Style Imitating Art | Diamond Dust Shoes by Andy Warhol

teal velvet dress, black sparkly duster cardigan, silver glittery boots, black felt floppy hat, thrifted leopard coat, preloved style, Shelbee on the Edge

Per my recent norm, I am writing this post hours after I should have already had it published. Better late than never, I suppose. It has been a struggle lately because of the relentless weather here. I am just happy that I managed to get dressed and find an outdoor place to take photographs in this never-ending winter vortex that surrounds me. I will come back to life once the snow melts, the sun shines, and the green grass greets me on the warm mornings of springtime. For now, I mostly hibernate and only get dressed for style challenges. But I’m okay with that!

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge, and Marsha of Marsha in the Middle. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as presenter, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the presenter by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the presenter will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join either! In fact, you don’t even have to join but you can still use the art to inspire an outfit just for the sake of trying something different. If you want to share your inspired outfit, we invite you do so on Instagram or any other social media platform that you prefer. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Shelbee, or Marsha or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

This Week’s Presenter

It was my turn to choose the artwork. I have been wanting to feature something by American pop artist Andy Warhol since I joined this group as co-host three years ago. It only took me this long to decide which of his works to pick.

Over 15 years ago, I visited the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it is still holds the top spot as the most fascinating museum experience I have ever had. We were in Pittsburgh for an Army function. While the soldiers were doing their required soldier things during the day, a group of significant others and I ventured into the city for a tourist excursion. I don’t remember all that much about the museum exhibitions except for Silver Clouds, which is an installation of 25 large metallic balloons floating around an enclosed room where the viewer can have an interactive experience with the art. But that wasn’t even the fascinating part.

The intrigue came when I needed to use the rest room which was located on the second floor. As I ascended the steps, the stairwell began to take on an eerie feeling. When I reached the floor where the bathroom was located, I was greeted by a large, dimly lit, empty open space with rest rooms off to the sides. It was really creepy for some reason. I proceeded to the ladies’ room, which was a standard public restroom consisting of a few toilets each in their separate stalls with one handicapped stall at the far end.

From what I could see, there was no other person in the bathroom or even on that floor of the building. But my senses seemed to indicate otherwise. As I was choosing my toilet, I noticed an extra long, skinny, striped, knit scarf hanging over the open door of the handicapped stall. I checked to see if someone was around who had forgotten their scarf. I could see no one but I sure as heck felt the presence of someone. In that moment, I convinced myself that the striped scarf on the handicapped stall door belonged to Andy Warhol himself. I also convinced myself that the spirit of Andy Warhol resides predominantly in the ladies’ room on the second floor of the Andy Warhol Museum. To this day, I am sticking to my story on the whereabouts of Andy Warhol’s spirit!

I know that Andy Warhol didn’t wear scarves often (preferring neckties or turtlenecks instead), but he did have a personal affinity for stripes. So it makes sense that the striped scarf was his. I also know that he was very open about his gender nonconformity so why wouldn’t he hang out in the ladies’ room? It’s his museum, after all. He can hang out wherever he wants.

Enough about my trip to the museum. Let’s get to the artist, the artwork, and my outfit.

The Artwork

Diamond Dust Shoes by Andy Warhol

Because Diamond Dust Shoes is a series of screen prints, I chose two different images from the collection to inspire my outfit. You can see more images of the collection here.

About the Artist: Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director, producer, and a leading figure in the pop art movement that emerged in the 1950s. He is widely regarded as one the most important artists of the mid to late 20th century. His works span multiple media including painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, and music production as he explores the relationships between individual artistic expression, the flourishing celebrity culture of the 1960s, and commercial advertising.

Andrew Warhola Jr. was born on August 6, 1928, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the fourth child of Ondrej Warhola (Americanized to Andrew Warhola Sr.) and Julia Zavacká Warhola, working-class Eastern European immigrants of Austrian-Hungarian descent.

In 1912, twenty-three year old Andrew Warhol Sr. emigrated to the United States to work in a coal mine. Nine years later, his wife joined him in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1921. The couple had three sons born in the United States after losing their first child, a daughter named Mary, during her infancy in Austria-Hungary. Their first son Paul was born in 1922, followed by John in 1925, and Andrew in 1928.

When young Andy Jr. was in third grade, he was diagnosed with rheumatic chorea which is a disorder of the nervous system characterized by involuntary jerking movements of the extremities. It is believed to be a complication of scarlet fever which caused blotchiness in Andy’s skin pigmentation. Due to his illness, Andy was often confined to bed as a child. During these confinements, he spent his time drawing, listening to the radio, and collecting pictures of movie stars. In 1942, when Andy was just 13 years old, his father died in an accident leaving behind a wife and three sons.

Andrew Warhol Jr. graduated from Schenley High School in 1945 with a Scholastic Art and Writing Award under his creative belt. After graduation, he went on to study commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. During his college years, Warhol was a member of the campus Modern Dance Club and the Beaux Arts Society as well as the art director of Cano, the student art magazine. A 1948 cover illustration and a 1949 full page interior illustration for Cano are believed to be the artist’s first two published artworks. Warhol earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design in 1949 and moved to New York City that same year to embark on a career in magazine illustration and advertising.

Warhol’s first commission as a commercial artist was to draw shoes for Glamour magazine in 1949. In 1952, art gallerist and collector Alexander Iolas discovered Andy Warhol and organized his first solo exhibition which was held at Hugo Gallery in New York City. Three years later, Warhol was commissioned to design advertisements for shoe manufacturer Israel Miller. This is where Warhol developed his “blotted line” technique which led to his signature printmaking and silkscreen paintings in the early 1960s.

In 1956, Andy began drawing sketches of ornate footwear as a hobby, eventually designing whimsical shoes representing famous people. When the shoes were exhibited at the Bodley Gallery in New York the following year, they sold for $50-225 apiece.

By the 1960’s, Andy Warhol was working for high end clients like Tiffany & Co., creating his famous silkscreen prints of Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, and managing a new experimental band, the Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol became so famous by the end of the 1960s that a radical feminist writer tried to assassinate him on June 3, 1968, outside of his studio. He was seriously wounded and remained in the hospital for two months after the shooting.

In the early 1970s, Warhol shifted his attention to entrepreneurship and became known as a quiet, shy and detailed observer. When Studio 54 opened in 1977, Andy was a regular in attendance bringing new life to the New York City nightlife. He formed a publishing company in 1979 and co-founded the New York Academy of Art in 1980. The 1980s saw Warhol in artistic collaboration with the Brooklyn Bridge, the American Museum of Natural History, the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Olympics, and Vanity Fair.

Warhol traveled to Milan in January 1987 for what would be his final exhibition. He returned to New York City in time to be a model in a fashion show on February 17, 1987. Five days later, at 6:32 a.m on February 22, 1987, Andy Warhol died from complications following gall bladder surgery at New York Hospital in Manhattan. He was 58 years old. His body was returned to Pittsburgh to be buried near his parents.

About the Artwork: Diamond Dust Shoes

Created in the early 1980s, Diamond Dust Shoes is a series of screen prints on paper with real diamond dust. This series takes Warhol back to his early days as a commercial artist when he sketched footwear for advertisements. He was commissioned by friend and fashion designer, Roy Halston, to create this series of images. Halston apparently sent his boyfriend, Victor Hugo, to drop off a box of shoes at Warhol’s studio. Warhol’s assistant dumped the box onto the floor leaving an accidental arrangement of footwear that intrigued Andy. He immediately began snapping photographs of the spilled out shoes and these became the basis of this silkscreen series, which bridges the gap to his first silkscreens from twenty years earlier.

I don’t know how many screen prints are part of this collection and I don’t know the size of the screen prints either. One of the screen prints, which measures 40 ¼ x 59 ¾ in. (102.2 x 151.8 cm.), was sold at Christie’s auction for $162,500 in 2018.

Resources/References:

About My Outfit

For this style challenge, I started at the bottom and built my outfit from my feet upward. For artwork titled Diamond Dust Shoes, I knew that I would wear these glittery ankle boots because they really look like they are covered in diamond dust. Next I added my glittery tights which also appear to be infused with diamond dust. And they feel just as scratchy as diamond dust might.

I was really drawn to the screen print featuring the turquoise, black, and gray shoes against the black background. I don’t have anything weather appropriate in the bright turquoise color, but I do have this teal velvet dress that seemed like the perfect luxurious texture to represent diamond dusted artworks. I added a black turtleneck for extra winter warmth as well as a long black duster cardigan that also has a little sparkle in it.

Keeping it shiny, I cinched my dress with a thin silver belt and then I tied a shoe print neckerchief around the buckle. I wore my diamond hoop earrings for obvious reasons and my adorable new Highland cow necklace that Jeff got me for Christmas just because I wanted to wear it. It has nothing to do with the art. I completed my outfit with my black floppy hat, some shiny black gloves, and a black velvet scarf…because there had to be a scarf in this outfit…hey, maybe it’s Andy’s!

When it was time to choose a coat for this outfit, I focused on the second screen print of shoes that features a rusty colored pump with a black print on it that could be leopard print. That shoe, and that shoe alone, inspired me to choose my cozy old thrifted leopard print coat to top off this velvety shiny outfit. I was all dressed up, Studio 54 style, and all I did was take some photographs in an old graffitied parking deck in Watertown, New York. No place to go! But that’s okay. I am enjoying hibernation season very much.

I hope you enjoyed this post. How did I do with this style challenge?

If you want to play along and be featured with your art inspired outfit in my gallery post on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, be sure to submit your photos to me at shelbeeontheedge@gmail.com by 10:00 p.m. EST on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. In the meantime, be sure to check out Salazar’s interpretation of this painting as well as Marsha’s take on it.

Happy styling, my friends!

Shelbee

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