The Allure of Forever

Is a curation of "perfect" items in fashion and makeup just a fantasy? One writer (me) gets vulnerable about desire and excess, spills about the best (cheap) brow mascara and recs a mind blowing novel

Year after year, the search for the “perfect” white button up haunts me. One that looks polished yet relaxed, mensweary and sexy, and the buttons line up just right to leave it down as far as possible without being too far. Pair it with jeans, leggings, with anything, and it’s just right. Currently I have a small collection of white button ups that are…fine…but not perfect. Not the ONE. And somewhere along the line, I absorbed the idea that the ONE is somewhere out there, that I just haven’t found it yet.

But I’m turning another year older this month, and reader, I was born, but not yesterday. If there was a perfect one, wouldn’t I have found it by now?

I started thinking that maybe the whole premise of the perfect anything is a moving target that can never truly be accomplished but certainly creates a lot of busywork. I have to say, as I age, and now having experienced a fair share of death, I do think about time differently, i.e. I don’t want to be wasting it scouring websites looking for said stupid shirt.

Clearly this has all been on my mind for some time…(this is a page from MADWOMAN, my forthcoming novel.

As I’ve started to see, and maybe you have too, as we traverse this sticky terrain of beauty and deeper meaning in this newsletter, this desire for a small collection of perfect staples that form a sort of uniform has long been something I’ve held, but have never achieved. (Unless you count this perfect sweater, which I can report I literally wear every day while working from home all Portland winter long—so maybe perfection is attainable?)

In any case, as I write this, ads for the AYR Deep End white button up litter my insta and literal mailbox (somehow?). It’s not cheap, of course, but somehow it seems that should be fine because its masquerading as an “investment” piece, which I have to say, is another term that I’ve started to have my doubts about. I have a closet full of “investment pieces” or things I bought because it seemed everyone approved of so how could they be wrong? Here I may or may not be referring to the Rudy Jude utility jeans whose pockets pouf in a weird way that super expensive denim just should not, and if I was pushed in a river, I’d sink. But for a long time, I became convinced of their worth. So convinced a pair scored off Noihsaf Bazaar now lives in my closet, somewhat regrettably.

The shirt in question…

So I see this AYR top, and I want it to be just right, I want it to end the search for a great white button up forever. I want to find shit so good I don’t have to put energy into finding more shit again later, or the pain of trying to sell the shit I thought was gonna be good but really wasn’t. (I won’t even get started on the crotch stranglers known as Kamm Pants). (I like these a lot better, because it turns out I’m a person who wants to sit down and eat food throughout the day.)

Equally as haunting: the “perfect” vintage Levis jeans, and the “perfect” black wool coat that is both chic and warm AF, and and and. I could go on. (I will say I found the perfect winter boots and have never looked back but Blundstones feel like common knowledge at this point.)

Sometimes when I meditate the message of less comes through very clearly. I visualize myself getting rid of clothes that no longer “serve me” that no longer “align” and whittling things down only to these perfect items that fit just right and are high quality and look sharp and polished when I need to, but also cozy and relaxed. And mainly, that feel good. What ends up happening is I come up from the meditation and feel total overwhelm at the thought of getting rid of things I have, and heres’s why: At some point, before I bought each thing, I thought it was the perfect…something. The intention was so pure. So how can I trust myself now looking at this AYR top knowing my track record, knowing the cycle it will inevitably go through.

With makeup, I have a similar fantasy, that I will one day decide on just a few perfect products and never need anything else. (I think this was the fantasy of miracle balm, one product that somehow was seven things—false! Even if I do like the stuff, it doesn’t replace things necessarily.)

I was chatting with a friend this morning who brought back the memory of buying disposal fashion in our late teens and early twenties—and I mentioned that I still have and wear a blouse from Forever 21 that has against all odds held up for now close to 17 years. A total one off, but what a life she’s had. Every time I wear it someone comments on how pretty it is. I even wore it under a white suit to my LA book event! (the suit, I will say, was pretty perfect and made by two wildly talented sisters I went to high school with). My favorite button up shirt was a gift when I was 22 from Urban Outfitters, a brand that I don’t think anyone still carries. Pinstriped and classic with a just right fit. I still wear it all the time.

I wish I had a more solid takeaway message but maybe it’s just that the allure of this minimalist perfection may never actually exist for me, not just because a lot of stuff sort of sucks once you actually get it home and doesn’t actually hold up over time, but because my tastes change year after year and they always have. Sure, some things stay the same, but for example: I have a collection of Ace and Jig jumpers and dusters that I simply do not wear anymore, a fact I would have never believed had you told me this eight years ago. I think it’s also something to do with our culture of social media telling us what to like, and creating a sort of sameness. When I take breaks from the scroll, I often find myself drawn more to what I actually like to wear versus what I’m being shown. (It turns out I really love leggings, legwarmers and the above mentioned giant sweater!)

The desire for something new is often actually just a desire to check out, or to self soothe, or bring about excitement on a long day, and ultimately speaks to my inner desire for “enoughness” that I am pinning on whatever the object is. Growing up, I was often told no. We could not afford the brand name things the other kids had, and I lived in a state of perpetual pining. I once told a therapist I wanted to try a “no-buy” year and she looked at me kindly and said, “I think you should just enjoy shopping every now and then.” Essentially challenging my pattern of all-or-nothing thinking—and also being like, hey, live a little, hon. You’re already sober and high-disciplined in all other ways. Have your kicks!" Which, I can appreciate. Fashion and style really mean something deep to me, and is one of the biggest sources of material pleasure in my life. But when I think of it terms of this rigid idea of the “perfect” piece, it’s a bit less fun.

As I get older, I’m certainly more in tune than ever before about how clothes make me FEEL, which has become more important than how they look. I care about the ways color and pattern really affect my mood and energy, and am more in tune with my instincts.

This is a trench coat I can really stand behind.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Maybe you’ve felt the same way a time or two, or maybe you have found the perfect white button up in which case, please share in the comments NOW.

As for recommendations, I have two things I want to bring to your attention. The first is that I read an absolute whopper of a novel recently called SOLDIER SAILOR by Claire Kilroy. It’s funny because for a long time after I had my daughter, I didn’t feel ready to read about narrators having the early motherhood experience, mainly because I was writhing in undiagnosed postpartum anxiety and later, post-weaning anxiety (and also, there were not as many books ten years ago about motherhood as there are now, or at least it seemed that way). I can easily look back now and see that was what was going on, but when I first had my daughter I was too in it to know that. I was a baby in terms of my spiritual journey and was pretty disconnected from my body in a lot of ways. I also desperately wanted it to be as simple as “new mom nerves.” But later, when it came back much worse after I weaned my daughter when she was two, I had to find a new solution and I had to do the hard work of getting to know myself deeper than I ever had. Like most periods of intense difficulty, the lessons learned are gold in their worth. Of course I see now the way that experience set me on a path that was ultimately life changing, a path I still walk today. Essentially a commitment to growth, learning, and leaning into and exploring the messages my body is sending versus pushing them away, aka moving into a more somatic approach.

Once I was over the major hump of the PW anxiety, I started to be able to read about other women’s experiences without it feeling somehow…threatening to my brain. My brain seemed to absorb content and loop on it in a way that felt intrusive and awful and I had to be really careful about what was coming in. Now, thankfully, I feel much more resilient, and crave books that go into the difficulties of early motherhood, the vast nuance, and the reckoning with the birth/death combo pack. Soldier Sailor is a love letter of sorts from a mother to her son documenting his first years and her transformation into becoming a mother. It’s also a story about how marriage is irrevocably changed after the arrival of a child. (This husband is rage evoking!).

I saw Leslie Jamison at Powells Tuesday night where she read from her memoir Splinters, and discussed motherhood as a “rearrangement of the soul” which feels extremely apt. Soldier Sailor certainly falls within the soul rearranging territory I love. It’s also one of the most beautifully written books on a line level I’ve read in a long time. I wanted to frame the final pages, truly. I think you should all preorder it. It’s already out in the UK but comes out with Scriber this June.

Finally, let’s end on brow mascara. I have very blonde, fine brows. I like to fill them in and give them some help. And I’ll keep it simple to tell you that while I know a lot of you are still on the boy brow train, I have long used a brow mascara that is just as good if not better, and is extremely cheap. I have also tried something similar from Kosas and it just wasn’t as good as this lil baby here:

Now, I can respect if you are trying to keep a full face of only clean beauty. This isn’t clean necessarily though I’ve never looked deep into its ingredients. I prioritize the clean thing when it comes to anything going on my actual face skin, and this just hangs out on the brows—I can live with it.

Alright, that’s all for now! Stay tuned as Kimberly King Parsons and I will be teaching our Novel class one more time for those of you who couldn’t make it the first time! Date and time to be announced soon.

I want to thank everyone who has subscribed. It means so much to me! I love this little corner of the internet so much, and can’t wait to hear from all of you what you’ve been loving lately! Please let me know.