Laura: Golden Hour: Dressing and Desire

golden hour: dressing and desire

In the long embrace of the summer solstice, as the sun lingers at its highest and day stretches into night, the world pauses in a moment of radiant transformation. This is the golden hour: a threshold of light and shadow, warmth and stillness, where desire hums at the center of all things. A time rich with abundance, this is a liminal space where creativity awakens and connection deepens.

Since ancient times, the solstice has been honored as a seasonal turning and a sacred celebration of life's fullness. The Dionysian rites, often observed during this peak of summer, were lush, ecstatic rituals of sensuality and transformation. These ceremonies—filled with music, dance, wine, and floral offerings—were a tribute to desire itself. Amidst these mythic libations and flames, Euripides wrote an invitation: "Behold, I bring you joy unbounded, and unmeasured delight… Let your soul dance with the frenzy of the vine, and find freedom in the sacred madness of the night." In this spirit, we are invited to surrender to the lushness of the solstice moment: the flower's bloom, the wine's warmth, the flicker of candlelight, the intimacy of soft dusk.

The Youth of Bacchus is a painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1884)

Indeed, desire is a force of devotion. It pushes us to create, to connect, to evolve. It sculpts, adorns, and transforms. It's the soft unfolding of petals in golden light, the curve of silk against sun-kissed skin, the clink of glasses shared in laughter and warmth. Desire and pleasure slip between the cracks of dissonance and distance, pulling us closer to something transformed. As bell hooks reminds us, "desire disrupts, subverts, and makes resistance possible." It is both pleasure and power that moves us not only toward beauty, but toward change.

This power is sensual, generative, and luminous, guiding us more intentionally toward ourselves and one another. Straddling the beautiful precipice between past and future, it grounds us in a glistening solstice of the present. Adorned in the armor of desire, intention, and pleasure—with one foot in each season—we can bring forward the now. As Audre Lorde wrote, "I feel, therefore I can be free." Feeling, longing, and desiring are radical tools of renewal.

This Summer Solstice, in the golden season of abundance and light, eugenie is reflecting on the necessity of embodying desire and pleasure to create futures and communities that care, nourish, and transform.

"If you inherently long for something, become it first. If you want gardens, become the gardener. If you want love, embody love. If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation. If you want peace, exude calmness. If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint. If you want to be valued, respect your own time. If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself. This is how to draw it in,
day by day, inch by inch."

- Victoria Erickson, Author & Poet

what we wear when the sun lingers

As you bask in the bright, buzzing light of the season, we hope you lean into desire, pleasure, and abundance as tools for connection and transformation. Explore the eugenie Golden Hour Collection: An ode to lush Dionysian pleasure, feminine form, and the liminal beauty of dusk. Think candlelit wine, honeyed fruit, and a dimly lit room of impeccably dressed women.

SHOP THE COLLECTION

a soundtrack for soft dusk

Curated for lingering light and slow evenings, the eugenie Golden Hour playlist invites you into the mood. Let it hum in the background as the sky shifts and the candles flicker.