Somewhere in the last year, Old Florida became an aesthetic online. And lately, a very popular one. Rattan, wicker, shells, palms, stripes, Art Deco texts. I understand the appeal, and I love plenty of it myself.
But I think we miss something when we reduce a place to only that.
For me, it’s a both-and. These icons are part of the story. Of course they are. They’re beautiful, familiar, and often there for a reason. But the things themselves are so much more interesting when you understand the life that put them there in the first place.
Old Florida was never styled. It accumulated.
It came from climate and necessity, from what was available, from people arriving here with their own traditions and figuring out how to live in a strange, hot, beautiful place surrounded by water. It has never been just one look. It’s more of a collision of glamour and grit, high and low tide, heat and a soulful breeze. Some of the Floridas we’ve all loved most weren’t the first versions anyway. They evolved.
I grew up in one of those versions and live today in another one.
One side of my family had been fishing these waters for generations. The other came from Kentucky, traveling a long way just to get near the beach. My mom took that draw to the water a step further. She followed it, eventually making her own life here. I’ve always loved that juxtaposition. By the time I came along, it was simply home.
We had a full net box behind our house and a little dried seaweed on everything. We swam in the bay, rode bikes down a very sleepy Star Route 1, and dug for old pottery with shovels and shaker pans. My dad was a can-do person and figured anything out, risking everything at times. My mom could turn a stop at Pic’s for Cheetos and a drive out to the Cape into the whole day. Our neighbor, Ease, was a second grandmother to me and taught me some of the love found on the bay. It was all everything and more.
None of these things felt particularly remarkable at the time. They were just part of the life around us.
And maybe that’s the difference I’m trying to get at. Displaying a shell is great, but shelling is far better. Rattan and wicker are beautiful natural materials, but sitting on them in a wet swimsuit, watching them thrive in our humidity, and somehow survive hurricane season is better still. The things we associate with Old Florida mean more when they’ve earned their place, when they’re part of the life, not just the look.
We didn’t have an extraordinary amount of entertainment in my Old Florida. We had an extraordinary capacity to make something very good out of what was around us. You must always make something good.
Years later, my husband and I found ourselves wanting to come back to that kind of life. We were infatuated with being naturally doused in simplicity but richer for it. Not small in ambition or experience, but small in all the right ways. Less distance between the water, work, home, the people we love, and the way we actually spend our days. I think that’s one of the great surprises of coming home: life can get smaller and feel bigger at the same time.
I think all of that has taught me something. It taught me to look and really see. And looking has become a pretty big part of my work.
I’ve become a collector of visual clues. The hem of an old work shirt. A hand-painted sign. The faded blue of something that’s spent twenty years in the sun. A beautiful old textile. The colors inside a beach bag. The glassware in a restaurant. What people wear when they aren’t thinking about being fashionable.
I photograph things constantly. I write them down. I put perspective to things that seemingly have nothing to do with one another. Sometimes an idea sits around for years before it finds its place. That’s one of my favorite things about creativity. Nothing stays in its lane.
A piece of pottery can influence a color. Food can influence a photograph. An old textile can become the beginning of a print. A worn-in hat can make you reconsider the shape of something you’re designing. Something I see in Paris will eventually find itself next to something we discover in India and something I’ve known my whole life here at the coast.
Somehow it all comes home.
And this Fall collection came from that kind of looking. Not from sitting down and deciding to make an “Old Florida collection.” I really didn’t want to do that. I actually dislike that limitation. I wanted to look underneath it and around it.
This collection strives to feel like a version of Old Florida that is alive and well in our hearts.
Watching the sun break the horizon on your favorite beach. Taking a look at one of our local fishing lodges and the daily preservation that goes into keeping its memories and simple joys alive. A long painted porch where everything happens: morning coffee, meals that stretch on, shucking oysters, a ceiling fan kicking overhead, candlelight glowing as the bugs come out.
That’s the Old Florida I’m interested in. Not frozen in another time, but still being lived. Places cared for. Good things happening. Useful things made beautiful. The simple stuff that you remember.
And then there are the clothes. The indigo of an old pair of jeans.
Chocolate and tobacco browns. Natural cotton and linen. Block prints that say something that isn’t prep. Useful button shirts, easy pants, denim, bandanas, beads, texture. Things with a little grit to them, but still beautiful enough to take somewhere wonderful.
There are pieces of home in this collection, but there are pieces of everywhere else we’ve been looking, too. Because Old Florida can be the foundation without being the boundary.
That feels much more like BECASA to me, an expression of how we want to live: apparel, home, kitchen, and all the things that find their way in between. The clothes we wear. What we cook. What we put on the table. The sit-outs we keep around. Music in the shop. A photograph. A dinner. It all belongs to the same world of very good, relaxed living.
Not because life is always relaxed. Mine certainly isn’t. It’s about making room for the parts that make it really good. Wearing clothes you can actually live in. Using the good things instead of saving them for later. Being outside. Setting the table even when dinner is simple. Staying for another drink.
Making a great deal out of a little.
The more I travel, the more I love bringing ideas home. And the more of the world I’m lucky enough to see, the more interesting home becomes to me. It all reflects off of home. Boats at first light. Oyster shells. Marsh grass on the bay. An old shirt. Our screen door. The community garden. The handwriting in an old cookbook. The colors of quilts and tablecloths.
There is design everywhere here. You need eyes to see it.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to understand about Old Florida all along. It isn’t something we need to recreate. And it certainly isn’t a checklist of wicker, palms, and seashells. As a matter of fact, it’s already in us, in the way we look, gather, make, use what we have, stay curious, take care of a place, and make something good from what’s around us, adding in something of our own.
We look outward. We make from where we are. And no matter how far our inspiration travels, home gives it its accent.
It’s the Old Florida in us.
x, Emily
