Pink against gray
The cap was the first thing she bought with her first lifeguard paycheck. She was eighteen, freshly certified as a Surf Lifeguard, with a studio above the hardware store on Liverpool Street in Port Lincoln, South Australia. She could have bought a technical visor, a patrol cap, something functional in navy or black. She tried a black one in the store. It didn't work. She bought a bubblegum-pink cap. She's replaced it three times since — they wear out in the salt and sun — but always pink. Always that pink.
The mesh top is pink too. And the bomber jacket is yellow with graffiti: a friend from Adelaide, an artist, customized it for her with tags that only the two of them understand. It's a one-of-a-kind piece, impossible to replicate, which she takes everywhere as a functional windbreaker and a reminder of a bond that needs no explaining. The curved visor, the bubblegum pink, the illegible tags: nothing Lowanna wears is there by accident.
All that palette — pink, yellow, multicolor against the gray of her skin — is a deliberate choice. Great white sharks are synonymous with gray and fear in the collective imagination. Lowanna chose color. The yellow of the jacket is exactly the shade of the caution flags on Australian beaches. That's not a coincidence either.
