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The One Bow Color That Works With Every LSU Game Day Look Picture the closet the Friday before an LSU home game. You've got the purple striped romper fo...
Picture the closet the Friday before an LSU home game. You've got the purple striped romper for one, the gold gingham for another, maybe a white LSU tee that everybody agrees on for the third. And there's the bow drawer, wide open, with a purple that clashes with the gold and a gold that gets lost against the white. Here's the shortcut that ends the standoff: a rich, true purple bow works with every single one of those looks.
Not the lavender. Not the plummy purple that photographs blue. The deep, saturated LSU purple, the one that reads as royal on a bright September Saturday. That's the bow you buy once and stop thinking about.
Gold is beautiful. Nobody's arguing that. But gold is a tricky bow color when you're trying to make one accessory carry a whole rotation of game day outfits. It disappears against anything cream, white, or tan, which is a huge share of what little ones actually wear when it's still eighty-something degrees at kickoff. A gold bow on a white LSU tee just melts into the shirt in photos. You lose it entirely.
Purple does the opposite. It holds its edge against white, it pops against gold, and it deepens against gray or denim. On a purple outfit it doesn't compete, it layers, because a true purple bow against a purple stripe reads as intentional tone-on-tone rather than a mismatch. That's the whole trick. One color that never fights whatever's underneath it.
There's a practical reason too. Kids grow, outfits get handed down, and the crawfish-boil-to-tailgate wardrobe turns over fast in a Louisiana house. A purple bow outlasts all of it. It'll still work next season on a completely different top, which is more than you can say for a bow that only matches one specific romper.
When people say "LSU purple," they're usually reaching for the official athletic purple, which runs cool and deep, almost royal with a hint of blue. If you want to get precise about it, the university keeps a brand color reference on LSU's official site that shows exactly how their purple and gold are meant to read. Match your bow to that, and it'll look right next to every other purple item in your kid's drawer.
Where moms go wrong, and it's an easy mistake, is grabbing whatever purple is on hand. A bright grape purple, a dusty mauve, a magenta-leaning purple... they all read as "not quite LSU" once you're standing next to somebody wearing the real thing at the tailgate. The eye catches it immediately. So the goal is one good deep purple, not five almost-purples.
For the bow style itself, a medium classic knot bow does the most work. Big enough to show up in photos, small enough that it isn't sliding around by the second quarter. Grosgrain holds its shape through the heat and the running around better than a floppy satin, and it survives a spill, which matters when there's food at every Louisiana gathering.
Say you've got three game days to dress for over a few weeks. The purple bow does all three without you buying a thing beyond it.
The all-white LSU tee and denim shorts look is your easy one. Purple bow, and suddenly the outfit reads as team spirit instead of just a plain white shirt. The bow is doing the entire job of tying it to game day. On the purple gingham or striped dress, that same bow sits tone-on-tone and pulls the whole thing together at the top, the way a matching hair accessory always finishes a smocked look. And on the gold-heavy outfit, the gold romper or the gold tutu, the purple bow is the contrast that keeps it from being a wall of one color. Gold and purple next to each other is the whole point of the palette. You're just letting the bow supply the second half.
Same bow, three completely different outfits, and it looks deliberate every time.
If you've got more than one little one heading to the game, the purple bow is also how you coordinate without dressing them like twins. Put the purple bow on the sister in the gold outfit and let the sister in the purple outfit go with a gold bow, or a simple white one. Now they read as a set, they photograph as a set, but neither of them is a carbon copy of the other. That's the sweet spot most Youngsville moms are after for the tailgate photos that end up on the fridge.
For a brother in the mix, a purple bow tie or purple details on his tee do the same connecting work. The purple thread running through all of them is what makes a family look coordinated in a group shot, even when everybody's actually wearing something different.
The only real catch is timing. Game day bows and the outfits that go with them move fast once the season's on the calendar, and the deep true purple sells through quicker than the odd shades because it's the one everyone actually wants. Getting your bow squared away early, before the first home game creeps up, means you're not hunting for the right purple the Thursday before kickoff.
One good purple bow, matched to the real LSU shade, and your little one's set for every Saturday this fall. That's one decision made and off your list, which around here, heading into a full season of tailgates and family photos, is worth a lot. Geaux Tigers.