A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
"Teacup on your left," Liesl said. "Big as a hot tub. Six people dancing in it, and it's spinning."
"Clockwise?"
"Does it matter?"
"Everything matters at a tea party." Oona tipped her face into the wind coming down off the San Bernardino Mountains, cold and clean, with a ghost of snow in it. Her folded cane rested in the crook of one arm. Her other hand sat on Liesl's elbow, just above the joint, where it had lived through twenty years of crowds. "You skipped the smell."
Liesl breathed in. Kettle corn. Fog machine. Someone's vanilla body spray, and under it the warm-concrete breath of the event halls leaking heat into the forty-seven-degree night. Through the steel wall of the nearest hall, a trance breakdown climbed rung by rung, and when it broke, the cheer burst out of the doors like a flock of startled birds.
"Sugar, fog, vanilla, concrete," she said. "And you, in a cloak that looks like a city seen from a plane."
She'd described it in the shop three times, slowly: deep navy, and across it neon lines in teal and green, violet and pink, rising into towers and arches and domes shaped like mushroom caps, symmetrical as a cathedral window. Oona had said sold before the second time was over.
"People keep staring at it," Liesl said.
"Good. I paid for staring."
The crowd ahead opened the way crowds open for a stilt walker. A tall woman came through it wearing a crown of cut crystal that threw rainbows into the fog, and under the crown, absurdly, the hood of a cotton hoodie printed with the very same towers. She stopped in front of Oona, studied the cloak from hem to hood, and went down on one knee on the asphalt.
"Your Majesty," she said. "You're late."
Oona didn't even blink. "I've never been on time in my life."
"Then you're right on schedule." The woman glanced at Liesl's crop hoodie, the same kingdom glinting across the velvet. "And you're wearing the east wing. Fine. You can come." She rose. "The kingdom opens for one song, the last one. Three doors between here and there, each locked with a riddle. Answer all three before last call."
"And if we don't?" said Liesl.
"Then it folds itself up like a letter and posts itself to next year."
Oona's watch spoke from her wrist in its small, polite voice. Eleven fifty-two p.m.
✦
The first door was set in a hedge of painted roses, and it was knee-high.
"I only speak when spoken to," said the woman in the crown. "I always get the last word. I live in every hall you'll dance in tonight, and nobody has ever once invited me. What am I?"
Liesl opened her mouth. Oona clicked her tongue. The click flew off the steel wall behind them and came back small and bright.
"An echo," Oona said.
The little door swung inward. They went through on hands and knees, Oona laughing, the cloak whispering over the grass.
On the other side lay a hall where a thousand teacups hung on threads too fine to see, chiming every time the kick drum landed. Dancers stood barefoot on a banquet table between the saucers, arms up. Every clock on every wall had stopped at six. Liesl narrated it all at speed, steering Oona around a girl in a rabbit-eared hood who was trading kandi for compliments.
"I know," said Oona. "Listen. Nothing's ticking."
At the far end, beneath a clock with no hands at all, the crown was waiting.
"I fill this hall without taking an inch of floor. Every light in the building is paid to chase me out. I'm in your pocket and under your hood, and the moment you come looking for me with a torch, I'm gone."
"Shadow," said Liesl.
"Close. Close is a lovely place. Nobody lives there."
One twenty-nine a.m.
The bass rose, and Liesl's pulse rose with it. Pocket. Hood. Torch.
"The dark," she said.
Every light in the hall went out at once: the teacups, the clocks, the exit signs. Then the floor tilted forward under their feet, and they began to go down.
✦
Liesl had never known black like it. Not the black of a bedroom with the curtains drawn. The black of the inside of a closed fist. She put out a hand and found nothing, put out a foot and found a slope.
Beside her, a soft snap: Oona unfolding her cane. Then the tap, quick and silver, sweeping left to right.
"Elbow," Oona said. "Just above. I'll call the steps."
Liesl's fingers found her friend's arm in the dark and settled where Oona's hand had rested all night. All year. Since they were eleven.
"Ceiling's dropping. Duck in three, two, now. Wall on your right, soft, like moss. Big room ahead. Sixty people, maybe seventy, all dancing very quietly, which I'd love to know the look of." The cane swept. The kick pulsed up through the floor, slow and enormous. "We're going down. Feel it? Down," Oona said, and her voice dropped. "Down." Lower still. "Down."
Liesl stopped walking.
Every down a little deeper than the last. Her own trick, from the summer they were eleven, lying on the floor of Oona's bedroom with the box fan rattling, holding the paperback closer and closer to Oona's face until the letters swam and there was nothing for it but to read aloud. Every chapter. Every voice. The whole of August, all the way down the hole.
"You kept that," Liesl said. Her voice cracked down the middle.
"I kept all of them." Oona drew Liesl's arm in snug against her ribs. "Your Duchess sounded like a pirate. Come on. I can hear the night air."
✦
The passage opened onto cold and stars, and the wind smelled of snow again. Ahead stood a tall gate of wrought iron and glass, and beyond it a glow, and a kick drum so big it lifted the hair on Liesl's arms.
The crown waited before the gate, her crystal points scattering the starlight.
One fifty-eight a.m.
A voice rolled out from beyond the gate: "This is the last song."
"I always begin at once," said the crown, "though I'm never in a hurry. You can carry me for twenty years and I weigh nothing at all. Nobody has ever seen me. I can only be told. And every time I'm given away, there's more of me than before."
Beyond the gate, the breakdown began, a long synth line climbing toward the drop. Liesl's mind went white and roaring. Twenty years. Told, not seen. Once.
Once upon a time.
She looked at Oona, at the small smile Oona used to wear on that bedroom floor whenever a page turned.
"A story," Liesl said.
The gate swung open.
✦
The kingdom rose out of the dark in lines of light. Towers of neon teal and green climbed toward the stars. Violet arches leapt between them. Domes swelled like mushroom caps over every rooftop, rimmed in pink and ribbed underneath like cathedral vaults, the whole city mirrored perfectly down its center line against a sky of deep navy. Thousands faced it, arms high, flags snapping overhead.
"Tell me," Oona said.
"Okay. On the left there's—" Liesl stopped. She took both her friend's hands instead. "No. You tell me."
Oona tipped her head. "Thousands of people, all turned the same way. A flag right above us, cracking like a whip. Somebody on the right singing every word, off-key, which means it's a good one." She grinned. "And you. Dancing, for once."
The drop landed. Oona threw her arms up and the cloak flew open, the kingdom on her back blazing in the stage light, tower for tower with the kingdom in the sky, and the velvet on Liesl's sleeves caught the same glow. Liesl closed her eyes and danced, and saw every tower anyway.
When the song ended, the domes went dark one by one, the way a city falls asleep, or the way a crew kills the lights. Liesl didn't look closely enough to know. The woman in the crown was gone. On Oona's hair sat a ring of cut crystal, throwing small rainbows across the kingdom on her back.
Liesl offered her elbow. Oona took it, just above the joint, and they walked home through the kingdom.
The kingdom, to wear
Oona's cloak comes from Magus Fawn: the Crystal Mushroom Kingdom women's cloak ($250), deep navy crossed with neon teal, green, violet and pink lines that rise into towers, arches and mushroom-cap domes, a whole glowing kingdom on one hooded festival cloak. The woman in the crown wears the Crystal Mushroom Kingdom cotton unisex pullover hoodie ($100), the same kingdom dye-sublimated into 100% cotton, a print process that traditionally worked only on polyester. Liesl's east wing is the Crystal Mushroom Kingdom crushed velvet crop hoodie ($75), a rave hoodie crop top whose velvet catches every light in the hall.
- Cloak: micro-mink outer · ultra-soft fluffy microfiber fleece lining in black or white faux fur · listed fabric weight 200 g/m² · double front zipper · heavy drawstrings · four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets) · unisex fit, XS–5XL.
- Cotton hoodie: 100% cotton, dye-sublimated · listed fabric weight 310 g/m² · kangaroo pocket · drawstring · relaxed regular fit, XS–6XL · allow 3–5% shrinkage after the first wash; wash cold and air dry.
- Crop hoodie: crushed velvet, 95% poly / 5% spandex · listed fabric weight 240 g/m² · hooded crop with a drawstring · long sleeves · regular fit, size options S–3XL.
Everything is made to order, and US orders of $70 or more ship free. Step through a very small door: women's cloaks · cotton hoodies · crushed velvet
What do you wear to Beyond Wonderland?
Wear a playful Alice in Wonderland rave outfit with a warm finish. Beyond Wonderland SoCal runs in late March at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, where nights drop to 45–50°F. Magus Fawn's pick is a statement crop hoodie or cotton hoodie for the warm halls, plus a hooded festival cloak for the open-air walks between stages.
- Alice in Wonderland rave outfit ideas: a crown, playing cards, a pocket watch, teacups, rabbit ears, roses painted red, storybook blue. Choose one motif and commit; a crown reads from across the hall.
- Trance festival outfits: the trance dress code loves shine and light, with sequins, holographic and iridescent fabric, LED gloves, kandi cuffs and flag capes. On cold nights the trance family reaches for faux-fur coats and sparkly hoodies, and a neon visionary-art rave cloak keeps the glow while holding the warmth.
- Warm halls, cool air: a packed hall runs hot, and the walk to the next stage runs cold after midnight. A double front zipper opens on the dance floor and closes outside, and a drawstring hood keeps the mountain wind off your ears.
- A mushroom hoodie, kingdom-style: in a Wonderland world, mushroom art reads as fantasy architecture, caps as domes and stems as towers, the storybook city you'd find past a very small door.
- Pocket plan: kandi to trade, earplugs, lip balm and a charged phone all ride in a cloak's four pockets, so your hands stay free for the last song.
Beyond Wonderland SoCal brings its Alice in Wonderland theme, in the decor and the characters, to the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino each late March (March 27–28 in 2026) on 45–50°F nights; Countdown NYE returns to the same grounds for two days over December 31 and January 1, mixing trance with bass and house under an outer-space theme on 40–45°F nights; and Dreamstate SoCal fills the Queen Mary waterfront in Long Beach with trance anthems, flags and PLUR culture each late November, on damp 50–55°F nights.
Frequently asked questions
Is it cold at Beyond Wonderland at night?
Cool, and cooler than the afternoon suggests. Beyond Wonderland SoCal runs in late March at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, where nights usually fall to 45–50°F. The halls stay warm with the crowd, so carry a hooded layer for the walks between stages, the lines outside and the long exit after the last song.
What are good Alice in Wonderland rave outfit ideas?
Start with one storybook motif: a crown, playing cards, a pocket watch, teacups, rabbit ears or roses painted red. Add shine for the trance stages, like sequins, iridescent fabric or LED gloves. For cold spring nights, a hooded festival cloak in a fantasy print turns the whole outfit into a costume with a castle on its back.
What is a mushroom hoodie?
A mushroom hoodie is a hoodie printed with mushroom and fungi art, from forest-floor caps to storybook domes. Magus Fawn's Crystal Mushroom Kingdom cotton hoodie turns mushroom caps into glowing fantasy architecture, dye-sublimated into 100% cotton at a listed 310 g/m², with a kangaroo pocket, a drawstring and sizes from XS to 6XL.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 (4.8★ from 147 reviews as of October 2026), and every piece is made to order here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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