What did you do this Summer? The end of the Summer resembles pretty good the end of the year, doesn’t it? How was your Summer, how was your year? On the 31st of August, I felt a lump in my throat, but it quickly went away when hey, a friend asked What are we doing for New Year’s?

?

This Summer, without really planning on it, I discovered myself (discovered, rediscovered, big words is what I mean, yes, yes) even more through concerts, entrepreneurship, Bali, books, the mountains, articles, music, festivals, road trips, the beach, movies, fun, loads of time on my own. You live most of the time inside of your head, make sure it’s a nice place to be resembles pretty good You live most of the time dressed, make sure you feel what you’re dressed in or Are you comfortable on your couch when it’s just you and your couch?

What?

This Summer, I found the style zone I feel like in my pajamas the most, I feel like on my couch the most.

Aha!

The couch is like a barometer to me. While a barometer is used to measure atmospheric pressure, I use the couch to sense the humanity in someone. When I meet someone – the friend of a friend at a party, people in the meeting I’m about to work with, a friend of a friend in a club, a man approaching me in a restaurant – without wanting to, somewhere inside my subconscious, a question arises whether this human being in front of me looks and talks exactly as they do on their couch at home. Of course, filters, gestures and expressions, adapted to nowadays’ society, do show up, but it’s the fraction of the second a natural spark shows up or not, too.

The naturalness you lay down on your couch with, on a Saturday morning.

It’s not about liking or not, we don’t have breakfast with everyone we meet. Liking is… Only God knows! It’s about that drop of magic we all have, hello! And who doesn’t like magic, hello?

Just when I thought I’d found that something this Summer – it’s style that we’re talking about – Fall came and I try not to forget to put long sleeves or trousers on. I, also, look into my closet and think Oh, I feel like changing something! Not to give up on everything I have, but, rather, inserts things in it that make me dance a new dance, somehow. Why? Because I entered a new chapter, again. I’d like to mark it somehow.

Style marks both the eras in the history we read about in books and the eras in our lives. Just like frames that frame moments. It’s interesting to observe myself from a distance, at times, and remember why I, obsessively, wore a jacket, dress, a certain someone’s trousers or some heels. It’s interesting to notice, also, that specific something I seem to not give up on, no matter what. Luckily, I don’t want to, it’s that specific something that’s at the base of me.

We each have a specific smell and we don’t even mean smell only when we say specific.

Don’t we?

2011. An ex boyfriend once told me Can’t you just dress like all the girls do? as we were arriving at a party. I wanted to cry for a second, but throw a little party for myself, at the same time. For me. Now I smile when I remember about it. I was wearing his jeans, I loved them and I know I would have been thrilled instead of him.

2016. Do you feel good in this dress?, the next ex-boyfriend asked me when we got to the seafront restaurant. I was feeling in a specific way and we loved each other. In a different way, I came to understand. Love can have multiple forms. We still love each other, but separately. Definitely differently. The courage, though, is the same. I threw a small party for it in my soul, also. For the courage to be myself, no matter what.

My specific something, their specific something. I, often, ask for opinions, opinions are offered to us even without us asking for them. It’s important to me, however, to know my opinion, every time, in the first place. It comes from intuition and it’s fascinating to play with intuition. Literally, not metaphorically, when it implies fire, also. Intuition always knows what state I’m in – bohemian, rock, home wear, chaos, minimal, disco, playful – and it’s its tune that I dress in.

I’m not saying it’s about clothes, in the first place, hello! At all. It wasn’t about clothes, in fact, before, either. It’s about those simple, little, little, little things you don’t pay attention to from the start, but are like little, little, little cartoon animals that scream and jump around, hoping for you to hear and see them.

And a time comes when you hear them, see them. And you think about you, about taking your responsibility, about them taking theirs and so on.

Do you believe people change? I believe people evolve (if they want and work at it), extend, dream, raise their arms and dance, take steps in various directions, just as I believe in their specific something that stays at the base of them, regardless of clothes, hair or relationships. It’s the character. It’s chaos and chaos is both the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe and the word of the Summer of 2018, in the best way possible. Character can’t be copied, nor imitated, mimed, nor hidden. It’s the fraction of the second on the couch and we all know how much we like to lay on the couch in our pajamas. It’s important to see who’s on it. Or in the mirror in the elevator, aside from the little cartoon animals.

Couch + Elevator = Our truest self can now fly free.

Summer of 2018

Later edit: Summer of 2021