Ooooh, FASHION! (That was my best David Bowie impression, could you tell?)
You don’t expect children’s books to be a hotbed of high style, but there are incredible fashion moments in their pages. I was lucky enough to write occasionally about fashion for newspapers and magazines (a lifetime ago); I’ll still be stopped in my tracks by a killer look.
I would love to raid the wardrobes of David Roberts’ characters. Roberts @dr.illustration is the illustrator behind the Questioneers (Ada Twist Scientist, Rosie Revere Engineer…) and scores more titles including Julia Donaldson’s The Cook and The King and The Flying Bath and Delightfully Different Fairy Tales created with his sister Lynn Roberts Maloney. With the glorious get-ups he draws, it came as no surprise to find out that Roberts studied fashion design and worked as a milliner before he became an illustrator.
I’ve compiled a few favourites here:
1. The impeccable Lila Greer (ABOVE), teacher of the Questioneers (this pic from Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty @abramskids )
2. That jumpsuit and those wedges on the mum from The Flying Bath by Julia Donaldson (@macmillankidsuk)
3. Cinderella’s stepmother and ugly sisters Elvira and Ermintrude trailing their flapper finery (David Roberts’ Delightfully Different Fairy Tales, with Lynn Roberts Maloney @pavilionchildrens)
4. Morwenna the witch in Sleeping Beauty wearing Lanvin-worthy green dress.
5. Sleeping Beauty aka Annabel in her bobby socks and wheel print full skirted dress.
6. Ada Twist’s mum and dad from Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beaty. All their threads, not to get started on their furniture, are exquisite!
7. and 8. Rapunzel rocks beautifully homespun threadbare 70s styles with stack soled Mary Janes.
9. Edna, the evil witch who imprisons Rapunzel, works an oilskin duster coat and accessorises with a pet crow.
What are your favourite David Roberts looks?
Are there any unforgettable fashion moments you have stumbled across in your kids’ books?
Stories with everything 