I’m still plugging away on the Marmotte Masquerade Stays, but have been held up by boring paperwork and car fixing and whatnot. So I’ll keep you entertained with other things. Between my stays and the Fairies & Dinosaurs at Versailles party I’ve been fixated on mad 18th century hair. These fashion plates particularly delight me:
ZOMG! Look at that hair! Look at the fruit! The entire bowl of lemons (or apricots?)! The full pineapple perched in front! That one random pear at front! And her fabulously NOSE-y nose. Best of all, do you know what the pointy fruit going up the back of her hair is? I do! I’m relatively certain that it is a cacao fruit.
Cacao fruit, Molokai, Hawaii
Yep. That’s right. Chocolate hair. I’m not sure what the large round fruit that alternates with it is though. Out-of-scale quince? Perhaps they were going really exotic and they were meant to be breadfruit.
Breadfruit (ulu), Molokai, Hawaii
It’s like pastoral France meets my parent’s farm! I love it! And what about this one:
She’s a little more typically pretty, which makes her less interesting to me, and the veges are a little more prosaic than the exotic fruit. I’m slightly confused by the three enormous carrots and then the three hydra-carrots. What’s that about? Lettuce though, I understand.
Growing lettuce, Molokai, Hawaii
My parents grow lettuce. It is the most delicious lettuce you have ever tasted. You don’t even need to dress the salads its that good.
Planting radishes alongside a bed of lettuce,
Last time I was home I helped to plant a bunch of lettuce, with assistance from Josie the cat, because my parents have garden cats like I have a sewing cat.
Josie helps with the planting
18th century hair and farms in Hawaii usually don’t go together so well though!
So sweet – Josie looks a lot like my cat ‘Cwtch.’ As for the head dresses – how would they stay up? I can only imagine the headache one would surely get due to wearing one. It fascinates me to wonder how these things were thought up.
Calico cats are the best!
I think the headdresses are more fantasy than possible reality, but I’m going to keep my eyes out for fake fruit to recreate my own 18th century Carmen Miranda do! 😉
I wonder what kind of structure would be used to hold up such creations without giving the wearer a huge headache! That’s a lot of produce on their heads!
I think it is a cabbage rather than lettuce, because cabbage was much more common a french culinary habit in the 18th century than lettuce. Most french observers would have seen a cabbage here, and the joke is better, more nasty, with a cabbage because this is a very peasant-like aliment. Not lofty at all. And there also might be a wordgame with colliflower, which is said cabbage-flower in french.
Dang it! I was afraid someone would notice that and ruin my lettuce fantasy. I don’t care for cabbages so I ignored that and interpreted them as lettuce. 😉
I need a cat to do stuff with
Having a cat is an important thing!