Romantica: In Defence of Romance
The Names Behind the Bikinis
Every Yaropa piece carries a name with a story behind it.
Not as an afterthought or simply a label, but as part of the world we build around each design. A name can hold a place, a feeling, a memory, a woman or sometimes, an entire way of looking at life.
So I wanted to start telling the stories behind them.
Because I don’t think a name should just sound beautiful. I think it should mean something.
Some names carry mythology.
Others carry a feeling.
Romantica belongs to the second kind.
Warm skin after a day in the sun. Salt still in your hair. Dinner that starts too late. A song that immediately takes you back somewhere. Falling in love with someone, with a place, or simply with the version of yourself that seems to exist only in summer.
Romantica is about romance.
But perhaps not quite the kind you think.
Before Romance Meant Love
The word romance didn’t begin with love at all.
Its history leads back through Old French romanz, a word associated with writing and storytelling in the vernacular; the language ordinary people actually spoke rather than Latin, the formal language of scholarship, religion and authority.
Over time, these vernacular stories became associated with tales of knights, adventure, devotion and extraordinary events. Medieval traditions of chivalry and courtly love followed, with poets and troubadours writing of longing, admiration and an often idealized beloved.
Only centuries later did romance narrow towards the meaning we instinctively give it today: a love story, romantic feeling, an affair of the heart.
I love knowing that. Because underneath everything we’ve added to the word since, romance began with stories told closer to the language of real life. Not the official language.
What Happened to Being Romantic?
Somewhere along the way, being a romantic became slightly embarrassing.
We call ourselves hopeless romantics as though hope itself needs an apology.
We learn to be realistic. Independent. Unimpressed.
We protect ourselves by pretending not to care too much.
And perhaps that’s why I find romance interesting.
Because being romantic requires a certain willingness to care.
To believe that a dinner can be more than dinner.
That getting dressed can change how you feel.
That a place can become part of you.
That a song can hold an entire year of your life.
That anticipation has value.
That beauty doesn’t need to be useful to be meaningful.
Romance, in that sense, isn’t only about another person.
It’s a way of paying attention.
The Feminine Gaze
For centuries, so much romantic storytelling positioned the woman as the object of admiration.
The beautiful woman.
The desired woman.
The woman being pursued.
But I’m much more interested in what happens when she becomes the one looking.
What does romance look like through her eyes?
Perhaps she dresses beautifully because she likes the ritual of it.
She orders the wine she loves.
She swims alone before breakfast.
She buys herself flowers.
She stays at the table longer because the evening feels too beautiful to end.
She falls in love, perhaps.
But she also falls in love with cities, music, food, friendships, clothes, mornings, oceans and different versions of herself.
That’s the feminine gaze I associate with Romantica.
Not femininity performed to be admired.
Femininity experienced from within.
The woman isn’t simply the romantic subject of someone else’s story.
She’s writing her own.
Why Summer Makes Romantics of Us
And then there is summer.
Maybe no season has been romanticized quite like it.
Summer seems to change our relationship with time.
Days stretch longer. Plans become looser. We eat outside. We stay out later. We wear less, carry less, plan less.
Life moves outdoors.
And ordinary things somehow become memories before they’re even over.
A particular beach.
A white dress.
The smell of sunscreen.
A song playing from somewhere you can’t quite place.
The first swim of the morning.
The last light before dinner.
Maybe that’s why summer romances stay with us even when they don’t last.
Not necessarily because the love was greater.
But because summer has a way of making everything feel temporary while we’re still living it.
And temporary things ask us to pay attention.
Perhaps nostalgia begins there.
We know, somewhere in the background, that the evening will end.
That we’ll eventually fly home.
That our skin will lose its tan.
That September will come.
And so we look a little longer.
Romance, the Brazilian Way
There is something about this understanding of romance that has always felt close to Brazil for me. Because emotion is so present in its cultural expression.
You hear it particularly beautifully in Brazilian music.
When bossa nova emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s, it brought a quieter, more intimate musical language. Guitar, voice, rhythm and songs filled with love, longing, beauty and saudade.
The beach was never very far away.
Neither was the woman.
Neither was longing.
Bossa nova could make an ordinary moment like seeing someone pass, missing someone, sitting near the sea – feel worthy of a song.
And I think there is something deeply romantic about that.
Not grand gestures.
Attention.
A willingness to give feeling to the everyday.
Brazil even has a word that English never quite manages to translate perfectly: saudade.
Longing. Missing. Nostalgia.
Saudade can hold affection for something precisely because it is absent; a person, a place, a time, a feeling that may never return in exactly the same way.
Perhaps romance and saudade are closer than they first appear.
One teaches us to notice the moment. The other reminds us why it mattered once it’s gone.
What Romantica Means to Yaropa
When I named the Yaropa Romantica Bikini, I wasn’t thinking only about romantic love.
I was thinking about a woman who romanticizes her own life.
Not because her life is perfect. But because she notices it.
She allows herself softness without confusing it with weakness.
She enjoys beauty without needing to justify it.
She can be independent and still sentimental.
Strong and still moved by small things.
Maybe that’s what Romantica means to me most. It’s permission not to become cynical.
To keep a little softness in a world that often rewards the opposite.
To dress for the feeling.
To order dessert.
To swim when everyone else has already left the beach.
To fall in love with places.
To miss them when they’re gone.
To make memories knowing they won’t stay forever.
A way of moving through the world.
A way of noticing.
A way of living.
Romantica isn’t waiting for a love story. She’s already inside one.
∼ Yara
Founder of Yaropa
Sources & Further Reading
This story draws on linguistic and cultural research into the history of romance, medieval courtly love, bossa nova and the Brazilian cultural language of love, longing and saudade.
- Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL). Romance — Étymologie. On the linguistic development of romance from Old French and Provençal romanz and its association with vernacular narrative.
https://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/romance - Encyclopædia Britannica. Romance Literature. On the development of medieval romance as a literary form and its relationship with chivalry, adventure and courtly love.
https://www.britannica.com/art/romance-literature-and-performance - Larousse. Research and reference material on l’amour courtois and the medieval troubadour tradition.
https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/divers/amour_courtois/187163 - MultiRio / Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro. A Música Carioca no Compasso da Bossa Nova. On the emergence of bossa nova in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s and its new, intimate musical language.
https://multirio.rio.rj.gov.br/index.php/historia-do-brasil/rio-de-janeiro/3366-a-musica-carioca-no-compasso-da-bossa-nova - Arquivo Nacional do Brasil. Arquivo em Cartaz debate Bossa Nova e memória. On bossa nova, memory and the cultural representation of the movement in Brazil.
https://www.gov.br/arquivonacional/pt-br/canais_atendimento/imprensa/noticias/arquivo-em-cartaz-debate-bossa-nova-e-memoria/