Sezane dress
Dior heels
Celine sunglasses
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o)
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Palais-Royal – Paris, France
Paris, May 29, 2023
Dear friends,
Did you know that, in English, the word ecru is a synonym for beige? I did not. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever used it in English before today. In French, I understood it to mean a shade of cream, which it does… but also doesn’t. Strictly speaking, the French define ecru as a shade of light, yellow-hued beige. So cream, but also not cream. Ecru.
This is a silly way to start a letter, but sometimes we all need a bit of levity. We’ve just come from breakfast at the Cafe de Flore, where we sat at a table on the sidewalk to sip our coffee and nibble our croissants. It’s my favourite way to spend a Parisian morning, especially if we arrive early enough to avoid (most of) the tourists, which we did. Apart from a bit of early morning traffic on boulevard Saint-Germain, we enjoyed a peaceful meal – and then I cheekily snuck upstairs to the toilette, where I changed from this outfit into my new ecru dress from Sezane.
Now, we’re at the Palais-Royal, which is really just a short walk across the river from the Flore. It’s another of my favourite Parisian places, which hid from me, albeit in plain sight, for years – I didn’t really get to know it until we moved to the city in 2012, though I’d walked past it dozens of times on prior trips. That’s the wonderful thing about this city, truly; there’s always something new to discover, you just need to be willing to constantly turn new corners and explore new paths.
But, I admit, since we don’t have the unlimited time here that I wish we did, we often return to these favourite spots rather than doing the kind of exploring that leads to new discoveries. Which is why we’re here, once again, at the Palais-Royal, where we’ve been dozens of times before, so many that we’ve practically memorized every marking in the stone columns and crack in the sidewalk. The temptation to set my ecru dress against this backdrop was simply too great – I couldn’t resist.
If I’m honest, that’s about all that I have to tell you about this particular moment in time. Normally I would share a story, or muse philosophically about past experiences in this same spot, but not today. Today, all I want to tell you is that I bought a new ecru dress that I love, paired it with new shoes that I also love and wore them both to a place that I absolutely adore, just to take pictures. We don’t just need a little levity, we also need to do what brings us happiness, however small or silly it might seem to an outside observer. And I recognise that to anyone who isn’t me, this little outing with my dress would probably seem laughable. I don’t care.
I was so happy, twirling my way down this sidewalk. It didn’t matter that people walking by kept stepping into the shot. It didn’t matter that there was no purpose to this walk to the Palais-Royal beyond the fun of it – in fact, that was probably what made it so wonderful. I did it just because I wanted to. And I would encourage you to do the same, whatever the thing you want to do may be. Do it soon. Today, if you can. It’s worth it. An appreciation of the simple wonder and beauty of life is, after all, not a sign of idiocy but a symptom of joy.
