On a flight the other day a fellow passenger lumbered slowly in front of me. She was one of those people who elbow themselves to get on the plane first. Usually these ‘important’ people are frequent travelers and they are pretty swift about getting on the plane. They get on quickly, set themselves up, and get out of everyone’s way. So it’s usually not much of a big deal.
As a dedicated follower of fashion it’s no surprise that Martin Margiela is one of my heroes. Sigh. He is known for pushing the fashion envelope time and time again. In turn, he started trend after trend. Cut up denim, Margiela. Bizarre show locations, Margiela. Recycling, Margiela. Tabi Shoes, Margiela. And, possibly the most influential, the oversized look. Yes, also Margiela.
I once told a shop assistant “I’m just not a skinny jeans person”, masking my deep insecurity about how I thought they looked on me. I will never forget her saying “but maybe you need to be a skinny jeans person”. It was one of those moments where I could see my old stories were limiting me. One of those ‘fashion as a metaphor for life’ moments.
My grandmother’s name was Joyce, a name she detested but a name that was very fitting. She was a grown up kid in most respects; and less grown-up, way more kid. Her favorite comment was “oh, pooh to that” which she would say to any convention she planned to summarily reject. “It’s too early for a drink”, “it’s too cold to sit outside” and my favorite “you will spoil the kids” were regularly dismissed with a glint in her eye and a clear defiance of ‘the rules’.
It felt like a gift this week to hear about this TedX talk on Gray Rhino’s by Michelle Wucker. After my initial dismay that it was not a guide to the ultimate African Safari (#goals) my nerd alert was set to stun as I listened to what felt like the ultimate follow up to last week’s post on disconfirming evidence.
The book Alice in Wonderland sits permanently on my desk: it serves as a reminder to be curious and that things are often not as they seem. In Through the Looking Glass, Alice climbs through a mirror into a world that works in reverse. Logic is reversed. In one of my favorite exchanges the Red Queen explains to Alice how they must run fast in order to stay in the same place. Does that sound like most of your days...which side of the looking glass are we really on?
It’s so easy to get stuck in our patterns. The day to day becomes week to week and, alarmingly, month to month. Before you realize it your life is a hamster wheel: you wake up in the morning and suddenly it’s time to go to bed. You drive into work on Monday and the next minute you are driving home on Friday. Or worse, it’s Sunday night, you blinked and you missed the weekend!
Every day I see another blog about some perfect person's perfect morning routine. Cold plunges, meditation, journaling, gratitude diaries, no coffee (people really!), no food (intermittent fasters), and my yoga friends would add a few sun salutations into the mix. Dave Asprey, supreme life hacker, would no doubt add about 10 other things.
Willie Nelson apparently once said “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.” It’s somewhat bubble-gum psychology and hardly advice that will light the world on fire.
But it’s Willie Nelson, what’s not to love about Willie!
Although we know this, it’s so hard to actively practice thinking positively.
Alessandro Michele took over as the creative director of Gucci in 2015. A relative unknown in the fashion world, he has injected a fire in Gucci that hasn’t been seen since Tom Ford’s days at the label. In these days of the celebrity fashion-director, it was unusual for an unknown to get the job and it was also unusual how he got the job.
For the last year and a half I have been eating a plant-based diet. This means I don’t eat any animal products, also known as ‘being vegan’. People have two reactions when I tell them my food preferences. A small minority are really interested and ask me a bunch of questions about what I eat and how I feel. The majority of people react to it like I am personally offending them by my food choices. The more hilarious people respond with the highly original joke “How do you know if someone is a vegan? They will tell you!”.
I've talked about Marie Kondo before: with her best-selling book 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up' and now a Netflix show, she's somewhat sweeping the nation. Her KonMari t-shirt folding technique changed my life. I mean, maybe not changed changed, but this self-confessed neat freak sure gets a lot of joy sparked from beautifully folded t-shirts all lined up in a row.
I’ve just finished reading ‘Molecules of Emotion’: the science behind mind-body medicine. This book is incredible, I’ve had it on my shelf for a while now and I should have read it sooner. Published in 1997, it still feels very progressive except for her recommendation to eat the very estrogen-laden soy.
My favorite advice to give people, especially young people, is "embrace your weirdness". I’m not suggesting you necessarily rock up to a job interview with blue lipstick, though in certain contexts that could work. More, I am suggesting that you do all those things you feel drawn to doing without first calculating whether it’s normal. Normal is boring. In a cluttered and crowded world ‘normal’ will not help you stand out.
I’m a huge fan of Allbirds sneakers. They are an easy company to support and support them I have. I think collectively we have ten pairs at the house and I recommend them to anyone that will listen. One friend who recently stayed with us went home and bought four pairs - he’s one of those “I shop once a year” guys, usually when he comes to visit me.
