Zara sweater (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Gucci loafers
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Chanel earrings
Location: Sonder (The Earl) – Dublin, Ireland
There’s so much of life now that I didn’t – couldn’t have – imagined when I was a teenager filling pages in yet another notebook. I was that girl, the one who carried a notebook everywhere in case inspiration struck. A blank page was just an invitation to scribble whatever thought might be running through my head when I came across it. Poems. Song lyrics. Philosophical musings about life. There was nothing I wouldn’t put on paper. The idea that someday I would do most of my writing digitally, that it wouldn’t be writing at all but typing, never crossed my mind.
…and if it had, frankly, I would have hated it. I still prefer to do my writing my hand. There’s infinitely more satisfaction in the act of filling pages than there is in typing them. Typing is work, it’s emails and reports; writing, putting a pen to a piece of paper, is a joy. I still carry a notebook everywhere. When I was in London in November, I purchased the most indulgent one imaginable at Smythson, which I subsequently toted to and wrote in while in Dublin. I still prefer a standard Moleskine, but the notebook you see in these photos is one of my little writer’s dreams come true.
But writing is not, in so many ways, what it once was. It doesn’t occupy the same role in my life, for one thing. When I was carrying a notebook to school as a teenager, the pages I filled were an escape – a literal one, because that notebook could pass for a schoolbook, but what I wrote in it was never my assigned work and no teacher knew the difference. (While I was physically in class, my notebook transported me to wherever I wanted to go. It felt almost magical, really.) And for another, it doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. Everyone knows how to write, and good enough is good enough, mostly, in this time of flurried and frantic communication; doing it well is nice, but not necessary, it’s better just to get it done.
So why, you might wonder, do I keep on filling pages? Particularly knowing that it’s unlikely anyone will ever read them? The truth is, most of my pages were never meant to be read. But I ask myself the same question all the time, anyway. When I was a teenager toting an extra notebook everywhere I went, I loathed the question, “Why do you write?” The answer felt too simple to stand up in the face of judgement, and too complicated all at the same time, because it came down, simply, to need. Writing was like breathing for me, at that stage of my life; I needed to keep doing it in order to survive. It was also the only way I knew to sort out how I felt about… anything, really.
Writing is a little bit less critical to keeping me alive these days. But Joan Didion’s words about why she writes still resonate strongly for me. Words are the tool that I use to understand what I’m thinking, what I’m experiencing in the world and what it means for me. The result is hours spent filling pages – often unfocused pages. There is just so much to write about, I never run out of subjects but I also don’t always spend my writing time on topics that fuel my passion. More often than not, I simply write down whatever comes to mind first, whether it’s in my journal or in this space.
I’ve been reflecting on that a lot lately; on the act of filling pages and how important it remains for me, but also about how I want to focus my work. There are so many stories – but which are the ones that I truly want to tell? After months of consideration, and reconsideration, I’ve finally landed on an answer. It’s not the one that I expected, admittedly. But when I landed on it, everything fell so perfectly into place that I knew it was the right one. I write, like I always have, because it makes sense to me to do it, because my happiest hours are spent filling pages. Even digital ones.
But what I fill them with, the stories I tell, will be changing in the coming months. After so many years spent on fashion, it’s time for a change. I’m truly thrilled to have settled on this new direction. And I can’t wait to bring you all along with me.
