Meet Magpie: The Woman Behind the Shift Dress

Today, we're sharing a sweet sister story of Ashton and Magpie, the inspiration behind our newest shift dress.  I hope you love this story as much as I did!

Magpie is almost 10 years younger than me, which means in high school I watched her a lot.  One time, when she was about 4 years old, I was babysitting her and fed her spaghettiOs for lunch while I was getting some homework done. At one point I looked up from my trigonometry to realize Magpie had wandered away from the table. I knew immediately where she had snuck off to - my bedroom. She liked to go in there and play with “big girl things”. I hustled upstairs to try to stop her from getting messy handprints all over my room.

I opened my bedroom door to find a much worse mess than I expected. Pillows were tossed off the bed with red fingerprints on them, my physics homework was spread across the floor, a bottle of nail polish was opened and spilled across the carpet, and Magpie was sitting in the middle of it all trying to paint her tiny nails. 

She looked up and smiled at me and said “Look Ashy I look bee-you-tee-full too!”. “Yes you do!” I responded and in that moment I realized that it didn’t matter that stuff was a mess, all that mattered was that those SpaghettiO covered cheeks were smiling and were in fact beautiful.

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I don’t think I realized until I was well into my 30’s how someone else’s existence can actually become part of who you are. Having Magpie in my life made me a big sister, which is deeply ingrained in my identity. I knew that being responsible for her as a young child formed some of my values, but as an adult she’s one of my best friends and greatest loves.

To have someone as a child be your shadow - your mini-me - grow up into a kind, thoughtful and intelligent adult is kind of mind blowing.

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One thing so unique to Magpie that I admire is how compassionate she is. She cares for every living thing - people, animals, even plants. She wants all of them to feel love and care.  And, because of her, I learned responsibility, patience, and compassion, and I understood true love.