Literary Inspiration – Pippi Longstocking

My favorite characters in books were always the girls with spunk, the girls with brains, the girls with sass. Anne Shirley, Harriet the Spy, Ramona, Elizabeth Bennett, Pippi Longstocking.

For years I’ve looked to the books I love for inspiration in lots of different areas of my life: Should you eat your mother’s pot roast if the meat is covered in small, taste bud-like bumps? Nope. Should you crack a slate over a boys head if he teases you? Absolutely. So why not look for the same characters for fashion inspiration? Dresses with puff sleeves, here I come!

Up first: Pippi Longstocking.

In Astrid Lingren’s novel, Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim’s Daughter Longstocking can lift a horse, throw pirates across the room, and sleeps with her feet on the pillow and her head under the covers. When we’re first introduced to her, she’s described like this:

“Her hair, the color of a carrot, was braided in two tight braids that stuck straight out. Her nose was the shape of a very small potato and was dotted all over with freckles. It must be admitted that the mouth under this nose was a very wide one, with strong white teeth. Her dress was rather unusual. Pippi herself had made it. She had meant it to be blue, but here wasn’t quite enough blue cloth, so Pippi has sewed little red pieces on it here and there. On her long thin legs she wore a pair of long stockings, one brown and the other black, and she had on a pair of black shoes that were exactly twice as long as her feet. These shoes her father had bought for her in South America so that Pippi would have something to grow into, and she never wanted to wear any others.”

Here’s my modern take on Pippi: