Style Imitating Art: Decoupage by Mary Delany

This week’s Style Imitating Art inspiration piece is Decoupage by Mary Delany. Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar (14 Shades of Grey), Terri (Meadow Tree Style), and Daenel (Living Outside the Stacks). Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday one of the hosts selects an inspiration image and they each post the image on their blogs. The following Monday they share their art inspired outfits. Participants submit their art inspired outfits with the curator by 10pm Tuesday and, that Wednesday, the curator shares all of the submissions on her blog. This week, the curator is Salazar. For the last Style Imitating Art challenge (that I took part in), we styled Serving Fish by Victo Ngai.

This is what Salazar said about choosing this theme:

…the paper collages (or more exactly, decoupages) of 18th century artist Mary Delany. It amazes me how realistic they are, considering they’re not paintings, and especially since Mrs. Delany didn’t start working on them until she was 72!
Since these are all the same style – realistic flowers on black background – I decided not to pick a specific piece, but rather the participants can choose whichever piece they want to interpret. I’m attaching here as an example, and you can see more of them here and here.

The decoupage by Mary Delany are simply exquisite. The detail is absolutely incredible. I chose this image because the red and the green spoke to me. Usually, I wouldn’t necessarily wear red and green together because it can look a little festive. However, if you add in lots of black, for example, it changes the feel altogether.

My outfit is quite different for me. I’m not a big skirt wearer, I much prefer trousers and jeans. However, when I spotted this faux leather midi skirt, I couldn’t resist it! I bought it in the H&M sale either late last year or early this year (I can’t remember!). I figured it would look fabulous in the winter with tights and boots and a nice chunky jumper. However, when I opened my wardrobe to find something black to wear for this theme, it jumped out at me, screaming to be worn with my red Skechers!

I added my little green vest top which I bought from Zara recently (I believe it’s still available), a black cardigan from H&M, and a bright red scarf that I’ve had for years. I quite like the result, and will probably wear this again, perhaps with different shoes. But we’ll see! But what about you? How would you style an outfit based on the decoupage by Mary Delany?