Have you checked out your horoscope for the year ahead? Pinning the goop at-a-glance to my vision board and waiting anxiously for my yearly reading with the incredible
. Do yourself a favor and get a recorded reading that you can rewatch throughout the year for a boost of encouragement and inspiration months down the road when you’ve lost the plot.
I’m also very into the Ins & Outs list that
put together, especially the bit about Bright Equals — finding people who match and support your drive or ambition. I’m starting to put together my vision for the Wild Plum wine launch this summer and feel lit up by other people’s ambition. I’m here for any and all of the big plans that you have percolating!
Completely unrelated, but I have to talk about this. Over the break we watched Mrs. Doubtfire and The Perfect Couple and, let me tell you, seeing a 46 year old Sally Field right up against a 59 year old Nicole Kidman is jarring. Sally Field’s face moves! She has forehead lines! Nicole Kidman looks like an animatronoic wax figurine. I cannot stop thinking about the two women and how much the concept of aging has changed in the past twenty years. A lovely friend added “aging” to her In List for the year and I exhaled reading it (she says as she stares at her face in the mirror and wonders if she needs Botox).
Links, links, links!
I spotted these boat shoes in a photo on the Sezane website in December, but couldn’t find the actual product anywhere. They dropped on Sunday and sold out in a nano second. I will be impatiently awaiting the restock notification. Same goes for this sweater.
Andrew hit it out of the park with my Christmas gift this year — a puzzle table!! Now, instead of taking over the kitchen table and forcing everyone to eat dinner without touching a damn thing, I can simply move the puzzle table. Game changer. Tackling this outrageously good Piecework Puzzle (we carry it at the store if you’re local).
And my mom delivered another holiday win with the Tatcha Indigo Hand Cream. I feel like Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her… or at least my hands do. Soooooo soft.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
It’s the second time I’ve read The Secret History and I remember having loved it 20ish years ago. The writing is so immediate and clear, as evidenced by the very first sentence: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
The drama! The intrigue! We are let in on the secret straight away. The taut, dazzling world of the students at Hampden College in Vermont is so beautifully detailed and I found myself tumbling headfirst into the world of the brooding, brilliant Henry, the blustering, witless Bunny, the cool, aloof Francis and the beautiful twins, Camilla and Charles. Patience is required, the elegant plot echoing strongly of the classic Greek tragedies that they study.
We follow Richard, a transplant from California who, unlike the rest of the group, does not come from money. He becomes enamored with the elusive, achingly cool students who study under the direction of their enigmatic professor, Julian. We soon learn that the group, excluding Bunny, have been secretly running to the woods at night, performing all sorts of Dionysian rituals in search of some kind of ascendence. But one night, in the grip of an otherworldly ecstasy, they kill a man.
They try to cover it up but Bunny finds out and it is Bunny’s unraveling that really provides the tension. At least until page 270 when the group has had enough of his thinly veiled threats to expose them and he is pushed off a cliff. It felt like the book should have ended shortly thereafter. Instead, the tension slowly evaporates as the reader is left with nearly 300 more pages in which nothing much happens!
There are moments of startling beauty, but I must have blocked out the second half of the book in my memory. I keep thinking about how much better it would be as a 300 page novel instead of a nearly 600 page one. Donna Tartt conjured a feel or a vibe for an elite, liberal arts college a la her alma mater, Bennington, but that sense of place was not enough to carry the another novel-length section. Like the first time I read it, going to hold tight to my love for the first half and leave it at that.
A striped sleep shirt so you can at least look the part for all of those late night study sessions (I have and love this!).
Round metal sunglasses to hide your bloodshot eyes after a late night at one of the dorm parties as you hurry across the quad.
A gorgeous, smart vest. School’s in session.
Wear this perfect cotton poplin white button down every single day and feel incredibly pulled together.
A classic wool coat for that New England academic winter look. Also comes in black which is definitely what the characters would have worn, but I prefer the softer grey.
An LL Bean tote for books, mushroom foraging, Dionysian revelry requirements. You name it.
The exact pair of loafers that I wore at boarding school because a true classic never dies.
The perfect pull-on kick-flare stretchy pointe pant to wear endlessly. And it looks especially good with a crisp white shirt or a little black sweater.
This set of Bistro-inspired glasses feels like the kind of thing that Henry would reach for, sipping wine or bourbon over games of Solitaire in the middle of the night.
Trouser socks in a very Vermont shade of brown to tuck into your Weejuns.
Wrinkles! Weejuns! You’re hitting on all cylinders today, Elyse
Thank you beauty 🙏 your next on the list!!! love you❤️🌹