The Mandarin Princess wears butterfly wings on her eyelids and her face is framed by a high collar of lace-like Miscanthus sinensis (Maiden Grass)
This SoCal belle of the ball wears a party dress festooned with dried Mandarin peels within a lapelled bodice and overskirt of Palm sheaths.
The long succulent leaves of the Aloe ( Canaria) in her skirt are held together with giant yellow Palm thorns, which act as guards for her shattered sun kissed dreams.
The university football players in the adjacent field are too full of Taco Bellz to bother picking the abundance of fruit rotting on the ground and so volunteers pick and distribute fresh fruit to the needy.
The dress stands as a sentinel in front of the garden’s glorious Victorian house, defiant of the profit that was made on the backs of cheap labour.
The dresses’ design evokes the short curved sleeves and the puffy overskirt of the romanticized Cinderella who lies in wait for a prosperous Prince Charming in the now abandoned Magic Kingdom in nearby Anaheim.
Historical photograph: Picking oranges. Circa 1910. J.H. Williams. The fruit industry was called the second Gold Rush and it attracted migrant workers from all corners of North America.