A Trip Down the Summery Lane

When we think of summer, often the images flooding our minds include colour-coded bikinis, oversized hats, denim shorts completed by picnics on the beach. Summer is season often viewed as a celebration of extrovertedness, endless energy and undying laughter. Trends like the evergreen “Hot Girl Summer” also lean into this form of confidence depicted through bold colours and unabashed exposure.

If you are one of those people who find beauty in soft core, being whimsical and adding a tinge of romance to their everyday life, the Ethereal Girl Summer is the perfect overarching term.

Image Credit: Kaizen Nguyen from Unsplash

For those who don't quite identify with the stereotypical flesh of the summer months, this aesthetic provides a quiet escape. Handwritten letters, long strolls in garden, picking flowers and arranging them-- all these simple activities have grown over time to inspire this style of surviving the hot months.

Unlike Hot Girl Summer, Ethereal Girl Summer, leans into a more alternative and whimsical way of expressing one’s identity and preferences. It conveys a quiet message: your confidence and power doesn’t always need to be proclaimed proudly (although there’s nothing wrong with that), it can also be veiled behind sheer fabrics and vintage slips.

The Birth of Ethereality

Ethereality finds it’s roots in the midst of myth and romance; Celestial prints and puff sleeves have long existed in history. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of 19th-century painters, featured women immersed in nature with faraway gazes. Greek goddesses like Artemis and Persephone also play a divine role in contributing to this aesthetic. Ethereality is often heralded as a symbol of passive beauty but these divine powers have showcased it as a complex mix of rebirth, death and moonlight simply layered with whimsy.

In makeup, ethereality is explored through dewy skin, flushed cheeks and glittery shimmer on the eyelids. Applying liquid highlighter on the high points of the face also helps evoke the soft glow of twilight. Faces like Florence Welch, FKA Twigs, Grimes, and Lana Del Rey have breathed new life into the aesthetic by blurring the lines between softness and strength.

Take the Quiz: Which ’90s Movie Character Are You?

Are you ready to travel back to the iconic ’90s and discover which unforgettable movie character matches your personality? Take this quiz to find out!

Simple Activities to Feel More Ethereal

Simple activities to feel more ethereal in the summer include the golden hour gaze of stepping outside just before sunset. Bringing a sheer scarf and draping yourself in long dresses, close your eyes as you feel the sun's heat embrace you. Pour your heart out in unwritten letters that don't necessarily have to be addressed to a particular person.

Feel your feelings and make them permanant through the ink on paper. If handwriting isn't your forte, thrift a typewriter or walk into a library and pore over the archives it holds. Lay down a thin blanket and touch grass- literally. Devour a basket of strawberries or hand-prepared lemonade.

Ethereality is a feeling, not just depicted through pictures. It is whatever you make of it.

Image Credit: Jennie Clavel from Unsplash

The Beauty of Inclusivity

Ethereality opens the door to inclusivity. Much of the beauty of the aesthetic lies in it’s accessibility; a vast majority of the aesthetic can simply be thrifted or sourced from your personal closet.

The ancient and the contemporary can easily be bridged through simply re-wearing most of the items you already own, simply in new ways. Faded petticoats can turn into one of the many layers of a long skirt. Random scraps of lace can easily morph into leg warmers and hair essentials.

You don’t need a specific body type, skin tone, or income level to participate. Many aspects of the aesthetic can be thrifted, DIY-ed, or sourced from your own closet. Old petticoats become skirts.

Vintage slips become day dresses. Scraps of lace can be turned into arm warmers or hair accessories.

The so-called imperfections, the frayed end of a dress or a hand-me-down shawl, make the aesthetic all too real. Ethereality thrives on items worn with memories attached to them, with lineage and stories to tell about the clothing. By wearing items with personal meaning to you— be it meaning you inherited or simply a story you have about the clothing— you reclaim parts of your identity.

After all, ethereality is rooted in nostalgia.

Image Credit: Priscilla Du Preez from Unsplash

Whether your someone expressing your femininity for the first time, a long-time enjoyer of the whimsical or simply a girl in a puff-sleeved top, ethereality doesn’t constrain you to fit into a mold. It simply adapts to whatever you have around you.

All-in-all, Ethereal Girl Summer serves as an aesthetic reminder of how being strong doesn’t necessarily mean letting go of being soft. It reminds us that we are three-dimensional; It is entirely possible to be mysterious and loud, delicate and powerful, all at once. The point is to feel, not to endlessly consume.