birthday and the super cosmic date of 08/08/08, was going to be held in the deer park of a castle in Wales, with Circulus headlining, but was sadly semi-cancelled at the last minute! Not that I had cobbled together quite enough pocket change to get there anyway... maybe next time?

Cat Fancy...

One upside to the aforementioned Epic Computer Fail of 2009: finding a million projects that I had either abandoned or simply forgotten all about nested in all the wrong folders on my hard drive.

It's a little known fact that I try to sneak collages of kittens into practically every design project I'm asked to work on, which, aside from a couple of googly eyed cats that made their way into a couple of compilation books and fashion editiorials in, oh, 2004 or so, has nearly always been to no avail. Here are a few of the collection still waiting for their forever homes: