Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Tag: inspiration (page 2 of 2)

Inspiration: The Fashion of Guo Pei

Beyond Victoriana, one of my favorite steampunk blogs, featured an article today about the work of Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei.  Her work is absolutely exquisite – big, voluminous pieces that easily rival, if not exceed, some of the best work from European couture collections.  Her “1002nd Arabian Nights” collection is the one featured on Beyond Victoriana; I reproduce some of the images (borrowed via Tom and Lorenzo Blog) here:



This one, though, from her latest collection, totally reminds me of what I was trying to achieve here, when I was brainstorming Princess Liandre’s look for the fantasy/Beauty and the Beast tale that I have been nursing.


(Image courtesy of Rose Studio website)

It’s, like, exactly what I pictured for her (minus the cool short bustle, but I think I like this better).  So. Awesome.

Now I am off to flail and squeal over how pretty all this is.

On Costuming

I’ve been pondering a bit about costuming for this “Beauty and the Beast” tale, and I’ve got some ideas for what people are wearing.  For this 1st scene in my head, I’ve got some ideas for what people are wearing.  I’m envisioning some sort of blend of different historical periods, and if I could draw my life would be way easier.  As it is, I can’t, and so I’ve got to fall back on cobbling together bits and pieces from different sources.
Overall, there’s a strong military and menswear influence on what I’m imagining.  I’m eschewing the big, poufy princess dresses that I usually prefer for something simpler and more tailored, though with a feminine touch.

The Queen

I imagine her wearing an ensemble that has a bit of military influence — a double-breasted coat that is crisply-cut and tailored, paired with a pair of leather leggings or some other long, skinny trousers.  Instead of the high collar, however, the coat boasts the diamond-shaped Queen Anne neckline, complete with a high, starched collar, like so:

Ugh, I seriously wish I could draw, because it would be so much easier to convey what I’m thinking.

EDITED TO ADD:

Just ran across this absolutely exquisite coat from Lizzy Nolan.  It gets close to what I imagined, actually, and I rather like the twist on the buttons.

Coat by Lizzy Nolan

In my head, though, the coat is long, floor-length, and cuts away at the hips to reveal leather leggings.  It’s also black velvet, with delicate embroidery done in gold and silver threading — a bit severe and sober, yet rich enough to be fitting for royalty.  The Queen is disdainful of too much luxury, would rather be in a jerkin and leggings (and on horseback) instead of a dress, so her clothing has to accomodate that.

Liandre

Liandre, on the other hand, follows the fashion conventions for other young, high-born ladies in the capital.  For the first scene I have in mind, she’s dressed casually.

The elements:

1. White shirt with billowy sleeves

It’s not quite pirate (and definitely NOT slutty pirate, which is all I seem to be able to find when I search google images), but what I imagine to be a comfortable sort of shirt to hang out in.  It is paired with…

2. A shirtwaist corset.

Again, it’s a simple one — no embroidery, nothing uber-decorative, just elegantly functional.  This one from Etsy totally fits the bill:

3. A short bustle skirt.

It adds a feminine sort of touch to the ensemble.  The short bustle skirts from Lovechild Boudoir are totally what I have in mind, like this one, “Honeymoon in Paris”:

4. Final touches.

Leather leggings (which pretty much seem to be standard fare amongst the women) and a pair of flat black leather riding boots.  With buckles.  Because everything is better with buckles.

Inspiration: The Fairy Tale

I fell asleep last night musing about some of my earliest writing inspirations: fairy tales.

I am, of course, of the generation characterized by the Disney Princess.  The first film I remember seeing in the theatre is Beauty and the Beast; this was quickly followed by Aladdin, which I absolutely adored, especially because the characters were brown, Princess Jasmine had long, shiny black hair, and her singing voice was done by Lea Salonga, the first (and so far, only) Filipina to win a Tony award.  Being brown, half-Filipina, and extraordinarily proud of my waist-length black hair, my 6 year-old self was convinced that this meant that I was Princess Jasmine, and no one could convince me otherwise.  (I was also convinced that Agrabah was just like the Philippines, and made my father tell me stories about princesses and fire-eaters and bazaars, but that’s another story for another time).

Before Disney, though, I had my trusted book of fairy tales.  Before I could read, my mom would read one story a day before naptime, and I would gaze at the illustrations of exquisite women in beautiful gowns, and dream of being one of them (only brown — I was acutely aware of race and representation, even then, and the fact that all the beautiful women were fair-skinned wasn’t lost on me).  The story behind the book was important as well, and woven into the magic that seemed to surround the book.

My mother told me that she had bought it, along with a copy of the children’s Bible (which was also intensely special to me, and which I read cover-to-cover more than once when I was in grade school), before I was born, when she was single and living alone and dreaming of the children that she would have one day.  It was such a romantic idea, and it made me love the book all the more.

Today, the binding is frayed and falling apart, due to my younger sister throwing it around when she was a toddler (I rescued it and hid it from her; the kid just didn’t know how to appreciate anything).  Going through it, though, reveals how deeply the book and its images managed to influence me.

A few years back, for example, I wrote a myth where a woman is born from a mysterious flower, one that dwells in the deepest, darkest part of an enchanted garden.  She is a faerie-like creature, winged and precious.  Flipping through my fairy tale book, however, I landed upon this illustration from the story, “Thumbelina,” which must have been stuck somewhere in my subconscious:

There are so many images that stay with me still, like Beauty playing the lute while living in the Beast’s magical castle:

Or Karen, the poor girl in “The Red Shoes,” who manages to snag a pair of beautiful red leather shoes, but then finds that she is doomed to dance in them forever:

Or my favorite, the Spanish princess about to be eaten by a terrible dragon:

I fell in love with the clothing, too, the old-fashioned, medieval-esque gowns.  They served as the inspiration for my fashion sketching days, and even now, my characters dash about in period costume.  Quite clearly, this was an incredibly formative book in my life.

Anyway, I woke up this morning with fairy tales still on the brain.  There’s so much I want to do with them, from taking my favorites and twisting them into my own adult versions, Claiming of Sleeping Beauty style, to using them as a launching pad for something different and new, something that plays with gender norms and roles (’cause let’s face it, I’ll be damned if I am going to write yet another ‘damsel in distress’ tale), toys with conventions, and yet weaves some of those familiar elements into it as well.

I’m not out to reinvent the wheel, however.  This sort of project has been done countless times before, and by authors more talented than me.  But I’ve realized that I draw my joy, happiness, and energy from the process of writing, and not just from the lovely outcome.  It’s the process of struggling to convey new ideas, of attempting to translate the images in my imagination to text on a page, of trying to shape and form prose into a form that has beauty and meaning, of giving life to characters and creatures and worlds — to me, this is what it means to be a writer.

Princess-Warriors, Lords Locked in Castles, and Fractured Fairy Tales

I’ve had fairy tales on the brain.

I’ve been reflecting on the influence that fairy tales have had on my writing over the years, as seen here, and I’ve also been thinking about how I might return to them in a more deliberate way, using them as a launch pad for new projects and ventures.  I’ve been in such a low place when it comes to writing for over a year now, and even before that, my writing was restricted to permutations of the same 4 characters, which was fun when it was just a silly project between my friend/writing partner and me, but severely curtailed the multiplicity of universes, ideas, and characters that I once had.

So here I am, entertaining thoughts about revisiting one of my old favorites, “Beauty and the Beast.”

Really, it’s a striking story: a man trapped in a castle, doomed because of his hubris and arrogance and pride, who can only be freed by the love of a woman.

Sure, she’s at risk from his “beastly” nature, as the Disney version demonstrated.  Yeah, she’s got to unearth his more gentlemanly qualities (which kinda reminds me of those terrible self-help relationship books for women: “A good woman can transform a bad boy into a chivalrous gentleman!”).  But it also creates a space where it might be possible to really toy with gender norms, or to at least give that female character more room to kick ass and be more aggressive than most fairy tales allow.

I’m always a little skeptical of the “feminist-izing” of the fairy tale, if only because I’ve read some interpretations that are so damn CHEESY and really… I dunno, self-conscious about the project.  I want something that’s different, something that tries to toy with established norms, but at the end of the day, I want a story that’s good, with characters that are fully-formed and complex.

(One of my favorite “feminist” tales has got to be The Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce.  It’s a fantasy and not an explicit reinterpretation of a fairy tale, but it features a female protagonist who is amazing and kick-ass and strong, yet flawed and wonderfully human… I highly recommend the series to anyone who hasn’t yet read it.)

But I digress.  I’ve started brainstorming a “fractured fairy tale” of my own, and it is actually really intriguing to me.  I’m starting from the premise that I want a story that features a cast of female characters who can transcend stereotypes, women who are lovers and fighters, who can be unapologetically sensual and sexual (no slut-shaming here), who can be sexually fluid, who are intelligent, witty, and exist as more than enablers for male characters, or devices to move the plot forward.

In this vein, we have Liandre, the princess of a realm that’s still nameless, but seems to be (in my head, at least) somewhat matrilineal in terms of the order of succession to the throne.  She is the only child of the queen,  Simone Hallivere, who is loved throughout the land for her battle prowess, her fierce sense of justice, and her shrewd political intelligence.  The Hallivere line has ruled for some 300 hundred years, but in order for each princess to be designated heir to the throne, she has to prove her mettle through some act of renown.

This, perhaps, is where our story opens.

Liandre is approaching her twenty-first birthday (the age of majority), when she should be formally named heir to the throne.  Unfortunately, Liandre is a mediocre student and still hasn’t undertaken the ritual rite-of-passage.  Her advisors are beyond frustrated with her (because she happens to be a bit incorrigible, unruly and rebellious, and enjoys provoking everyone), her mother is at the end of her tether, and there are rumblings that she will be the weak link in the Hallivere line, the one who will cause their rule to fail.

Enter Liandre’s aunt, the sorceress/enchantress/witch Erlinda.

There’s magic at work in this universe, and a goddess who is more than a theological belief, but an actual presence and force (here I’m thinking about Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series, as well as Pierce’s work — in their work, gods and goddesses are true actors, lurking in the background of their heroines endeavors.).  In my mind, magic flows through the blood of the Hallivere queens, but every few generations it surfaces in ways more potent than others.  These women inherit the full gift of the Goddess, which includes a command of magic and a lengthened life-span.

Erlinda is one of these women, and is something like 150 years old.  She tells Liandre a story, a tale that Erlinda’s mother confessed on her death bed.  It goes something like this:

“Many, many years ago, my mother fell in love with a man, a great lord who ruled a kingdom in the foothills of the Emerald Mountains.  So deep was her love for him that she gave him a most precious gift: an enchanted rose, one that would protect him from all harm while he kept it in his grasp.

My mother’s trust, however, was misplaced, for the handsome lord betrayed her.  The deep love that she felt for him was only passing fancy on his side.  He gave the rose to another, the daughter of some powerful baron from a neighboring land.

In her wrath, she cursed him, trapped him in stasis, never to age, never to love, never to die until the spell can be broken.”

It’s a seemingly impossible task, one based on legend and hearsay and not on solid fact, but it is tantalizing to Liandre, something more exciting than staid, cliched dragon rescues (the fall-back option that her advisors have been encouraging) and yet easier than, say, defeating an army (her mother’s claim to fame).  And so she sets off on her journey to find the Beast in his frozen castle…. and goodness knows what she’ll find there.  Someone dark and brooding, who had his share of pretty negative qualities to begin with but has now festered in darkness for a couple of centuries… He’s bound to be great company.  But I have a thing for Byronic heroes, so what’s a girl to do?

Anyway, still working on some drabbly things that can capture these ideas together.  Also pondering this interesting world where we have sword-wielding Queens blessed by the Goddess, etc.  Is it steampunky?  Straight up-and-down medieval-esque?  I still haven’t decided, and I imagine I’ll have to toy and tinker with it till I’m certain.

In the meantime, something from Kate Beaton on the Bronte sisters and their ridiculous love for Byronic heroes:



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