Style Icon Saturday (Part 1)

It's Saturday again! Time for another installment of Style Icon Saturday. Who will be today's icon?

Irene Adler

Via and Via

Since the release of the Robert Downey Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes, I fell head over heels with Rachel McAdams' portrayal of Irene Adler. For those who haven't watched or read Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler is an "adventuress" in the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" who in the end outwits Sherlock (which is an almost impossible task at that.) In the BBC version, she is portrayed as a powerful dominatrix (played by Lara Pulver) who teams up with Sherlock's nemesis James Moriarty to blackmail the Royals (similar to the novel.)

Via

Well, when extorting you have to wear a killer outfit...

From the different versions of Sherlock Holmes, the 2009 movie portrayal and the latest BBC portrayal of Irene Adler are my favorites. She beams confidence and gets what she wants from people by, in her own words, misbehaving. Some people might see her in a bad light but I see her more as a feminist hero. She manipulates (mostly) men to get what she wants and has them on her side when she needs them to be. She reduces some of the most influential people into weaklings, but ironic enough her weakness is a man. You can see a domineering woman through what she wears; in the movie she wears bold colors that were not common for the normal reserved Victorian woman. That could of been a choice on the part of the costumer but "A Scandal in Bohemia" does describe her as an "adventuress", defined as "a woman who seeks social or financial advancement by dishonest or unscrupulous methods." Fuchsia, or any bright shade for that matter could have been seen as a color worn by unscrupulous women. In the BBC version, Irene has on ink black stilettos, sharp enough to kill a man and tall enough to dominate over him. Red lipstick is key, as it will put the fear of God into a man (said by the gorgeous Dita Von Teese, who would know a thing or two about that.) Being Irene Adler, she would not be caught dead without a riding crop.

Via and Via

Smarts and a sense of style...so easy to fall for

This post will be a short one because it will lead into a post I did a while back. The new BBC version of Sherlock, with its characters, inspired an entire digital collection. In the last post I mentioned I would show how a concept board helps a collection come together. In the next post I will show the collection in its entirety. Stay tuned for the next post!

Stay fashionable kids!

-Daniela