Sezane cardigan
Almada Label top (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Dior heels
Chanel handbag
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o)
Mejuri earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Musée Jacquemart-André – Paris, France
Paris, May 26, 2023
Dear friends,
If I had to choose just one thing that I love most about Paris – and it would be nearly impossible, the list is endless – it would be that there’s always something new to discover. That doesn’t mean there’s always something that’s truly new. But the city offers so much art, culture and history that no matter how often you visit, no matter how long you stay, you’ll never see it all.
I’m dead serious. It would be impossible, even with a lifetime of concerted effort. (And while I’ve been trying to prove myself wrong for more than two decades, I know it isn’t realistic.)
Case in point: the Musée Jacquemart-André. It’s been open since 1913. That was just a year after the second of its two owners willed it to L’Institut de France. (The incredibly extravagant place was their home before it was a museum, an idea that seems unfathomable me, who has only lived in apartments, including one that measured only 220 square feet, in adulthood.) And yet, we’ve never been. Today, the museum is our something new.
It’s the thrill of discovery, the constant possibility of stumbling upon something entirely new to me, that makes me so love travel. It’s true that in my daily live, I thrive on routine. I crave the consistency of waking up at the same time, I like to know what each of my meals will be throughout the day without having to think about it… and, of course, I want all the clothes in my wardrobe to match so I only buy neutral toned garments. That doesn’t change when we’re on holiday, per se. But it’s that consistency that allows me to fully immerse myself in new experiences and enjoy good surprises when they do come my way – while avoiding unpleasant ones as much as possible.
It’s not a perfect system, but it works for me. I still step in chewed gum, miss the occasional bus and forget to stop at the grocery store. Life happens. But mostly, by keeping what I can control under control in a way that makes sense to me, I can squeeze as much enjoyment out of life as possible. And I would never want it to be said that I’m not dedicated to that pursuit. After all, like I said in my last letter: life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. It only makes sense, at least to me, to live exactly the way you want to… which for me, means in pursuit of the unfamiliar.
Countless friends have recommended the Musée Jacquemart-André to us over the years. And so many people who know us well can’t be entirely wrong. It turns out that I don’t share the former owners’ taste in art, which is natural enough. We don’t all love the same things. But their taste in architecture, on the other hand, is so unhindered by trivial constraints like a budget and thus so imaginative, so dramatic for the sake of it, that I’m instantly in love. Jacquemart and Andre were both creative, original thinkers. As a couple, they built a dream home that is unrestrained in its opulence, naively unaware of its mild absurdity in a broader social context and, frankly, breathtaking.
…this is exactly the kind of something new I’m so enamoured of discovering. The passion that the owners poured into the construction of their very particular hôtel particulier (which is French for townhouse) is still palpable more than a century after its completion. This was, to them, a work of art. Personally, I’m inclined to agree.
We snapped these photos in the winter garden. It’s the loveliest part of the house-turned-museum, I think. A purpose-built room intended to house tropical and subtropical plants, its glass roof lets in light that gives the pink and white marble space a luminous, ethereal quality. The plants still live on the main floor, as lush as you would imagine under all that sunlight. They’re the principal attraction, but the staircase that leads out of the garden to the rest of the house, in particular the mirror-lined second floor landing, is the real masterwork. I would have stayed their happily, and skipped (most of) the rest of the place entirely.
The Musée Jacquemart-André was only new to me. But what a marvelous discovery.
