By the time we got to Singapore, I had to get free.
I felt as though I could write an Atlas of Remote Islands—twenty five days jostled about at sea, punctuated with series tiny respites, atolls in little archipelagoes, the smallest of dirt clots in the midst of a vast, seemingly endless ocean. I had hitched a ride from Hawaii to Singapore on a friend-of-a-friend's sailboat, and though I had had grand dreams tinged with film stills from Pirates of the Caribbean and the soundtrack of South Pacific, I soon realized just how claustrophobic one could get on a boat—and on an island. Though they had beautiful names—Rapa Iti, Pukapuka, Banaba—and breath-taking vistas, even the largest of islands where we landed could be explored in an afternoon, circumnavigated on foot or used like a racetrack for the little motorcycles ubiquitous in the South Pacific.
A Motorcycle. Hundreds of motorcycles and their owners crowded the port in Singapore in an endless hustle of comings and goings, ferrying people to their destinations. I approached a young man looming on the outskirts of a crowd of particularly aggressive taxi-bikers, leaning on a clean little motorcycle smoking a cigarette with the aloof deft of a frenchman. "You want a ride?" he asked, blowing smoke my way. "I want your bike," I responded. "What have you got?" he asked, nonplused. I opened my bag and started rifling.
We haggled until he walked away with a fistful of bills, four New York Times bestsellers in hardback, and all of my dresses ("for my fiancee") and I rode off on his bike, glad he didn't want the dress I was wearing, too. The steady friction of the road felt impossibly delicious after a month on the water, and the thrill of traveling straight in one direction without an ocean roadblock rang through me. I rode. Over the bridge, (a bridge!) off the island and up the coast, the heat of the evening melting away into the cool of the night; I kept riding and laughing, stopping periodically to admire the view, refuel and continue on.
Two days later, the roads widened, the traffic thickened, and Bangkok rose on the horizon. Wandering through the streets crowded with busy people, and full of wholly new sights and smells, I was overcome with the sense of urban verve I had so pined for. In one of the markets I found a woman selling the most exquisite silks. I asked her how much for an entire bolt of iridescent fuchsia shantung. "What have you got?" she responded. "Well," I said, "I have a motorcycle…"
It is this sense of freedom, independence (and perhaps reckless abandon?) that inspired our South Pacific line of dresses. With flirtatious details, bright, Oceana-inspired hues, and summery cuts, these dresses would be the prefect tagalong for a trip to the beach, a month at sea, or a trek through exotic markets. Pack one on your next warm-weather adventure and see if you don't feel just a bit more free.
