If you’ve watched Netflix’s Sirens, you may have fallen in love with its laid-back, nautical elegance. The show takes place over the course of a Labor Day Weekend as Devon (Meghann Fahy) tracks down her younger sister, Simone (Milly Alcock) who has traded her working class upbringing for the highly-regimented comforts of a pedigreed billionaire lifestyle, courtesy of her new boss/best friend, Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore). Across boat clubs, hilltop estates, and yachts, the series crisply captures the WASPy Nantucket lifestyle.
It may have inspired you to bring a bit of this fictional seaside town into your own life—perhaps without the birds and betrayal. Here’s the bad news: We can’t get you an Alex Katz style portrait (or a giant lawn anchor), but we can help with other ideas, principally the mint green bicycle on which Simone (Molly Alcock) traverses the island. Her bike was a Sixthreezero EVRYjourney Bike—the exact type most popular among the New England beach crowd. And a hidden symbol of Simone’s status.
A touchpoint of the East Coast island aesthetic, retro whimsical bikes have been staples on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard for decades. While their large wheels and rounded handlebars don’t make for the best dirt-racing vehicles, their elegant shape transforms them from a utility object into an object d’art.
Simone’s bicycle indicates that she isn’t the interloper that everyone perceives her to be. She actually, truly belongs. It’s no accident that when she and Peter Kell (Kevin Bacon) have their first accidental rendez-vous, she shows up on her bike.
Two women in front of the Cycle Shop in Nantucket, also 1957.
On the bicycle is another insider tip-off: a Nantucket Bike Basket Co. basket. The company’s logo (visible on Simone’s own bike) is one of the surest pieces of evidence that the series is in fact set on Nantucket. In the mid-19th century, when the fictional Peter Kell’s ancestors made their first fortune in whaling, sailors on Nantucket Lightships used their spare time to weave the now iconic baskets. Still popular today, they are made of rattan and constructed on a mold, which contributes to the very tight weave. They were originally used to carry groceries across the island, but now, the bike baskets that descended from them are an “if you know, you know” way to ferry heaping portions of ice cream from Juice Bar.
Children hopping onto their bicycles on Nantucket in 1957.
While Simone and the Sirens crew look great on their bikes, they also make for fabulous accessories in a garage or on the sidewalk, and that’s exactly why they fit in Sirens. They’re not about ease of use: These bikes are about looking seamless, elegant, and completely detached from the rocky realities of the mainland.
Dorothy Scarborough (she/her) is the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country and Elle Decor.
