A circle represents totality, wholeness and perfection. There are a lot of circles in life: Day follows night; winter comes after summer; young becomes old. Everything is a circle if you start to see them! All elements flow, change, become what they are meant to be and make space for things yet to come.

The first time I heard about circles as something other than what we had to draw at school in geometry was when I was a little kid. I watched The Lion King with utter amazement on my face. Do you remember that scene when the little lion cub was presented to all the animals, and Elton John’s voice carried the epic scene? 

Everything in nature follows their circle: The flowers with their rhythm of resting, rooting, and blossoming and the bees picking their nectar and making honey. Knowing about circles also means taking care not to break them: To care that what we start flows and continues, not to interrupt circles, and not to cause waste but give a little push so a flow stays in its movement.

Since I saw the scene from Lion King for the first time, I have come quite a way in my circle. Growing up, learning, failing, getting up again, getting older, learning about my limits and discovering I could do more than I thought. Where am I in my circle? I do now know.

What I do know is this: I want to make a big, big rainbow-coloured circle. A circle that radiates, shines and inspires others. A beautifully round circle without any edges that hurt somebody and comes in all colours. Just like my bag.

What is your circle?

Pictures: Greta Schoop
Styling: Greta Schoop & Sara Streule
Hair & Makeup & Model: Sara Streule
Artwork: Safu at The Circle

Bag: I Love Syria, Clothing: Bought in the Provence,
Hat: Chapelaria Azevedo Rua, Belt: Claudie Pierlot,
Cardigan: The House of Foxy bought at Hazels Boudoir,
Shoes: Zara

A coronation occurs today in another dimension: Imagine a pink princess Diana sitting on the throne. High up is her chin, and the smile of the queen of hearts fills the room.

Whatever dimension, princesses have something in common: They grow up in a home that lacks love, and their wounded spirits crave attention. They only believe in their aliveness in the flashlights of the cameras and know how to play it to their advantage. Their desire for love is their tragedy and glory: In the breast of every Diana beats a heart starving and hungry. The disaster escalates if they are bound to men whose love they can never win.

But like every coin has two sides, the beauty always lies closest to the pain, and their past makes them capable of floating whole nations with love.

So tell me: Which dimension would you rather be and shout hail to the ruler in a spectacular parade: One with a dead princess that lingers like a beautiful shadow full of sadness or a dimension with a sparkling pink queen on the throne?

Photographer: Nora dal Cero
Hair & Makeup: Sandra Gimmel
Styling & Model: Sara Streule
Jewellery: Natkina, Clothing: Maroni Vintage
Crowns: One from Etsy, the others lent from friends

Who is on a fool’s errand, and who follows the quest for the holy grail? Time will tell! Who is the jester, and who is ruling royalty? Time will tell! Who is a watch ambassador: Time has spoken: Sara is in Love with is!

My watch is purple, the mysterious sibling of pink. Purple is a colour that has an aura of mystery, spirituality and belief. It is also said that it has an aphrodisiac effect. Maurice de Mauriac, a watch manufacturer from Zurich, makes the watch we are discussing.

I haven’t worn a watch for years. But when the L3 Spheric Purple touched my skin for the first time, I knew those times were over. Does a watch give time a different meaning? It may be that seconds and minutes feel more special when I observe the watch hands moving in circles over the shiny dial plate.

This particular watch had to be presented in unique pictures: The shooting I did with photographer Philipp Mueller takes you to a crazy version of a fictive version of Alice in Wonderland. Do you see the rabbit in the far, repeatedly saying that he is late, pointing at his watch? Am I Alice? Am I the Queen? Am I both or neither? Time will tell! We only know once the story continues…

Watch: Maurice de Mauriac
Clothing: Rubi Baur mixed with accessories & shoes from my wardrobe
Location: Wow Museum Zurich

Pictures: Philipp Mueller
Styling and Makeup: Sara Streule

Pink, like the sky on a sunset in spring.
Pink, like the skin of a newborn.
Pink, like a box full of Barbie shoes.

Pink, like ripe, fragrant raspberries.
Pink, like Amazon River Dolphins.
Pink, like my first teenage lipstick.
Pink, like chunky Himalayan Salt.
Pink, like a flock of Caribbean flamingos.
Pink, like a cherry blossom tree in Japan.
Pink, like Barbie’s dream house.
Pink, like the peel of sweet dragon fruit.
Pink, like the flesh of a Guava fruit.
Pink, like a string of sticky, sugary candy floss.
Pink, like satin ballet slippers.
Pink, like hibiscus blooming in the south.
Pink, like Lake Hillier in Western Australia.
Pink, like a staple of freshly picked radishes.
Pink, like the jolliest doughnuts in the shop.
Pink, like a rose quartz rock.

Pink, like Sara.
What is your shade?

Photographer: Anja Wurm
Styling und Makeup: Sara Streule
Clothing : Rubi Baur
Necklace: Vivienne Westwood, Hat: Vintage
Shoes: all from my wardrobe

Her ancestors were gold diggers. No, not the kind of women the word is used for nowadays, but real gold diggers with washing pans made of iron and cracked dirty hands from the wet mud. Their mouths were filled with rotten teeth, and their smile was also foul.

Just one of their teeth was gold, blinking in the sunlight when they told rude jokes about the women in the village. Their minds were always full of the promises of a shining future that never became the present or the past.

In her sleep, the gold diggers’ daughter heard the sound of moving stones and felt the cold water on her skin. She dreamed of the fingers with dirty nails that touched Welcome Stranger with its body of 72 kilograms of gold. It was the biggest nugget of them all. Her life started as a tragedy since her family was capable of many things, but loving her was none of them. The only problem with her was that her eyes looked like Persian turquoise, while her kin had a lust for gold running through their veins.

Her ancestors hurt the ground with their picks and her delicate soul with their hard words and deeds. She started to wear a veil to spare them from the blue sparkle she was carrying and began to wear fool’s gold because her family treasures never touched her neck or hand. Their misunderstanding was that they believed gold was found when they wounded the earth’s skin, and she would be just like the earth: Revealing her brightest sparkles when injured.

They didn’t know that the earth cried in silence when they swung their picks, and she still cried into her pillow years after she escaped without a hint of gold dust on her cheeks but gaping wounds on her soul. She learned from her past that gold meant no luck and rough hands were not very likely to offer softness. She ended up working in a coffee shop on the highway, serving a little bit too dry cake and a tad too hot coffee to truck drivers wearing lumberjack jackets and calling her Miss Hollywood.

Maybe it was the reflection of the gold of her ancestor’s desires in her eyes. Perhaps it was the absence of it on her alabaster neck or the melancholy that was always around her like a cloud or her very personal perfume. Maybe it was just the desolation of the highway and the lonely life on the road. Something about her made people dream of sparkling things. 

It was so easy to be shining compared to highway reality. On the other hand, the tragedy was that no matter how brilliant or beautiful a woman ever was, she could never outshine the outlandish glam of pure, genuine, solid gold. But she was all left alive, the first in her line of family who was no gold digger and the last one breathing. She smiled, her pink lips moved, and the coffee pot was ready. “What can I bring you?”.

Dress & Hat & Handbag & Necklace & Gloves : Vintage,
Belt: Maya Seyferth, Shoes: Irregular Choice,
Photographer: Roland Urech
Location: Cindy’s Diner

Once upon a time, a girl was searching for her wonderland. She thought she had found the golden ticket until she realised how wrong that belief was: The sad truth was, she didn’t even know her own name. She was called Wilhelmina Wonka.

So she was just a clown; there was no golden ticket. She looked colourful, and unlike other people, her talent to make things joyful ran strong through her veins like an endless rainbow. She inspired people everywhere she went, filling their eyes and hearts with the brightest colour. People looked at her like she was a piece of joy, but they didn’t know that she had a dark void of something missing inside her.

She got up in the morning, filled with colours she collected in her dreams and spilt them onto the world, day after day. People laughed with joy when they saw her, they laughed about her as if she was a clown too, and they laughed with her. She never kept anything back for herself. From Monday to Sunday, she exploded like a colour bomb at a Holi festival daily. What was left inside her then was darkness, hurt, pain and profound loneliness coming to light with the absence of colour. This she kept for herself. It was nothing she wanted to be her legacy. But it caused her more pain than an aching toe or a sore leg. In the dark nights, she forgot everything she knew about colours and her dreams had to teach her like it was the first time she ever heard about her destiny.

She wished so much there was a Willy somewhere out there. He would be just like her, and they would recharge each other while giving their colours away. When the lights of the colour factory went out, she often cried in the happiest place on earth, but nobody ever saw it. Since she covered the traces with happiness in the morning, nobody sensed the odour of a broken heart in the air among the sweet jolly smell of amusement.

This dear reader is the colourful and happy and sad story of Wilhelmina Wonka. She is still out there, looking for somebody to shower her in colour. She has sweets for you all, for sure. And the moral of the story: You never know what’s behind the face of a Wonka, don’t judge it a first glance.

Jumper & Gloves: Anastasia Bull
Blazer: Mugler Vintage, Hat: Chanel Vintage
Skirt: From the Erotic Shop
Shoes: Bordello

Pictures: Tanja Gschwandl
Makeup: Lara Spiess
Styling: Greta Schoop & Sara Streule

“What is the most beautiful thing you can think of?”
he asked. “The moon” she said and closed her eyes.

Oh moon, you make me dream of immortality,
eternal beauty and endless love.
You are the muse of not just one poet and artist,
but you have a hoard of lovers,
worshipping your otherworldly beauty.
Your soft glow feels like magic and covers
a whole planet in a blue shimmer.

Oh moon, every night I try to reach you,
gentle touch your craters with my fingertips.
I wonder if the zillions of myths about you are true.
Do I imagine, or do you keep an eye on me?
Is it you smiling at me in sleepless nights?

Oh moon, you source of wisdom,
you must have seen all secrets hidden
in the darkest dark.
Will you whisper one into my ear,
if I show my naked heart to you on a full moon night?
You have all my attention,
every time you appear in the sky.

Jewellery: Natkina

I closed my eyes and became one with my surroundings. Having a gentle eureka moment with a herbal twist, I realised I was part of the planet, the field, and the ground beneath my feet. I was a flower in a zillion of flowers, with the only abnormality being that I had feet instead of roots. But that didn’t matter to anybody for one precious moment. The soil embraced my toes and told them they were fine just the way they were, and so was I.

While for the outside world, nothing that made it into history books about human achievements and wonders of the world happened, this moment was everything for me. My life, my book. Peace, love, happiness and balance in a nutshell, a perfect world manifesting itself behind two closed blue-green eyes and slightly open lips.

In his moment, when my heart was at peace and I belonged, I was the purest essence of myself. I had my place in the universe next to my loved one. We were king and queen of the endless fields for the sweetest seductive instant we were given. The humming of the bees was a jubilee. Purple took over the world and embraced my pinkness with zillions of arms.

Earth filled all my senses with pure natural delight: My nose was drunk with the beguiling lavender smell, and my heart overflowed with the essence of love. The pink stranger became known as the purple bride; the secret of belonging was to commit.

Every white inch of my skin was stung by bees and mosquitos. It didn’t matter because paradise is perfect, and love makes all imperfections disappear. I was bound to earth, tied to you, finally not running up a hill for the first time in an eternity. The butterfly didn’t feel like flying anymore. The woman it gave birth to was all yours. It was the true me. I came to stay. My toes dug roots into the soil.

All I had on my mind was to cherish our tenderness, dreaming of your lips and mine forever, believing purple clouds would never spill rain on our sacred land. Your laughter was my siren song. I was enchanted. Tears of joy ran down my face, unlike ever before. Life was wild. Life was free. I felt like I don’t need anything else but the love in my heart, the smell in my lungs and your laughter in my ears. Then I woke up, and the scent of lavender was still lingering but fading. I was almost shocked to discover I had toes again. I put one foot in front of another and started to walk.

Dress: Maya Seyferth, Hat: Frollein von Sofa

The pink bunny scurries through the forest in snake lines between the trees on Valentine’s Day. The nimble creature avoids to be caught. Not belonging to anybody, yet not helpless at all.

Once and for ever listen and understand: Harmless and helpless are two entirely different things. Having a mind at peace doesn’t mean to be depending, but the opposite. The missing need to be restrained, possessed or subservient is true strength. If you do understand this, you might touch a free soul once.

Bunnies don’t dream of diamond rings nor do they crave for other symbols of opression. So happy Valentine’s Day, free creature. You do love your own soul, you do know about the worth of your heart and don’t give it away for cheap flowers from the petrol station and kisses that smell of unbrushed teeth. Your goal of life is not to wash laundry for somebody who shouts at you or to close your eyes to betrayal and lies.

So if you want to catch a bunny, good luck.

Outfits/Styling: BAZ Vintage, Mask: Maskaras
Pictures: BAZ Photography

The lady of the flowers dances in your dreams. She dances in your head. Swirls around in your thoughts. Her laughter is a bright sound, like rolling glass marbles and joyful copper bells. In her realm, it’s summer forever, because she lingers in happiness.

She keeps the feelings, hopes and loves of last summer close to her chest. They are her shining treasure. “Do you wanna dance with me again?” she asks and her eyes fix on you, letting the snow melt even on the mountaintops far away.

Blue is the colour of the sky before it falls asleep and blue is the colour of her dress. What she said she says and will say. Future, past and present don’t exist in her dream, only those words and you taking her hand. Night after night. You can dream this dream a million times and always have a smile on your sleeping face when the dance starts again to sweet piano sounds.

If you join her laughter, summer will never end, beauty will sprawl like weed in your garden. She’ll sit down in the moonshine and weave curtains made of love, affection and tenderness to protect you from sun and rain. You will lay next to her on a bed of petals and she will tell you stories about the rabbit on the moon and the pharaohs of the Nile.

She is a fairy that one, only shows herself when she chooses to. If she reaches out it means you have her heart. Don’t crush it please, fairies are delicate creatures. So take her hand, just take her hand.

Dress: Maya Seyferth, Headpiece: Pearls & Swine, Shoes: Vintage
Photographer: Fabiana Nunes, Team: Greta Schoop