Sapphic / WLW flag

Used on: Sapphic / WLW

Sapphic / WLW pride flag: pink top and bottom stripes with a pale, almost white centre stripe carrying a single lavender violet with a yellow centre.

Designer: lesbeux-moved, simplified by pride-color-schemes · 14 August 2015; simplified version 25 June 2017

Three horizontal stripes, pink, a pale almost white violet-tinted centre, and pink, with a single lavender violet flower centred on the pale stripe. Created by Tumblr user lesbeux-moved on 14 August 2015 with a realistic pair of violets, and simplified to a single stylised violet by the Tumblr blog pride-color-schemes on 25 June 2017 because the detailed violets were hard to reproduce. No official colour specification has ever been published for this flag. The values shown here are the widely circulated community set sampled from the 2017 artwork; they are community convention, not an authoritative standard.

Colour codes: Sapphic / WLW flag
Stripe HEX RGB CMYK Pantone Meaning
Top stripe #FD8BA8 253,139,168 C:0 M:45 Y:34 K:1 n/a Love
Middle stripe #FBF2FF 251,242,255 C:2 M:5 Y:0 K:0 n/a The pale, almost white ground the violet is set against
Bottom stripe #FD8BA8 253,139,168 C:0 M:45 Y:34 K:1 n/a Love
Violet petals #C76BC5 199,107,197 C:0 M:46 Y:1 K:22 n/a The violet: women gave violets to the women they were courting, a token of sapphic desire
Violet centre #FDD768 253,215,104 C:0 M:15 Y:59 K:1 n/a The stamen at the heart of the flower

History

The violet is the flag's central motif. Sappho's poetry repeatedly describes women garlanded in violets, and by the twentieth century the flower had become a quiet token women gave to other women they were courting. The pink stripes stand for love; the pale, almost white centre stripe is the ground the flower sits on.

The original flag was posted to Tumblr by the user lesbeux-moved on 14 August 2015: two pink stripes above and below a pale centre stripe carrying a realistic pair of violets.

On 25 June 2017 the Tumblr blog pride-color-schemes published a simplified version, keeping the same three stripes but replacing the realistic violets with a single stylised lavender violet with five petals and a yellow centre. The simplification was made because the detailed violets were hard to reproduce. This simplified version is the one shown here and the one in general use; both versions remain in circulation.