Hi Style Stars,
This week’s letter includes my experience heart-alignment shopping on Facebook marketplace and some thoughts on that hoary old chestnut genes/jeans (and what’s really freaky thing about it)…
I’ve spent the last couple months buying things for my new place. A perfect vintage American flag I found folded in a Zip-lock bag in a hot antique barn, a Ralph Lauren chinoiserie lamp handed over to me in a church parking lot, even a most surprising Victorian bed. Most of what I’ve bought has been from dusty antique malls and Facebook marketplace.
I enjoy the interactions that come with this kind of commerce. They’re usually with older people who have the time and nature to talk, and I like talking to them. I walk away feeling that a sense of good has been imparted into the thing they’ve given me. In a fanciful way — I think they might like the idea of their old things living a new life in the big city — but also because this is a little bit of something good about the relationship between old and young people. Excitement about what’s to come mirrored back with patina.
Sometimes the goodwill in these exchanges is very literal. A few weeks ago I drove a while away to pick up a loveseat that ended up not fitting in my car. The woman selling it was the wife of a Presbyterian pastor, who came out into the stew of dusk to help us, and they offered to put it in their teenage son’s SUV and drive it over. “It’s a good excuse to get a milkshake.”
The Sydney Sweeney genes/jeans thing is something I usually wouldn’t comment on because it’s like staring at the sun. It’s a kind of opinion-blackhole that tetrises out meaning in favor of foam at the mouth.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t matter. Anything that creates this much energy through conflict and arousal does.