The 88-foot-tall spruce currently holding court at Rockefeller Center has some stiff competition in London. Conjured by British designers Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby of Boudicca, an evergreen at the Victoria & Albert Museum is tricked-out with a custom soundtrack by composer Daniel Pemberton and its own "damp forest smell" by perfumer Geza Schoen. But it's the piece de resistance up top that has people talking: a 24-inch fiberglass and papier mache mannequin, dressed in a lace-covered corset with delicate roses running across her shoulder and feather wings sprouting from her back. But Miss V&A's no prim and proper holiday angel; for all that sweet detailing, she has exposed steel alloy pins for arms and molded, fingered hands. Why? The figurine was partly inspired by Broach and Kirkby's interests in robots and the slightly creepy mechanical dancing doll in Fellini's Seventies flick Casanova. The other main inspiration was Hans Christian Andersen's tale of "The Little Match Girl." The storybook heroine "strikes her match to see her dreams," says Broach. "She sees them, then dies and is taken to heaven. There's a dark beauty that's very natural to Boudicca language." Also noteworthy: the figure's coiffure, designed by Paris' Laurent Philippon of Bumble & bumble. "She looks a bit like Elizabeth's Cate Blanchett," says Broach, "with a kind of glorious Thirties wave mixed in."
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