The Aubree

There is a phrase my friends and I have been saying since we were kids, and we're still saying it today: "Well… that's just Aubree."

It usually comes with a laugh and an eye roll, right after Aubree has announced an opinion nobody asked for, dug in on a position she has absolutely no intention of changing, or delivered a line with the kind of confidence that makes the rest of us wonder if she's ever second-guessed herself a single day in her life.

We let her get away with it. Every single time. Here's why.

Aubree is the friend who shows up. Not "checks in." Not "let me know if you need anything." She shows up. In my entire life, I have never met another person more willing to get in the car or on a plane simply because someone she loves needs her in the room — and not just for the weddings and the funerals. Everyone shows up for those. I mean the ordinary hard days nobody else even notices. If you are her person, distance is just a detail.

And she'll tell you the truth. All of it. Straight, no garnish. She once called me and said: "Court, we love you, but you've got to stop only talking about CB Grey." It stung for about a minute. Then it landed exactly the way it was intended — as love. (Yes, I see the irony of telling you that story here. Aub, I promise this is the last thing I'll write about scarves. It's not.)

She was also the first woman ever to hand me a mood board. Of course she was. She came prepared. She came with opinions. She came knowing exactly what she loved.

So I built her design around two leopards — not just because they're fierce, but because a leopard never apologizes for being a leopard. It doesn't ask permission to take up space. It doesn't become something smaller to make someone else more comfortable. Palm leaves surround them, because she thrives wherever life plants her. And the soft pastels are the gentleness that's always been there beneath the confidence. The gentleness is real. It just doesn't lead.

Thirty years later, the eye rolls are still going strong — ours at her, hers at me. But if my life ever falls apart on some random Tuesday, I know exactly whose car will already be in my driveway.

Well… that's just Aubree.