Cake for Breakfast

Wilfred sweater (similar)
Mango trousers
Linjer rings (c/o)
Maris Pearl Co. earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Sixteenth Arrondissement – Paris, France

Paris, June 2, 2023

Dear friends,

If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember my Kate Spade phase. There’s no archival evidence of it for me to share, though. Most of my posts from before 2016 got lost when I made the move from Blogger to WordPress. C’est la vie. The fact is, like most fashion bloggers in the 2010s, I coveted polkadot iPhone cases, colourful party dresses and notebooks emblazoned with cheeky phrases like Eat Cake for Breakfast.

My love of Kate Spade dates back far longer, to a series of ads that ran in Vogue in the fall of 2002, when Kate was still at the helm of her eponymous brand. She made the throwback party dresses she designed look cool, not preppy. The parties she threw were styled, but also a mess, like she’d given Gatsby a call and asked to borrow his house for the evening, then set up a photo booth and filled the place with confetti.

You get the idea. Or maybe you don’t, but writing more than one paragraph about a twenty-year-old ad campaign feels self-indulgent. The point is, Kate Spade owned by Kate Spade was a niche brand. It made dressing up, way up, look effortless and fun. There was always a little too much champagne and someone inevitably wound up in tears, but no one forgot what a good time they had. The Kate Spade owned mostly by Neiman Marcus with stores in every outlet mall around the world had an undeniable mass appeal, but it was straight-laced. Everyone enjoyed a single glass of champagne with dinner and went home at a sensible time.

I loved both versions of Kate Spade different reasons. How can you dislike a brand that reminds you that adulthood isn’t just about making sure your bills are paid? You’re in charge. You can eat cake for breakfast, there’s no one to stop you.

Eat cake for breakfast became a personal mantra for me. It was an early version of the now popular romanticise your life. When you eat cake for breakfast, it’s a special day – even if it’s Tuesday and all that’s on your schedule is a series of meetings in grey-walled rooms at the office. One of my favourite memories from the early years when we lived in East Vancouver is our Saturday morning cake for breakfast dates. On grey weekend mornings when we didn’t have much going on, we would walk to the now defunct Black Rook Bakery together instead of going out for brunch. We ordered two slices of cake and shared.

The cakes at Black Rook Bakery were all worth of a special occasion. (That occasion was almost always just that we had the day off work, but they made it special.) There was a layered angel food with ribbons of lemon curd and meringue dotted with chopped roasted almost; that was a firm favourite. I also loved what they called their Chester Cheesecake. It was carrot cake and cheesecake in one – two slices of carrot at the top and bottom, a slice of cream cheese in the middle and cream cheese icing on the outside. My mouth still waters when I think about it.

We don’t have cake for breakfast that often these days. We don’t have cake that often at all, actually – my sweet tooth has diminished considerably over the years, and I’m particular about cake, like I am about everything. I don’t just love every slice I taste, it has to be the right one. And I haven’t really found that in Winnipeg. (Though to be truthful, I haven’t tried that hard.) Paris is another story, of course. Because in Paris, there is Maison Philippe Conticini. And at our sixteenth arrondissement apartment, there is a Maison Philippe Conticini just down the road… which is just one of many reasons we’ve been so happy here.

We ordered a whole cake, as an early birthday treat for Ian. It was a special, limited edition cake for Mother’s Day – all pink and gold on the outside, with layers of praline and fruit jelly underneath. We’ve concluded that it’s essentially an elevated peanut butter and jelly – and we love it. We’re enjoying the last slices for breakfast this morning, on our balcony, before we head out to enjoy our last day in the city. I can’t complain.

Eat cake for breakfast. I don’t say it much anymore, but I still think you should do it every once in a while. I’ve never regretted it. And I can’t imagine that I ever will.

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