Yes, I Can Believe Piper Wore a Butter Yellow Dress
This season, White Lotus viewers are introduced to the Rattliff family, a prominent wealthy family from North Carolina. The family is always dressed in their southern, conservative, preppy outfits. Piper, the middle child and only daughter of the Ratliff family is the black sheep in her family. Piper is unlike her older brother Saxon, who wants to gain approval from his father, or her younger brother Lochlan, who wants to follow the same path as his older siblings. Piper is on a spiritual journey and wants to find an identity outside of her family.
Though she is the outcast of the family, Piper wears the colors associated with the religions she studies in college. Throughout the season, Piper wears the colors white and blue, associated with Western religions, and orange and yellow, associated with Eastern religions. When Piper tells her family her desire to live in Thailand for a year, she stops wearing Western religious colors and starts wearing Eastern religious colors.
In episodes Six and Seven of this season of White Lotus, Piper wears a stylish and appropriate conservative Olin butter yellow short-sleeved embroidered midi dress from Ciao Lucia when visiting the monk’s temple. The timeless Olin dress is currently sold out on the company’s website. Ciao Lucia is a popular clothing brand by a-list celebrities Bella Hadid and Margot Robbie. The clothing brand is known for its timeless style inspired by the 1960s.
The butter yellow dress Piper wears gives both a current fashion trend and gives more depth to her character arc this season. Piper wears butter yellow in plenty of fashion shows for the designer’s spring and summer collections. Celebrities like Gigi Hadid, Sabrina Carpenter, and Rihanna wear pastel colors. Yellow is not only a trend in high fashion but has deep meaning in Thailand culture. In Thailand, yellow means to renounce and detach from worldly desires. Desiring to live in the monk’s temple for more spiritual meaning, Piper wants to renounce her confrontable, sheltered life in North Carolina and devote herself to studying Buddhism for a year.
Piper’s clothing is both meaningful to her character arc this season and fashion trendy. Yes, the outfit is expensive and does not fit the monk’s lifestyle of renunciation of worldly pleasures. Piper has only lived in North Carolina, and her clothes reflect the rich southern life she has lived her whole life. Piper only wants to learn more about Eastern religion for a year, not to live in Thailand permanently. Pipers’ conservative timeless outfits fit her southern roots. Piper’s arc this season is to seek meaning through different religions worldwide.