👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Same girl! Love what you said about filling a void vs. being. LIke. BEING. Where is my mind? What am I doing? WHY AM I TALKING!? Being purposeful IS luxurious. It doesn't have to equal $$$ name brands, though they are nice and give me a sense of ... power? Superiority?? So maybe that's not good either! Anyway, thank you for your stream of consciousness.
The “is this for my therapist or is this for Substack” got me. I’m constantly struggling with the line between my inner voice and my inner outer voice. How much of this is something I need to work out in public, with others, and how much of it needs to be done behind those doors? Especially when everyone else is sharing everything out loud!! All the time!!
Also the urge to do All The Things and Be Everything is sooo so strong right now.
Reading this installment has me thinking perhaps you might love the two books by Oliver Burkeman, if you haven't already read them: Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals. He's my go-to guy when it comes to addressing my feelings of needing to do everything, read everything, maximize productivity, etc etc etc. He's like the Zen Master of Time Management & Productivity. Happy reading!
I loved this spiral and it's comforting to know that other people's brains get whipped up in a frenzy and need to be talked off the ledge.
My assessment of what is happening to luxury brands is this: Many luxury brands were built, a hundred or more years ago, based on quality and exemplary service. In the past few years, both of those have been on the decline for most brands defined as luxury. People are fed up. Why pay a steep price for something that underdelivers? If you go to a fine dining restaurant and have a horrible experience, you aren't going back.
Additionally, luxury has been associated with exclusivity. But then many of the luxury brands started catering to the masses so they could increase their bottom line and impress stockholders, lining the pockets of their board members. That strategy blew up in their faces.
I agree with you. For me, luxury equals pleasure, whether that's the small moments you mentioned and having the time and mental space to appreciate them - or whether it's just feeling good in what you're wearing. That can mean quality or that can mean self-expression.
I love that you shared this and found a way to articulate it. It's tricky to spin words out of the spiral and I find your honesty gorgeous. Beauty haunts. It can be hard to navigate a relationship with it while keeping an eye on our moral and emotionally regulated selves. It's a spell and sometimes we fall under. You bring us a lot by raising the questions and allowing us in.
LOVE this post thank you for writing it! I always say I wish I’d followed up on my college dream of becoming a fashion sociologist and this is why!!!
Also, if you want to buy something AND stop waxing your legs, the best thing I bought in the last year/maybe ever is an IPL thingy to zap my legs. It worked. It WORKED!
Well Laurel Pantin, you sound a lot like me! Mostly my relationship with clothes/fashion/style is healthy, positive and life enhancing but sometimes (usually when my work life is also spiralling towards chaos) my reliance on clothes/fashion/style becomes unhealthy and compulsive. To me, real luxury is to be calm and not riddled with anxiety. Sometimes it happens briefly on a Friday evening! Thane care. X
I will often think of luxury in terms of …is it a premium brand (meaning made extremely well by craftsmen etc and why it costs so much) vs luxury, which is often times just driven by marketing. I got a Khaite belt for Xmas that I’ve wanted forever and though I like it and am happy with it, it’s no better made than belts I have at half that price. I realized I wanted the status 🙊
Great post!! That beaded dress I agreeee is gorgeous AND doesn’t actually seem like something that fits within your style aesthetic. Recognizing beauty vs having to have it is one of the major steps toward not overconsuming.
So you're an affluent person with too many choices and a very loud inner voice, but overall all is good, consider others with loud bosses, demanding landlords, bills which wait to be paid, a side hustle gone to bust, the roof started to leak and the credit card blanked out...🤢💯
The whole point of this Substack is high-end clothes with a swirl of emotional honesty. Why don’t you go find Barbara Ehrenreich’s Substack and chastise her for lacking great recommendations on the best Blaze Milano jacket - that would be as nonsensical.
Laurel, thank you for your vulnerability. I hope comments like these don’t stop you from continuing to be so candid as 99.9999% of us feel a sense of community in your writing and the other 0.0001% of us are apparently having a bad day 🫣
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Same girl! Love what you said about filling a void vs. being. LIke. BEING. Where is my mind? What am I doing? WHY AM I TALKING!? Being purposeful IS luxurious. It doesn't have to equal $$$ name brands, though they are nice and give me a sense of ... power? Superiority?? So maybe that's not good either! Anyway, thank you for your stream of consciousness.
The “is this for my therapist or is this for Substack” got me. I’m constantly struggling with the line between my inner voice and my inner outer voice. How much of this is something I need to work out in public, with others, and how much of it needs to be done behind those doors? Especially when everyone else is sharing everything out loud!! All the time!!
Also the urge to do All The Things and Be Everything is sooo so strong right now.
New-ish to Earl Earl and am already a huge fan!
Reading this installment has me thinking perhaps you might love the two books by Oliver Burkeman, if you haven't already read them: Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals. He's my go-to guy when it comes to addressing my feelings of needing to do everything, read everything, maximize productivity, etc etc etc. He's like the Zen Master of Time Management & Productivity. Happy reading!
I loved this spiral and it's comforting to know that other people's brains get whipped up in a frenzy and need to be talked off the ledge.
My assessment of what is happening to luxury brands is this: Many luxury brands were built, a hundred or more years ago, based on quality and exemplary service. In the past few years, both of those have been on the decline for most brands defined as luxury. People are fed up. Why pay a steep price for something that underdelivers? If you go to a fine dining restaurant and have a horrible experience, you aren't going back.
Additionally, luxury has been associated with exclusivity. But then many of the luxury brands started catering to the masses so they could increase their bottom line and impress stockholders, lining the pockets of their board members. That strategy blew up in their faces.
I agree with you. For me, luxury equals pleasure, whether that's the small moments you mentioned and having the time and mental space to appreciate them - or whether it's just feeling good in what you're wearing. That can mean quality or that can mean self-expression.
I love that you shared this and found a way to articulate it. It's tricky to spin words out of the spiral and I find your honesty gorgeous. Beauty haunts. It can be hard to navigate a relationship with it while keeping an eye on our moral and emotionally regulated selves. It's a spell and sometimes we fall under. You bring us a lot by raising the questions and allowing us in.
Wow. Did I write this? No, because you wrote it better. But, same.
Wow!! What a great piece.
LOVE this post thank you for writing it! I always say I wish I’d followed up on my college dream of becoming a fashion sociologist and this is why!!!
Also, if you want to buy something AND stop waxing your legs, the best thing I bought in the last year/maybe ever is an IPL thingy to zap my legs. It worked. It WORKED!
Well Laurel Pantin, you sound a lot like me! Mostly my relationship with clothes/fashion/style is healthy, positive and life enhancing but sometimes (usually when my work life is also spiralling towards chaos) my reliance on clothes/fashion/style becomes unhealthy and compulsive. To me, real luxury is to be calm and not riddled with anxiety. Sometimes it happens briefly on a Friday evening! Thane care. X
I will often think of luxury in terms of …is it a premium brand (meaning made extremely well by craftsmen etc and why it costs so much) vs luxury, which is often times just driven by marketing. I got a Khaite belt for Xmas that I’ve wanted forever and though I like it and am happy with it, it’s no better made than belts I have at half that price. I realized I wanted the status 🙊
Get the beaded dress! 🙈
This one was really felt - thank you! My head exactly this time of year, and the joy found in those bottom of the bag salty crumbs - yes!
I am here for this spiral and all the rest of the spirals that come from this - it mimics my own so closely - I feel seen!
Great post!! That beaded dress I agreeee is gorgeous AND doesn’t actually seem like something that fits within your style aesthetic. Recognizing beauty vs having to have it is one of the major steps toward not overconsuming.
So you're an affluent person with too many choices and a very loud inner voice, but overall all is good, consider others with loud bosses, demanding landlords, bills which wait to be paid, a side hustle gone to bust, the roof started to leak and the credit card blanked out...🤢💯
The whole point of this Substack is high-end clothes with a swirl of emotional honesty. Why don’t you go find Barbara Ehrenreich’s Substack and chastise her for lacking great recommendations on the best Blaze Milano jacket - that would be as nonsensical.
Barbara Ehrenreich is dead and thus not on Substack. But all of her published writing is still very much worth reading!
Laurel, thank you for your vulnerability. I hope comments like these don’t stop you from continuing to be so candid as 99.9999% of us feel a sense of community in your writing and the other 0.0001% of us are apparently having a bad day 🫣
C’mon man what a churlish comment
I can relate ❤️