PHOTOGRAPHY BY LILLIAN LIU
Model: @prisciliavanb
Designs: Syban Velardi-laufer @sybansyban
Makeup: Maya Lewis Makeup @mayalewismakeup
Lighting: Lumecube @lumecube

Model: Karie Holst @karieleighholst
Environment Artist: CSaros @eyeofsaros Dress: Firefly Path @fireflypath
Headdress: DreamscometrueUA @dreams_cometrueua
Necklace: Regal Rose @regalrose Nails: Lory Sun Artistry @lorysunartistry Lighting: Elinchrom @elinchrom_ltd, Nanlite @nanliteusa

On a long winter’s night, at an hour through which most mortals slumber like cozy hedgehogs, your mind roams the heavens. You soar past the rooftops and treetops and into the clouds; you drift among stars and planets, gazing tenderly down at the quiet world.

You are drawn, naturally, to the moon. She is your sister; her light is your light too.

So it’s natural that when you open your eyes in the darkness, she follows you to earth. In her shimmering gown and glowing moonstones, she finds you in the slumbering woods—among the remnants of a Gothic palace, let’s say—and dips her feet into the stream of time. Thus she connects herself to the tides, the stars, the planet, and the universe. We believe there’s no kinder protector possible.

“Assemble, ye huntresses and warriors,” she calls. “Gather to us, our sister spirits of the heavens’ untapped powers!”

You watch, rapt, as a pantheon of celestial figures manifest in different phases and moods. They’re luminous, regal, curious, playful, commanding, serene … Clad in gold dust and silver armor, bright silks in shades that drape like curtains made of twilight, and bold tiaras with dangerous tips, your divine companions marry strength to beauty and hold spirit above all. They don’t need to bow to the queen goddess, because the moon doesn’t require obeisance in order to shine; her power is her power is her power, and there’s no one who will deny it. Each one of you will have a turn to illuminate the land, the sea, the sky.

Yes, you are also an aspect of the moon. This is also your night to shine.

Photographer Lillian Liu, the brilliance behind our celestial photo feature, calls the silvery über-goddess on our cover “the soft whisper of night, the comforting glow that keeps the creeping darkness at bay.” As embodied by model Karie Holst, she’s also a creation of inspiration and innovation, just as you’d expect from an artist whose own fantasies always fuel her art.

The goddesses have bestowed multiple talents on Lillian. She’s not only a prolific photographer but also a model and a concert pianist who has performed everywhere from Vancouver (her current city) to Paris. She holds multiple degrees in music, including one in classical piano performance earned at London’s Royal College of Music, and is on the faculty of several

esteemed schools and conservatories. As a lover of antiquarian books, vintage art, animals, and (of course) fantastic costumes, she’s a creative contributor and member of the Paris-based humanitarian and environmentalist collective Free Spirit, which blends art and music with philanthropy.

With such a diverse background, where did she draw inspiration for these pictures?

“My moon goddess here isn’t derived from one culture specifically,” Lillian says, while noting that the water sign of Cancer, which is ruled by the moon, did inspire the stream in which she’s stepping and the jugs on the ground around her.

Lillian created the moon goddess character with Karie in mind. Karie is a “chameleon” who Lillian says beams yin energy—the quiet, feminine, dark type of power that finds its mate in the more aggressively garish yang.

The exquisite costume helped guide the shoot. “I build ideas from the costume up,” Lillian says. One of her first steps was to “source the dress that would convey the theme best.” She found it in the design studio of JoEllen Elam Conway, otherwise known as Firefly Path. “The gown was a perfect piece,” she says, “because of its simplicity and that fabric, which offers sleek shine with its liquid texture and an ethereal design, reminiscent of glowing moonlight radiating off the water. The floating pieces of the gown on her skin look like embedded sigils.”

She decided that Karie’s makeup would be “cool-toned and dewy as well to match the luminescent glow of the dress. And of course, we can’t forget the white wig!” Lillian and Karie did the makeup and styling themselves.

When I asked how Lillian found the perfect location for the cover shoot, she told me she created it—in her apartment.

That was where she took the photos. Once they were done, she started sketching an ideal environment for the character they’d just created. The Gothic arches made the perfect frame for Karie’s sinuous pose, and we think they’re all the palace a moon goddess will ever need—because of course she should have plants and flowing water and open sky wherever she goes.

Finally, Lillian says, “I approached my artist friend CSaros, and he brought this beautiful and mystical world to life” as a 3D rendering. “I then embedded the photograph of the model, painting in light and shadow, and began toning the whole piece,” shading the colors seamlessly.

So the Gothic arches, the stream, the silver-blue rays reaching through twisty tree branches like the timeless enchanted forest of our wishes—all of that was created from scratch and imagination, as if the goddess summoned it into being herself ?

Well, naturally. That’s what goddesses do: They create.

And, of course, they conjure. We imagine the goddesses of these inside pages represent the moon in all her attributes and phases. They were, Lillian says, “inspired by different stories and elements” and include “warriors that channel their power from the night” and the personifications of light and radiance itself, all tricked out in gold and silver … as well as a few figures of, say, speckled moonbeams on a staircase, and a sleeper who might be the dark moon at rest between waning and waxing.

You’ll recognize our perennial favorite Yinsey Wang, who embodies a mere sliver of luminous moon in glimmering blue sky, touching down at a stream in the Azores. Other phases evolve in new locations. Lillian pauses at the Château du Vivier in Fontenay-Trésigny, France, where Janis from Mars brings the blue-silver crescent of an armored new moon. Outside a church in Paris, Theresa Fractale reflects the golden glister of a bright harvest phase crowned with stars, hovering just above Earth in late summer and early fall.

In time, even the brightest heavenly body feels the need for rest. The moon goddess understands, and she promises to bestow upon you the gift of deep, peaceful repose. She guides you toward that oneiric realm in which all your dreams will be good ones.

“You’ll wake refreshed and serene,” she promises.

So go ahead—lie down below the windows of that Gothic palace grown up. Drape yourself over the stones like a knight in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Sleep as long as you can—even after the sun rises and beams yang energy toward Earth. We know the moon is always with us.

I’m going to make a prophecy. All through the coming year, I predict, you will dream of the moon. You’ll embrace her spirit and take her luster for your own. While you sleep, let the shadows guard your secrets; this gathering of celestial beings will inspire you to create more. If cold, bitter sorrow strikes, you’ll continue to shine. You have the moon’s harmonious balance for inspiration.

That’s because the truth, my luminous sisters, is that we’re all goddesses of the moon. We have our phases and dreams, our powers and light. And this season, we shine together.

Photographer: Ava Rymer @gingeredspice
Model: Molly Katherine @scarlett.o.hair
Gowns: Chotronette @chotronette
Florals: Mary Love with Love is in the Air @loveisintheairevents
Venue: Vaughan House Greenhouse & Enchanted Cottage @vaughanhouse

A rose is a broom is a wand is a door. A door is an hour is a way into a bright burst of dreams that are color and magic and a new season, a new life, for an autumn queen tangled up in enchantments. The dryads have watched over our queen pictured here,

Molly Katherine, for how long? A week? A summer? A century? Long enough for her talisman rose to have darkened and her hair to have grown into the branches. With the first chill in the air, the magic that clings to her stirs—Wake up, wake up!

Molly grips the stem of the rose. It is not the blossom that will return her fully to life; it is the thorns. So she dreams, ’til the stem transforms into the handle of a broom and the forest a familiar.

When she opens her eyes, her first thought is of home.

A stone dragon points the way. She and the broom take off … for a palace? No, no, no—what she needs now is a cottage.

An enchanted one. She has plans to lay.

Autumn is the season of memories and plans. This is the time for looking back on the year thus far and dreaming up future magic. You gather mushrooms and firewood, the last foraging from the glen. Scour the windows, plump the pillows, set a soup pot to simmering. Settle in with a book or a craft and mull over who you’ll be next.

There is no better place for a season’s contemplation—and reinvention—than a cottage. We become our best selves in a meaningful space, one with a connection to the earth and the past, a place for contemplation, safety, comfort, the glow of hearth and heart.

Naturally, we would follow Molly just about anywhere.

We are lucky that she headed for one of our mutually favorite haunts, the Vaughan House near Lynchburg, Virginia. Their new cottage—perfect for queens, fairies, witches, all manner of enchanted creature—is just the place to regroup.

In its traditional definition, a cottage is a small home without land. Other than that, it could be almost anything. It could cluster with others in a village; it might stand alone on a moor, in the middle of a forest, or the edge of a bog, maybe teeter at the top of a cliff or nestle into the rock just below.

Cottages are history, fairy tales, romance, tradition, abundance. The pluckiest heroines (and most wizened witches) live in cottages. They’ll take a palace, sure, once they’ve earned

it—but they start their lives the hardscrabble way and have to learn to value the so-called simpler things such as good bread and family love. Especially in a tale by Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm, when a cottage might at first look to the characters like what we’d call a hut, even a hovel: something mean and poor, a starting place rather than an end.

I grew up with a version of “Hansel and Gretel” that begins in such a hovel, where the parents cannot manage to put food on the table. When Mother and Father decide, regretfully, to send the children into the forest to fend for themselves, the kids make an unpromising start by using the bread in their supper basket for marking their path. There’s a bit of good luck when they spot a cottage made out of glorious food—what says “Welcome home” better than a beautiful meal? Plentiful food, full bellies, pleasure … It all sounds great to the resident witch too, as long as the children feed her in return.

It is her cottage after all. Her home. And just look at how creative she’s been with building and decorating it. At the very least, the place continues to define ingenuity, as Hansel and Gretel use their wits to escape.

They return, of course, to the cottage where they were born, and their remorseful parents celebrate their arrival.

In a bustling world, we yearn for home, for simplicity free of the pressures that come with living crowded into cities, competing for space. We want a home with a personality, a sense of tradition verging on nostalgia (and what’s wrong with remembering the best of the past? Nothing). Cottages are quaint in the best way, one-of-a-kind and picture-worthy: the walls half- timbered, rock-faced, wood-shingled, or coated in pebbly harling and tinted white or ochre; the roof thatched or slate-shingled, peaked, sturdy. Naturally sourced, connected to the earth, they are part of our autumn dreams, when we all want to be witches.

And our art and our stories. In Dutch master Adriaen van Ostade’s Cottage Dooryard of 1643, a father gazes over laundry, a chicken coop, a boy playing with a dog, a mother cleaning mussels, a daughter tending a younger sibling. It’s a vision of life that is simply life, a quiet contentment. Berthe Morisot took us indoors with her Cottage Interior of 1886, in which the artist dares to show light colors, a table set for tea, and a girl framed in a doorway, moving from one space to another as she steps toward the transformation of young womanhood.

Now step into The Enchanted Cottage of 1945, an early romantasy movie in which two disfigured lovers see each other as they really are inside. We know all along that Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young are meant for each other—if only they weren’t so determined to see themselves as homely. What do looks matter anyway? Well, just in case: The cottage shapeshifts their exteriors to match the gorgeous people they are deep down, and then—even better—they accept the love that’s offered, and they become their true selves freed of concern about their appearance.

A dream cottage hovers behind every cascade of pink roses in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. John William Waterhouse’s Soul of the Rose (1908) is all sensory delight as a young woman revels in the pleasures of smell and touch; one hand cups the petals gently while the other digs into the rough wall as if to say that she’s ready for all experience.

Claude Monet’s 1925 House Among the Roses is a quintessential impressionist confection celebrated in suggestive strokes of color, not rigid forms and boundaries. It depicts the house where the artist lived in Giverny—rather, a portion of that house, for the whole home is quite grand. In painting just a portion of it, he created an intimacy and dizzy lyricism to hint that even those who can afford something fancy prefer a cottage.

Inside, a cottage is just right for serious work too. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple lives in the last cottage on Old Pasture Lane. From the comforts of her tea table and easy chair, she puts chaos into order by solving all manner of nasty murders inside cozy novels.

Where does Rat live in The Wind in the Willows? Sure, it’s called an underground home, the Dulce Domum, a burrow—but look at the pictures Kenneth Grahame’s novel inspires. You’ll see books and fireplaces, a cupboard bed with a curtain to draw snug, a simple table where Rat can write poetry. Inside, it’s all cottage.

In our photo story, Queen Molly makes one transformation on her way into the cottage, another once she’s in it. Tugging at the door isn’t enough to gain entrance; you can’t just assume that the cottage is waiting for you. So she sleeps in the courtyard and wakes to embrace the season in its riot of ruddy color, its abundance of pumpkins and gourds, seed pods and stone. Only then does she find the home she didn’t know she was seeking.

You know you live in a cottage. Whatever it’s called, whatever it’s made of, it’s your safe space, your bastion and refuge, your locus amoenus of inspiration. Open the window; let the brisk air scour out the cobwebs (the ones no one is using, anyway). Fill it with the season’s flowers and pictures and books; hang herbs to dry from the rafters and do your housework barefoot. Or leave the walls blank and let the space speak for itself. If your home is an apartment, let it be a cottage of the mind; its physical shape means next to nothing when it follows the heart of its occupant. No matter how big or small, if there’s room for a stack of books, you have a library like the one where our Molly curls up to lose herself in other worlds and lives.

We consider autumn to be the kindest season. After summer wanderings, you return home to anchor yourself in your community. That pot of soup that Molly cooked up a few hours ago—surely there’s someone in the village who could use a bowl. The queen will bring it over herself with a heavy round loaf of bread, stepping carefully around the marshy places in the path.

Our Molly may flirt with spectacular gowns stitched together from fae wishes and laughter, but she ends dressed for practical tasks, perched in the kitchen with a mug of tea. Ballgowns and rubies are all very fine, she thinks, but kindness is an art too, and its own sort of luxury. She’s really just at the start of her fairy tale.

Let the autumn magic begin.

Photography by Elizabeth Elder @emackphoto

Story Model: Emily O’Dette @esodette
Gown: Firefly Path @fireflypath
Wings: HelloFaerie @hellofaerie
Crown: Fiori Couture @fioricouture
Videography: Griffin Sendek @griffinsendek

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, said Mr. Shakespeare, but the rose family (Rosaceae) is so large and varied that his poetic statement is not entirely accurate. Of course, that family includes our common garden roses, but also fruit trees and shrubs. Even the strawberry is a kind of rose. Some members of the rose family are sweetly scented, some have no scent at all, but what they do all have is fairies. Members of the rose family fairly swarm with fairies, and when the peach and pear and plum trees are blooming, you may see a fairy sitting on every branch.

Some of these fairies are mild-mannered, but others can be quite pesky, so readers of this magazine may wonder, How do I deal with fairies in my garden? Dealing with fairies in an orchard is a separate issue, and I would direct you to “The Problem of Fairies in a Commercial Orchard” by Rev. Edwidg Higginbottom, where he describes what to do if, for example, fairies attack the families that come to pick apples in your orchard, pulling their hair and pinching them in defense of the fruit.

Here I shall deal only with the average urban or suburban garden, which contains perhaps a few rosebushes, a cherry or apricot tree, and a raspberry bush from which the homemaker intends to make jams and preserves. I shall focus specifically on the rose family of fairies, which are by far the most troublesome of the garden fairies, but certainly worth having—just like the plants they care for and defend.

Consider, for example, how easy it is to grow lilacs, peonies, or daffodils. All these have their own fairies, but they give us practically no trouble at all. However, roses must be cared for diligently lest they get black spot or an infestation of aphids. They must be pruned in the right season, as must fruit trees and bushes, if you are to get any fruit. The rose family of fairies are exactly as troublesome as their plants. Let us now discuss them in detail, so you will know what to expect from your particular set of fairies and why you may wish to include them in your garden despite the additional care they require.

Old Rose Fairies

The old rose fairies are as varied as the roses themselves, from the prickly wild roses that scramble through country hedges to the stately bourbons and gallicas that ornament our rose beds.

I am always delighted to see a fairy ball in my bed of old roses. Some of the fairies play miniature lutes and pipes and tabors, while others engage in ancient court dances, moving in intricate figures over the grass. They dress in gowns made of rose petals, the albas in pale many-petalled confections, the gallicas in various shades of pink, the damasks wearing mossy green caps. The queen of my garden, the Empress Josephine fairy, sits in state on a toadstool, watching the throng.

Modern Rose Fairies

The modern rose fairies are more troublesome, but great fun. They are the fairies of garden roses hybridized after 1867, and their ancestors come from all over the world—India, China, Japan, and elsewhere. They think the old roses are dull, and on moonlit nights you can see them jitterbugging to a cricket jazz band. Their petal outfits are colorful, from creamy yellow to mauve and deep purple, and they tend to be daringly modern in style. Some of the female fairies even wear trousers!

Fruit Bush and Other Plant Fairies

Fruit bush fairies tend to be shy—the raspberry and blackberry fairies hide in their bushes, so you may scarcely see them. But the strawberry fairies are as bold as their bright red caps, and if you are polite to them, they will show you which of their berries are the ripest and ready for picking.

Fruit Tree Fairies

I must confess that the fruit tree fairies are my favorite. In spring, I like to see the peach and plum and apricot fairies sitting on the branches of their trees in delicate pink and white gowns. They are good friends to the birds, helping to build nests and rescuing baby birds that have fallen out of them. The apple blossom fairies can be a bit sour and disagreeable, especially the wild crabs, but they are worth the trouble. If you gain their friendship, you will have a bountiful harvest of apples to keep in your cellar over the winter.

The most beautiful by far, in my opinion at least, are the cherry blossom fairies. In spring you will see them, arrayed in layers of pink tulle, covering their trees so completely that it looks as though they are having a debutante ball. It is a treat seeing them flutter through the air or float down to the grass like pink snow. The trouble you will take in growing a cherry tree will be worth it for the beauty they bring to your garden.

The rose family of plants is not the easiest to grow, and if you have been wounded by the sharp thorn of a protective blackberry fairy or suffered through an invasion of aphids, you may be tempted to give up on them. But I urge you to persevere, for no other fairies bring such beauty and grace to your garden.

Photography: JOVANA RIKALO @jovanarikalo
Model: Phoebe @phoebymontari
Mushrooms: Ana Youkhana @ana_youkhana
Decor: Tandrbal @tandrbal

Readers of this journal are certainly familiar with the various flower fairies of Great Britain and Ireland, which have been written about extensively in academic journals as well as children’s books. More recently, fairyologists have focused on the flower fairies of the North American continent, such as the Lupine Fairy, the Bee Balm Fairy, and the Joe-Pye Weed Fairy. Although less popular with the public, our native tree and shrub fairies, such as the Dogwood, Redbud, and Buttonbush Fairies, have also been subjects of scholarly attention. However, almost no attention has been paid to what may be the most interesting and elusive fairies of all—the mushroom variety.

Noticing this lacuna, the editor of this journal, Professor Ebenezer Brown, graciously invited me to write about mushroom fairies for my fellow fairyologists. It has been my pleasure to study the Mushroom Fairy (Fata fungi) for the past decade, ever since I completed a Ph.D. in Fairy Studies at Harrington-Hall University in Massachusetts.

At first, my advisor tried to dissuade me from studying mushroom fairies, telling me the topic was simply too obscure. “Why don’t you choose one of the tree fairies that are still under-researched, such as the Spruce or Sycamore Fairy?”

he asked me. He even urged me to consider the nascent field of moss fairies.

“But all of these fairies are already the subjects of established scholarly research,” I told him. I wanted to study something no one had studied before. And ever since I was a child, foraging in the forests of western Massachusetts with my grandmother, I have loved mushrooms, from the common turkey tail (Trametes versicolor) that grows along rotting logs to the resplendent and deadly fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), its crimson cap spotted with small white dots like a sign clearly indicating “Do not touch!”

Seeing that he could not dissuade me, Professor Brown reluctantly agreed to supervise my dissertation, The Varieties of North American Mushroom Fairies, which will soon be published as a scholarly monograph available from Harrington-Hall University Press. What follows is an excerpt from the introduction.

There are many different kinds of mushrooms all over the world, and therefore many different kinds of mushroom fairies. The term mushroom fairy can be used for the entire

family, including for the fairies of toadstools, which are simply poisonous mushrooms. However, it is more accurate to call these fairies by their specific names, such as the Inkcap Fairy or the Common Puffball Fairy. Of course, fairyologists prefer to use the even more specific Latin genus and species designations, so the Hen of the Woods Fairy (also called the Maitake Fairy) is Fata Grifola frondosa.

In North America alone, there are so many mushroom varieties that it would take a lifetime to study them all, and wherever you find mushrooms, from the California hills to the forests of Maine and the Louisiana bayous, you will find their fairies. Just like the flower and tree fairies you are probably familiar with in your own garden, the mushroom fairies guard and care for their mushrooms in various ways. For example, the Morel Fairies wash out the distinctive honeycomb-shaped sacks of the morels with rainwater and tend to any injuries caused by weather or depredation. They protect their mushrooms from the beetles that seem to love them so, although they cannot do much against the deer and grouse that are equally fans of the delicious morels. When I tell you that there are more than fifty different species of Morchella, the true morels, you can imagine how many different kinds of fairies must tend to this one genus of mushroom alone.

The fairies of poisonous mushrooms are even more proactive, and if you are out sketching or photographing mushrooms, you must watch out for their darts or arrows. Although these are small, approximately the size of an acacia thorn, they can be quite dangerous, and if you are stung by them, I recommend an immediate visit to your local poison control center.

Naturally, mushroom fairies have evolved to resemble the fungi they live among, so the Black Trumpet Fairies blend right in to the dark patches of those mushrooms on the forest floor, and the Saffron Milk Cap Fairies stand out as brilliantly orange, unless they are in a group of their mushrooms, in which case they are almost indistinguishable. While flower fairies’ clothing is generally made of petals, and tree fairies’ clothing is sewn from leaves or soft bark, mushroom fairies make themselves outfits using their mushrooms. Their garments can look like anything from the white frills of the shaggy mane, which resemble the fringe of a 1920s flapper, to the wrinkled brown leather of wood ear or the purple velvet of the violet wellcap.

Mushroom fairies also seem to take their personalities from their mushrooms. For example, the Chicken of the Woods Fairies are outgoing and gregarious, while the Chanterelle Fairies are opinionated and as peppery as their mushrooms are reputed to taste. The Hedgehog Mushroom Fairies are earthy and practical, rather like hobbits. The Porcini Fairies are brave, even heroic, in defense of their mushrooms. The Yellow Blusher Fairies are so shy that you will rarely see them. I have seen them only once, and they do indeed blush as yellow as their mushrooms. The Old Man of the Woods Fairies in fact resemble wrinkled grandfathers, while the Pettycoat Mottlegill Fairies look and sound exactly like little girls in pinafores.

Once again I should warn you about the more dangerous varieties of mushrooms, whose fairies are equally so. You must watch out in particular for the death cap, whose fairies look so friendly and unassuming—they will smile at you as they shoot poisonous darts into your hand. The Destroying Angel Fairies are easily spotted by their distinctive white robes and wings, which however are purely decorative. (Unlike flower and tree fairies, mushroom fairies do not have wings or fly, which may be connected to the mushroom’s method of reproduction by spores rather than pollen.) You will know the Funeral Bell Fairies by the tolling of the bells they carry. I have already mentioned the fly agaric, whose fairies are easy to identify by their attractive red dresses with white polka dots.

There is still much we do not know about mushroom fairies. They can be male, female, or neither, depending on the type of mushroom. Regardless of their appearance, they seem to reproduce along with their mushrooms, so if you grow mushrooms, you are guaranteed to have mushroom fairies as well. Thoughtful fungus farmers (who grow mushrooms, yeasts, and molds) will provide water and shelter for the fairies that guard their mushrooms, knowing that the mushrooms will be healthier with fairies to care for them. However, if you wish to retain fairies for your mushrooms, you must use organic methods, because fairies will not stand for insecticides of any kind and will leave your farm directly if you use them.

If you wish to communicate with a mushroom fairy, I suggest you find one of the more sociable mushroom species, such as honey or oyster mushrooms, or even puffballs, although their fairies can be unpredictable. If you approach the fairies of whichever mushroom species you have chosen very politely, they may sit beside their mushrooms and have a conversation with you. I myself have been fortunate to gain the friendship of a Greenspot Milkcap Fairy who has told me a great deal about the secret life of the forest, to which humans are not usually privy. But the mushroom fairies see it all: the slow growth of trees over many seasons; the spring birth, summer blossoming, and autumn decay of flowers; the brief, vivid sojourn of foxes and owls and chipmunks. She has also

told me about the lives of the mushrooms. Did you know there is much more of a mushroom under the ground than above? And did you know that through an underground network, mushrooms communicate with trees and enable them to communicate with one another? My Greenspot Milkcap Fairy has shown me how everything we see in the forest is connected, like a great web. We have sat together for hours on a mossy bank, me in my jeans and flannel shirt, she in a rippling green robe resembling the green cap of her mushroom, listening to the sounds of the forest around us. Sitting there, it seemed to me that I learned the great secret of the forest, which is patience.

There is still so much work to be done in the field of mushroom fairy scholarship. I urge my fellow fairyologists to study these important fungal spirits. Without them, how would the mushrooms grow? And without the mushrooms, how would the forests and our other natural ecosystems thrive? Graduate students in particular should focus on the fairies of lesser known mushrooms such as the shaggy rose goblet, which looks like a scarlet cup; the dog’s nose mushroom, which looks exactly how it sounds; the sulfurous staghorn jelly; the milky, globular shooting star; or the fluted bird’s nest, which seems to contain small white eggs. There are so many mushrooms and their fairies still to study! By searching for these species in the forests and fields and deserts where they are found, researchers will add important scholarship to the field of fairyology and teach us more about the fascinating Mushroom Fairy.

Photographer: STEVE PARKE @steve.parke
Model: TEE PIMENTEL @teepimentel
Wardrobe: JILL ANDREWS GOWNS @jagowns
Muah: NIKKI VERDECCHIA @nikki.verdecchia
Backdrop Paintings: NICHOLE LEAVY ART @nicholeleavyart Jewelry: PARRISH RELICS @parrish_relics
Photographer’s Assistant: BRITT OLSEN-ECKER @brittolsenecker

This time-traveling cover story shoot was conjured by a Baltimore team that’s worked together several times before for Enchanted Living. Of course, when you’re featuring a saint and a goddess, you need a unique pantheon of artists.

To re-create these two Renaissance-era paintings, we first needed some … painting, so we called upon artist Nichole Leavy to create custom backdrops, like the ones she so gorgeously crafted for our Nautical and Medieval issues. Her Primavera grove (pictured in its full glory at bottom left) is a stylized version of Botticelli’s original, she says, since the original is so rich and detailed. “I took certain liberties and simplified,” she says, “omitting the figures, of course, and ‘opening up’ the middle foliage. I also changed the original orange trees (a symbol of the Medici Family) into peach trees to be cheeky.” Her Saint Catherine backdrop was much smaller, as she needed to paint it quickly, but it worked perfectly, as you can see.

Both goddess and saint had to have amazing dresses, so we went to wedding- gown designer Jill Andrews, who made pieces for our Celestial and Decadence cover shoots. For Venus’s complicated radiance, she layered white silk chiffon over metallic gold lamé, then hemmed the edges of the chemise using a technique that makes “the perfect ruffle you see in old paintings.” She re-created the ornamental bra from a piece she found online and then hand-covered it with beaded trim. “It was fun to interpret and source all the various details,” Andrews says. She made our saint’s dress from an extremely fine iridescent silk, binding the neck with black velvet and using black cotton bobbinet (a sort of netting) over a bright chartreuse-green charmeuse to get just the right shading on the sleeves. The overdress is a luscious silk and rayon velvet lined with saffron silk taffeta to get the perfect era-appropriate drape.

Of course, we also needed someone who could embody both a goddess and a saint, and we were thrilled to finally put Tee Pimentel on our cover. You’ve seen Tee many times in these pages already, and you might also know her as the magical wing maker behind Creatures Who Craft. Have you ever seen a model move more fluidly from goddess to saint and back again? “It was almost like I was swaying in a dance with friends,” she says, when describing posing as Venus. She does admit to having had a little more trouble with Saint Catherine. “The model in the original painting was really leaning into that wheel at an odd angle,” she says, reflecting on the lack of torture devices in the Enchanted Living shoot, which we do try to make general policy.

Tee arrived at the shoot with jewelry from Parrish Relics, whose treasures we’ve also featured numerous times. Our

goddess and our ladies on pages 18 and 19 are wearing artist Jen Parrish-Hill’s handmade floriated amulet and clover earrings (bottom center), inspired by the Miracle Windows of the Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral. Our saint is wearing her trois fleurs sacrées amulet and earrings (bottom right), inspired by the mille-fleurs tapestries of medieval Europe. How gorgeous are they?

And then Nikki Verdecchia—who has contributed to more shoots for this magazine than we can count—once again worked her hair and makeup magic, keeping Tee’s hair and skin soft and natural, with a glowy lip … for that delicate luminescence worthy of goddess and saint. Because we shine as both, don’t we?

And, finally, photographer extraordinaire Steve Parke, who’s now up to his sixteenth cover for us, worked to replicate the feel of the original paintings by using static lighting rather than strobe lights, which tend to throw a more even light source everywhere in the space. “This allowed me to move the light sources wherever I wanted and achieve a softer, more painterly quality to the images,” he says. Britt Olson-Ecker of local band The Outcalls was also there to assist; everyone knows that it never hurts to have a goddess of music on hand, no matter your endeavor.

Photographer: STEVE PARKE @steve.parke
Model: TEE PIMENTEL @teepimentel
Wardrobe: JILL ANDREWS GOWNS @jagowns
Muah: NIKKI VERDECCHIA @nikki.verdecchia
Backdrop Paintings: NICHOLE LEAVY ART @nicholeleavyart
Jewelry: PARRISH RELICS @parrish_relics
Photographer’s Assistant: BRITT OLSEN-ECKER @brittolsenecker

We’re gazing into our scrying stones at a new year, eaking open a fresh tarot pack, planning a bright 25 of luscious flavors and fragrances, colors and charms. We’ve always been artists, but this year we’re itching to try something new: bake ourselves some jewelry, write a poem full of predictions and wishes, pick up a brush and paint a self- portrait—treat ourselves as the raw materials for new lives.

Welcome to your own personal Renaissance. Are you ready to be refreshed?

The cycles of birth, growth, decay, and rebirth are what define time itself: seasons of the year, transitions of history. So let’s go back about five and a half centuries and say it’s 1475. You’ve lived through a bleak time, what with the Black Plague (1347, then again and again) and the so-called Holy Wars that finally ended (more or less) in 1453, when Constantinople passed from the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Empire. Lately you’ve noticed that the world is more interested in business than in religion, which means that you’re mixing more with other cultures in a step toward globalization. People are paying more attention to people. And then you look around a bit more and rediscover the ancient Greeks and Romans: their intricate stories, their passionate gods, their love of the body in art.

Suddenly you know there is no more exciting time to be alive— and to be refashioning yourself into the person you want to be.

For this issue, we re-created the Renaissance with a dazzling dual cover shoot embodying two of the era’s most amazing icons: the Roman goddess Venus and the early Christian martyr Saint Catherine of Alexandria. We pulled these archetypes out of two famous paintings, dressed our model in lush Renaissance attire, stood her in front of exquisite hand-painted backdrops, and asked goddess and saint to speak to us through the centuries. Art and beauty might be eternal, but they must also step out of the frame once in a while, reveal their layers, and remind us who they are.

At first glance, these women could not seem more different. Botticelli’s Primavera (painted in the late 1470s or early 1480s) shows an exuberant festival, with pagan gods welcoming springtime—perfect for the theme of rebirth. Then Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria (circa 1507) presents a quiet conversation between saint and heavens, a callback to medieval themes of martyrdom and submission. And yet both of them are quintessentially the Renaissance.

What draws goddess and saint together is not who they were but how the artists presented them, the reverence that Botticelli and Raphael shared for the human … sidling all the way over into outright joy. Our talented team of artists felt it too. They utterly reveled in designing and sewing the costumes, painting the scenery, posing, photographing as much of the process as possible, and finding the modern superwomen within the timeless icons.

Indeed, is there any better way to spend a day—or an era?

Goddess of Mysteries

That stately but ethereal figure on our outside cover cannot be anyone other than Venus, goddess of love and beauty. She is an ancient goddess reborn (yes, Botticelli painted that Venus too), a somewhat serious spirit presiding over others’ pleasure: She is one of the ideals to which we aspire. She is also the mother of Cupid, who flies blindfolded over her head, aiming his arrow willy-nilly into a crowd—because you never know when love (or inspiration, or the dawn of a new age) might strike you.

Dating phases of creativity is always dicey, but we’ll go ahead and break the Italian Renaissance down into four major periods: the early gearing-up (1300–1450), the Renaissance generally speaking (1450–1500), the High Renaissance (1500–1520), and a long, lingering, late era (1520–1625) infused with Mannerism, spilling over into the drama of the Baroque. We’ve covered a bit of it all in these pages, from early angels to Queen Elizabeth, and of course, the flourishing art scene.

Botticelli was born around 1445 and belonged to that second phase. He was from a family of goldsmiths (formerly leather tanners), and he lived all his life in one neighborhood in Florence, with some forays to Rome. When he reinvented himself as a painter, he became known for otherworldly, fine- featured, slightly pensive-looking Madonnas. And then came Primavera, and it changed everything.

This huge painting (about 6 ⅔ by 10 ⅓ feet) is a nest of mysteries. We don’t even know what Botticelli might have called it—art historian Giorgio Vasari gave it the name we know, some seventy years after it was made. What we do know is that Primavera was the first large-scale painting of classical gods and goddesses undertaken since the classical era. Here we see Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Flora, the wind Zephyrus, and the nymph Chloris. People had heard of these entities but hadn’t seen them portrayed on such a scale. Botticelli’s masterwork is everything that Renaissance humanism and art were about—an expansion of beliefs and references, with a realistic sense of dimension in the space through which painted bodies appeared to move, and love at the center of it all (or just slightly off-center, anyway).

Now take away the party, the friends—just leave Cupid, because he’s part of who Venus is—and the ancient goddess manifests new qualities. Draped in bright colors over a pale gown, with the hint of gold armor over her heart, she is regal, commanding—a strong beauty. She can hold her own in solitude.

Botticelli’s Venus meets our gaze, her head tilted to the side. Flirting a little? Not if we look at her closely. She seems thoughtful, perhaps assessing us. Are we worthy of love?

Her hand lifts in greeting, or maybe she’s just about to make a pronouncement.

We might not have all the answers, but do we really need a reason to celebrate Venus? Shouldn’t life be all about love and abundance anyway?

Goddess of Transformation

To love, and to love beauty, means you have a curious mind and an adventurous streak—you want to experience the world as you find yourself in it. So our modern Venus, embodied by model Tee Pimentel, is not quite so judgy as Botticelli’s. She asks, What is love, anyway? How do you define what’s beautiful in your life? She has a sense of humor; having exchanged Botticelli’s blue-gray gown for one in diaphanous white, she crosses her arms, just on the point of laughing good-heartedly in our faces. But laughter is just one side of her. She’s also dreamy, passionate, serious, inhabiting each mood fully—a truly human goddess. She urges us to embrace all our emotions. And isn’t it just about time?

Our clothes have always signaled who we are to the world, and as our Venus decides to change hers, we discover new mysteries. The layers peel away. Designer Jill Andrews has added luxe elements such as the cloth-of-gold (a modern silk lamé) that glimmers beneath the filmy white overdress. That gold emerges as Venus’s sleeves, showing she’s precious through and through.

But our girl chooses not to stay Venus forever. When she steps into the Tuscan landscape of our second cover—both backgrounds painted marvelously by Nichole Leavy—she slips into a gown of iridescent blue silk chiffon with split sleeves, studded by 150-year-old gold buttons. Perhaps she is one of the

Muses: Clio for history; Polyhymnia for sacred poetry, song, and dance; Thalia for comedy and celebration. Or a new Muse for a modern age that embraces the past …

Why, incidentally, is there no Muse for painting? Some people say it’s because art must be governed by the goddess of beauty. Or maybe all of us are the Muses. Because even a so-called ordinary girl can change the world.

Breaking the Wheel

Take, for example, Raphael’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria, painted with the spiked wheel of her martyrdom, face turned to the heavens in ecstatic conversation. She too has been a guiding spirit for the Renaissance and beyond: intense, intelligent, sure of her convictions and her rightful place. Not afraid to suffer for her beliefs.

Born around 287, Catherine was a princess and a bookworm (girl after our heart) who converted to Christianity at age fourteen. She set about converting other Romans until the emperor Maxentius considered her a problem when she was about eighteen. He sent pagan philosophers to teach her a lesson and bring her back to the official state religion—and she out-debated them, even convinced some of them to adopt the new faith. Naturally, Maxentius threw her in prison. She held firm. He proposed marriage; she refused. But when he condemned her to death, she accepted with grace.

The method of execution was to have been that spiky wheel on which she leans in Raphael’s picture. It was a cruel sentence, with the executioner using the wheel to break victims’ bones and then leaving them to die. But when the wheel came out, Catherine touched it—and it shattered under her hand. So Maxentius ordered the executioner to cut off her head … and instead of blood, her wound ran with milk.

Saint Catherine has endured for more than 1,700 years as a model of intelligence and resolve. In 1428, her voice urged sixteen- year-old Joan of Arc to take charge of the French army; this princess also knew how to be a warrior.

Joan’s heroism was still within living memory when Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (even his name is a work of art) painted this picture around 1507. His Catherine embodied strength of character and grace, her body twisting away from the wheel that was meant to be her end and up to the heavens in which she trusts. And he painted her in ecstasy, plugged into the divine.

Our modern saint takes Raphael’s version a step further. She’s already shattered the wheel and kicked the pieces away; it doesn’t belong anywhere near her. When we first encounter her, on our inside cover, she meets our eyes immediately—chin up, proud and defiant, with a smile in the corners of her mouth. That’s right, she says, I’m still here. Page a little further into the feature and you’ll see that in her most Raphaelesque pose—eyes toward the sky—she has actually left the painting behind to plant her feet on the modern studio floor and channel the divine into this complicated world.

She shows up several times, too, in the work of Artemisia Gentileschi, who herself withstood torture to tell her own truth (see “When Women Painted the Renaissance” on page 28), and in paintings by Caravaggio, Titian, Vanessa Bell, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others.

Catherine is a princess in the very best sense: a brilliant intellectual, a persuasive debater, with a magical-miraculous scorn for anyone who tries to tell her who to be. She doesn’t need a weapon to fight a war; she has her mind and her will, a complexity that might surprise even our Venus. A secret smile between poses hints at even more mysteries to uncover, perhaps a challenge for us …

Will you be a goddess or a saint?

We answer her just as we’d answer our Venus: Why choose? Be one, be both, be anything. This is your Renaissance.

Photography by Michaela Ďurišová of her mother Vlasta Gerhardová
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Feature image: Photographer/Styling: Michaela Ďurišová @michaela.durisova Model: Vlasta Gerhardová @gerhardova
Crowns: Magaela Accessories @magaela_accessories Dresses: Sicilystyle.sk_bystricky_kraj (cover, p. 12-13)
@sicilystyle.sk_bystricky_kraj, linnenaive (p. 14) @linennaive Wings, muah: (p. 11, 15, 17, 70-71) Barbora Baška Slovaková Muah: Dominika Tosh (p. 14)

Tell us a story, you said—you and you and you. Youngest sister, with your green-gold hair and laughter like birds at dawn; next-to-youngest, with your solemn smile and eyes like forest pools shadowed by ancient oaks; next-to- oldest, with your nut-brown cheeks and berry-red lips, your quick and nimble hands that can spin a spider’s web. Tell us a story, oldest sister.

And I said, Have I told you about the Wise Woman of the Forest?

No, you haven’t. Tell us. Tell us. Tell us.

There is a wise woman who lives in the forest, I said. She has lived there since the beginning of time, or maybe just before time began. It’s entirely possible that one morning, as she was sipping her cup of time, one of her cats knocked it out of her hands while trying to nuzzle her chin. Did I mention that she has cats? Of course she has cats. One of them, whose fur is as soft and gray as mist, knocked her cup over and all the time ran out. That is why we have time.

But not much time, said the youngest, because you told us we have to go to bed.

Hush, said the next-to-youngest. Let our sister tell her story.

This is the story I told you.

Deep in the forest there is a castle. It is made of gray stone and surrounded by a gray stone wall. It’s not a large castle, but it is a castle nevertheless, with towers and turrets and battlements. On top of the towers are pennants waving in the breeze, with the pattern of a black cat rampant, and on top of the turrets are peaked round roofs like witches’ hats.

The outer wall has four gates. At the eastern gate, you will be greeted by a white cat, at the southern gate by a ginger, at the western gate by a tortoiseshell, and at the final gate, the northern, by a black cat with white paws and a white patch under its chin.

Each cat will ask your business with the Wise Woman of the Forest, and you must state your business as clearly and accurately as you can. Usually the visitors who come are on a quest, and they come to ask the Wise Woman for wisdom. Someone or tell us a story, you said—you and you and you. Youngest sister, with your green-gold hair and laughter like birds at dawn; next-to-youngest, with your solemn smile and eyes like forest pools shadowed by ancient oaks; next-to- oldest, with your nut-brown cheeks and berry-red lips, your quick and nimble hands that can spin a spider’s web. Tell us a story, oldest sister.

And I said, Have I told you about the Wise Woman of the Forest?

No, you haven’t. Tell us. Tell us. Tell us.

There is a wise woman who lives in the forest, I said. She has lived there since the beginning of time, or maybe just before time began. It’s entirely possible that one morning, as she was sipping her cup of time, one of her cats knocked it out of her hands while trying to nuzzle her chin. Did I mention that she has cats? Of course she has cats. One of them, whose fur is as soft and gray as mist, knocked her cup over and all the time ran out. That is why we have time.

But not much time, said the youngest, because you told us we have to go to bed.

Hush, said the next-to-youngest. Let our sister tell her story.

This is the story I told you.

Deep in the forest there is a castle. It is made of gray stone and surrounded by a gray stone wall. It’s not a large castle, but it is a castle nevertheless, with towers and turrets and battlements. On top of the towers are pennants waving in the breeze, with the pattern of a black cat rampant, and on top of the turrets are peaked round roofs like witches’ hats.

The outer wall has four gates. At the eastern gate, you will be greeted by a white cat, at the southern gate by a ginger, at the western gate by a tortoiseshell, and at the final gate, the northern, by a black cat with white paws and a white patch under its chin.

Each cat will ask your business with the Wise Woman of the Forest, and you must state your business as clearly and accurately as you can. Usually the visitors who come are on a quest, and they come to ask the Wise Woman for wisdom. Someone or something (a witch, a snake, a dove) has given them instructions that begin, “Go to the Wise Woman of the Forest and ask her …” Here are some of the questions she has been asked:

Where can I find the garden of the Hesperides?

How can I free my husband from the spell that has turned him into a bear?

Where can I find a pair of shoes that will allow me to climb the glass mountain?

How can I weave a cloak of feathers so I can find my swan wife again?

What is happiness, where does it lie, and how can I get there? How can I defeat death, because I want to live forever?

What is true love and where in the world, or out of the world, can I find it?

If you have legitimate business with the Wise Woman—that is, if you have not come to her simply out of curiosity—the cat will let you enter.

If you enter at the eastern gate, you will see a garden with small flowers—violets, daisies, and primroses scattered across a green lawn. At its center is a sundial that tells all the hours.

Around it, daffodils and hyacinths are blooming, and growing by the wall are cherry and apricot trees, dropping their pink and white blossoms on the grass. The air is filled with birdsong.

If you enter by the southern gate, you will see a garden filled with beds of irises, delphiniums, and foxgloves in full bloom. At its center is a rectangular pool on which float the pink flowers of waterlilies. Next to the wall grow rosebushes, all the beautiful old scented varieties. Honeysuckle twines through the rose canes, its yellow bugles buzzing with bees. Sometimes you can hear a frog croaking to its mate.

If you enter by the western gate, you will see an orchard of apple and pear and peach trees, dropping their ripe fruit on the ground. Along trellises on the wall grow grape vines, with green and purple clusters of grapes hanging down like jewels.

In one corner is a fig tree on which grow figs so sweet that wasps get drunk on their nectar. In this garden, if you stand very still, butterflies will land on your hands and shoulders. At its center is a statue of Pomona holding the Horn of Plenty.

The northern gate leads into an austere garden of dry grasses and bare branches that glitter like gems because every stem and twig is coated in ice. The only sounds are a creaking as the wind moves through the branches, a tinkling as ice falls, the crunch of frost under your boots. At the center of this garden stands a yew tree, still clothed in green needles and red berries, promising that color will return again to the earth.

Whichever gate and garden you enter, you will be led into the castle, where the Wise Woman of the Forest sits in her library. Along the walls of that library are bookshelves rising all the way to the ceiling, so high that the upper shelves can be reached only by ladders. The ceiling is painted to look like the sky—or perhaps it is the sky? Sometimes it’s as blue as the sky on a sunny day, sometimes it’s gray with rain and flashing with thunder, sometimes it’s white with unfallen snow. And the ladders go up and up, so that their tops are hidden in mist or clouds.

The books in that library contain all the wisdom in the world, and if the Wise Woman of the Forest needs to consult any of them, she sends one of her cats up a ladder to fetch the required volume. All of her cats are wise, all are multilingual, and the cats of the library in particular wear small berets with feathers— pigeon or peacock or kingfisher feathers—to distinguish them from the garden or kitchen cats, or the cats who play lutes to amuse the Wise Woman of the Forest when she embroiders the night sky with stars.

At the center of the library is a hearth, and in that hearth burns a fire, pink and orange and violet and blue, that never smokes and never goes out. Beside that fire is where she sits every day, working at her desk, because she is a very busy woman—she always has a great deal to do.

What does she do? you asked. Tell us, oldest sister. Yes, please tell us.

The northern gate leads into an austere garden of dry grasses and bare branches that glitter like gems because every stem and twig is coated in ice. The only sounds are a creaking as the wind moves through the branches, a tinkling as ice falls, the crunch of frost under your boots. At the center of this garden stands a yew tree, still clothed in green needles and red berries, promising that color will return again to the earth.

Whichever gate and garden you enter, you will be led into the castle, where the Wise Woman of the Forest sits in her library. Along the walls of that library are bookshelves rising all the way to the ceiling, so high that the upper shelves can be reached only by ladders. The ceiling is painted to look like the sky—or perhaps it is the sky? Sometimes it’s as blue as the sky on a sunny day, sometimes it’s gray with rain and flashing with thunder, sometimes it’s white with unfallen snow. And the ladders go up and up, so that their tops are hidden in mist or clouds.

The books in that library contain all the wisdom in the world, and if the Wise Woman of the Forest needs to consult any of them, she sends one of her cats up a ladder to fetch the required volume. All of her cats are wise, all are multilingual, and the cats of the library in particular wear small berets with feathers— pigeon or peacock or kingfisher feathers—to distinguish them from the garden or kitchen cats, or the cats who play lutes to amuse the Wise Woman of the Forest when she embroiders the night sky with stars.

At the center of the library is a hearth, and in that hearth burns a fire, pink and orange and violet and blue, that never smokes and never goes out. Beside that fire is where she sits every day, working at her desk, because she is a very busy woman—she always has a great deal to do.

What does she do? you asked. Tell us, oldest sister. Yes, please tell us.

Well, for example, she makes sure the stars are staying in their proper courses and the spiders are spinning their webs as they should. She checks that the leaves are turning the right colors in autumn, that the tides go in and out on schedule, that nightingales sing their songs during the correct seasons in the gardens of Spain and Morocco. She does not let butterflies confuse themselves with moths, or vice versa. She designs the patterns for all the snakeskins, and if the planets need aligning, she takes care of that as well. She makes sure that the universe keeps running the way it ought to, because it needs to be adjusted now and then, like an antique clock. And of course she dispenses wisdom to all who find her castle and ask for it. Although she is as ancient as the universe itself, she contains all the ages she has ever been. If you came to her, you might find a girl playing with agate marbles on the floor, or a young woman occupied with her celestial embroidery, or a middle-aged matron writing with a quill pen in a language older than the stars, or a grandmother telling tales and perhaps jokes to her cats as they listen attentively with their tails wrapped around their paws. At night she sleeps in the highest tower of her castle in a bed made of clouds—or perhaps on the moon. I have never visited her at night, so I tell you only what I have heard. But I know that her nightgown is embroidered with a thousand eyes that open when she sleeps and keep watch for her.

Who is this wise woman? you asked. Yes, who is she? Does she have a name?

She has at least as many names as there are stars in the sky, I answered. And probably more. I call her Mother-of-All, and she is your mother and mine. Now go to sleep, Spring. Go to sleep, Summer. Go to sleep, Autumn. It is past your bedtime, and if the Wise Woman of the Forest were here, she would scold you for still being awake. I have work to do, so let me cover you up.

You have had your story. It is time to dream.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MEGAN VAUGHAN
WITH MODEL MOLLY KATHERINE

Summer is for shape-shifters and surprises, flower spells and animal portents.

For dreaming and doing and reveling in the steady surge of life—the ferns that leaf out of control, the rose that blooms and blooms, the fawns who find their legs and begin to explore this messy, gorgeous, ever-changing world. It’s the season for reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses and experiencing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for digging up your favorite selkie story or writing one yourself. It’s for falling in thunderstruck love with the flora and fauna at home and in nature. They will transform you in ways you would never expect.

This summer, lose yourself in a forest, in a gown the color of Irish moss—like this one here, by Chotronette—with a crown like a halo of needles. In time you will come upon a cottage, or maybe a greenhouse, nestled in among the trees, as happens in the very best seasons. The door is open, and the display of potted plants inside tempts you to shed your crown. Wings unfurl from your shoulder blades—you become a fairy, seeing and smelling and touching the wonders around you as if for the first time. And then maybe the queen’s gown is too much, so you shimmy out of it and choose something you can run in. Shake out your hair and you’ll feel a surge: The hard white antlers sprout, the sign that this version of you too is at home.

There is no place better for living out tales of summer magic than Vaughan House, the site of this issue’s cover shoot. You might remember the story from our “Magical Spaces” issue in summer 2021: When owners Megan and Mitch Vaughan suffered a miscarriage, Megan fell into depression—and a testing of faith—until a friend’s gift of a potted daffodil somehow struck a hopeful chord. Gradually a new interest in horticulture drew Megan out of her sorrow. It inspired Mitch to build—in their backyard and with his own hands—a rustic greenhouse that Megan could fill with her favorite potted plants.

Today the greenhouse brims over. It is a sanctuary for Megan and Mitch’s young family, and it has unexpectedly transformed their lives. Their property is now a popular micro-wedding venue, and they are putting final touches on a new space, a cottage complete with a turret right out of a fairy tale. As they promise on their website, “We are the folklore hidden in the woods.”

Romantic love is most at home in summer—perhaps with unexpected consequences. Consider A Midsummer Night’s Dream: If you fall asleep in the forest, you just might find yourself enamored of the first person you see upon waking, if the fairies are around to sprinkle your eyelids with the juice of a wild pansy called love-in-idleness. Or in a most unfortunate transformation, you might wake up with the head of an ass … and discover that the person who’s been sleeping near you is perfectly happy with the new you.

Every fairy is a shape-shifter. So are the Scandinavian nisser; so are naiads and dryads, goddesses and witches … and mortals such as this issue’s mascot, Arachne, who was so renowned in life for her tapestries that she aroused the wrath of Athena—and then defeated her in a weaving contest. After a beating with Athena’s shuttle, Arachne repented of her pride and hanged herself. Athena showed mercy by resurrecting Arachne as a spider, and the weaver returned to work on the spot, albeit on a much smaller scale.

“Weaving spiders, come not here,” chants Shakespeare’s First Fairy, protecting Titania’s sleep. “Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence.”

But wait—we’d like to extend those spiders, most humble fauna, an invitation. They are beneficial for the garden and for the home; their only crime is being so good at what they do. In tribute, look for spiderwebs throughout this issue; you’ll find them made out of all sorts of materials, glinting or wisping in sometimes unexpected places.

Take our cover, for example. Our personal Titania, glorious model Molly Katherine, pays homage to Arachne in a golden detail. Molly is a bit of a shape-shifter herself. She says that designing costumes comes naturally for her: “I’ve always had an extensive range of styles, and a lot of times I get consumed by the aesthetic of whatever I’m into at the moment—whether that’s a show, music, or anything else.” Getting into character for a shoot is “really just embodying someone that I already feel like or want to be, so it is a great way for me to channel the different ways I feel on any given day!”

Molly’s long locks are clearly a signature feature. They’re also surprisingly versatile when it comes to transforming herself. “I have endless options,” she says. “If I want to let the outfit shine, I can do something really simple with my hair, and the image will still have that ethereal, fantasy, or Renaissance-painting look I’m going for.”

In Molly’s pictures on these pages, we spot allusions to Pre-Raphaelite painters John William Waterhouse and John Everett Millais, and to stories of enchanted deer, and to the powers of gardens and greenhouses to soothe and inspire and even heal. Most of all, we see in these photos—as with this issue in full—a celebration of summer’s hope and the power of flora and fauna (and very, very long hair) to inspire and beguile.

Susann Cokal is the author of four novels, the latest of which is Mermaid Moon. Visit her online at susanncokal.com.

Photographer/Styling: Megan Vaughan @vaughanhouse
Model: Molly Katherine @scarlett.o.hair
Dresses: Chotronette @chotronette
Wings: Wearable Whimzy @wearablewhimzy
Gold crown: Verdessa Fairy B.Contrary @verdessa_fairy
Antler headpiece: @thefloramystica
Florals: Mary @loveisintheairevents
Venue: Vaughan House Greenhouse @vaughanhouse

Sylvie Facon would like to see you in the library. That is, she would like to see you wearing the library, namely in the form of one of her fantastic couturier gowns.

Made from actual antiquarian books that she takes apart and manipulates, Facon’s creations are at once both avant-garde and romantic, innovative and steeped in history. She collects materials from the odd corners of library and bookstore, where she says you’ll find “passion fully expressed, a mastery of subjects”—though the tomes themselves have probably languished unopened for years. Or think of them this way: waiting. It is their destiny to be rediscovered and repurposed, cleverly fashioned into marvels to make their wearers and beholders gasp.

By now you’re already imagining yourself slipping into a one-of-a-kind Facon. Pull the heavy bindings and spines up around your spine. Settle the gathered pages around your waist and get help lacing yourself into that corset. You have entered the fever dream of a writer, bookseller, couturier, reader, lover. With every step, your gown sways like a bell; your pages rustle; the edges of your bodice part to reveal precious handwritten lines. You can truly call yourself an open book when an ancient tome’s pages unfurl from your hips.

Already known for unique bridal wear and floral gowns, Facon—a resident of Arras, France—was inspired to create her first book dress when she encountered steampunk. The movement’s philosophy about using old materials to make something unexpected and new gave her exciting visions of new uses for book covers and bindings.

In an interview that took place over email, Facon said, “What I love most in old books is what I call ‘the colors of time’s passing’: the aged leathers, the color of their pages, what’s unique and precious. The fact that they have been witnesses to lives, generations, big events—that they’ve survived all of that to arrive at me.”

By making books into dresses, she “can put them into conversation with other precious materials that enhance their beauty.” So to their sturdy leather and foxed pages she adds tulle, rattan, and lace to create garments both spectacular and personal: showy statement pieces that feel as intimate as a whisper.

“I work from an impulse toward harmony and gentleness,” she says, “thus very few contrasts.” When she looks for materials, she has an eye out for “sketches, drawings, and paintings with a lot of finesse. Elegant typography. An impression of profusion.”  The colors are in half-tint, slightly faded, never “garish.”

She has completed nine out of a projected ten chapters, each one a different dress. What drives the series is “above all a desire to say things in my own way, to tell stories.” Her authorship is emphasized in a technique that partially erases it, as she makes sure none of the sewing work shows. Only the final creation should be seen, she says: “We move from one kind of material to another in an almost invisible way.”

The effect does not come easily. A dress needs curves to fit a woman’s body, but the old leather bindings and spines are not supple. Facon has a “little secret” for protecting their integrity while she works with them—and an artist must guard her secrets closely—but she says she does not use steam or any chemical products to alter the physical books. She simply works with them gently, coaxing them into the shapes she requires. Call her the book whisperer.

Inspiration comes also from a friend’s bookstore in the center of Arras. The ground floor may look like a typical bookshop, but, she says, “the mezzanine level takes us to the past. Thousands of old books are packed tight on shelves that sag under their weight”—old books that are no longer for sale and that “have no great value, but in my eyes are very aesthetic.”

Her own personal library is curated for the visual and the magical. She loves illustrated editions about fairies, elves, dragons, and other enchanted creatures, and the work of French artists Sandrine Gestin and Didier Graffet. “Their world is also mine,” she says.

That world is ever expanding into entire universes of possibility. One idea sparks another as Facon builds couture out of fantasy. One of the challenges she faces while creating the book dresses is precisely “to stay in the realm of original haute couture, not costume.” She explains that a costume is a way of transforming oneself to embody a character or era; a costumer puts her creativity at the service of the client’s vision. Original haute couture requires precise technical savoir faire and flawless handmade execution—most important, it represents an artistic vision that soars above the materials to express ideas of the art, artist, and time themselves.

In one of Facon’s creations, you don’t just wear the story; you are the story.

Visit Sylvie Facon online at sylviefacon-creatrice.fr/en/home.
Find Susann Cokal online at susanncokal.com.

We wanted to interrupt your gorgeous chocolate-buying activities with the unveiling of the cover of our spring Book Lovers issue!

We’re sending this chock-full issue off to the printer this very day and and should be arriving in your mailboxes, and hearts, and bookstores, in March.

Here’s the cover featuring one of Sylvie Facon’s epic book dresses and model Eléa Hamdi:

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