Come Shopping With Me, Edition III: Pins, Part II — The Motif Edit

Welcome back. This is Part II of the brooch edit. Last week was Part I, The Silver Edit, all about Mexican sterling, modernism, and the small utilitarian outliers I’d never edit out. If you missed it, you can catch up there. The whole intro from Part I still applies: brooches are the easiest styling hack and the most personal thing you can do to a wardrobe. Minimum effort. Maximum lift.

This week’s focus is, the motif.

A Note on Motifs: Horseshoes, snakes, butterflies, swallows, dogwoods, crescent moons. These have all been pinned to coat lapels for over a century, and they’re still here for a reason. They carry meaning, whether you know the meaning or not. A horseshoe is luck. A swallow is coming home. A butterfly is rebirth. A snake, depending on the tradition, is danger or wisdom. The dogwood is spring.

You don’t need to know any of this to wear them. But part of why I keep gravitating toward motif pins is that they do something a plain piece of metal can’t. They tell a story, and I love stories.

The romantic ones. Horseshoes, crescent moons, lucky charms scaled up to lapel size. The kind of brooch that gives an outfit a story without you having to say a word. A silver dogwood on a navy peacoat is the same idea as a fresh boutonniere in a wedding suit. A little garden against a structured ground.

This is also where you can cross over into fabric flowers. The chiffon roses, silk camellias, organza poppies that seem to be everywhere, I keep folding into the silver mix. Hard flower, soft flower, or one of each, both pinned to a stiff lapel.

Luck: