Fashion inspiration can be found anywhere, and books are incredible sources for style innovation. Book-Inspired Fashion explores these treasure troves, and brings them them to you in looks inspired by vibrant characters, far away lands, brilliantly woven plot lines, and more.

I hope all of you have had an amazing holiday season, and that you are treasuring the brief reprieve before the semester starts up again! Because Animal Farm is such a widely read book in school, I thought it’d be an appropriate segue into 2016, as a book we can all discuss.

Table of Contents

Reading Between the Lines

Animal Farm, well-known as a satire that (poorly) disguises the biting political allegory represented by an unforgettable cast of animal characters, is among English author George Orwell’s two most famous works. (The other is 1984.) Clocking it at around 100 pages, this novella is relentlessly powerful and memorable despite – and perhaps due to – its brevity.

It was published in 1946 amidst political and social turmoil. Orwell intended the work to draw a critical eye to totalitarian governments, specifically the Soviet Union and the feud between Stalin and Trotsky. Given the subject matter, Orwell struggled to find a publisher willing to release the book, despite many acknowledgements of the work’s quality.

Animal Farm was eventually published after the end of the war, a few years after Orwell wrote the original manuscript. Despite its numerous early rejections, it is today considered one of the greatest works of the 20 century.

The extensive cast of characters includes the pigs Snowball, Napoleon, and Squealer, the hard-working horse pair Boxer and Clover, and the aloof, taciturn donkey Benjamin. They live among sheep, cows, hens, dogs, and more, and establish themselves as a true community after the death of the Old Major, who expounded the evil of man and need for liberty.