IT’S OCTOBER, GUYS.

I know I’ve told you all this before, but I love fall. Fall is my favorite. Fall is my boo. I love watching the leaves change, visiting cider mills, picking pumpkins, and Halloween; I love apple cider, pumpkin spice lattes, and Fireball Fridays; I love sweaters and booties and leggings. Fall is my happy place. If that makes me ‘basic‘, so be it. I change for no one.

That being said, fall colors are so dark. Don’t get me wrong, I love oxblood, cognac, and navy, but sometimes it feels like my entire fall wardrobe is like a watercolor washed with muddy water – everything is muted and blurs together. I can do moody, but I don’t want to be drab.

Luckily, fall pastels – soft, feminine colors, like peach, mint, baby blue, and lilac – have been a thing for a few years now, and while head-to-toe pastels are as striking as ever, pairing deep fall colors with pastels is a fresh way to add contrast to any outfit. In today’s Fashion Inspired by Art post, I’ll show you how using examples from Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing”:

Jean-Honoré Fragonards’s “The Swing” (1767-8) via Wikimedia Commons. (Click image to enlarge.)

Look familiar? If you’re a Disneyphile (who isn’t?) you might recognize it from a number in Frozen. It also played an important part in the development of Tangled; the animators modeled the movie’s visual style after the painting, including Rapunzel’s iconic dress.

Outside of our Disney obsessions, “The Swing” is one of the most recognizable paintings done in the Rococo style. It’s also a perfect example of how pastel colors pop when juxtaposed with rich jewel colors and muted tones.

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About Fragonard and “The Swing”

In 1767, a young French nobleman commissioned painter Gabriel Francis Doyen to paint a portrait of him and his mistress, who was married to another man. Doyen was concerned with the immorality and ‘frivolity’ of the painting, and passed the commission on to a younger painter – Jean-Honoré Fragonard.