Rembrandt's well turned-out and nude Women.

Rembrandt rendered life well, sometimes more unflinchingly than many sitters would have liked. His depiction of materials and accessories is also particularly beautiful. His women were women of the time and adhered to contemporaneous ideas of beauty; they had fleshy legs, large stomachs, narrow, rounded shouldered and small breasts. It is hard to equate this idea of beauty with our own. And, yet, when it is beauties that he is depicting, large stomachs or not, it is difficult to see them as anything other than lovely.

I've been researching the man recently and have been accosted by images of his women. I thought I'd change things up a bit and give a glimpse at fashion in painting and of the past rather than on models and of the now. And also look at another standard of beauty compared to the one we're familiar with.

PS He was pretty generous with the accessories.

Saskia

Saskia

Hendrickje Stoffels

Bathsheba

My Amsterdam Look

I'm doing a module in Northern Painting this year and I also had a reader suggest I enter an awesome easyJet competition asking bloggers to come up with looks inspired by Amsterdam so I thought "Why not?". I said I'd give it a stab and label it "study".

When I think of Amsterdam (despite never having been there), I am dually inspired by both the old and new.

The old (the buildings, the Vermeers and Rembrandts which immediately come to mind) is opulent but restrained, pious but sensuous and with an eye for detail and so it was a great opportunity to use the abundance of Baroque-inspired clothes in stores at the moment to put an outfit together. The result is a decadent outfit composed of a gold and red palette, velvet, jewels and pearls - perfect for randomly looking way over-dressed! (PS As an art historian I know how problematic the term "baroque" actually is and that the works below don't even really fall under this title at all so I'm using it in a very vague, fashion-trend specific sense here!)

1. Dolce and Gabbana 2.Alexander McQueen 3. Topshop 4. Dolce and Gabbana

The new inspired the day looks. The street style of Amsterdam is majorly inspiring - so urban, so contemporary, so easy, so cool. It's an aesthetic I love; simple, rad clothes that are easy to wear and have clean lines. And it inspired the below; two chic outfits for ambling round the city like an It Girl.

1. Zara 2. Jil Sander 3. Zara 4. Topshop 5. JW Anderson 6. Jil Sander 7. Isabel Marant

But, yeah, it was mostly just fun to put outfits I can't afford together. Oh, and to creep on street style...I mean "study". It was fun to "study".