An amber-colored glass paperweight sits in my nightstand drawer. It used to belong to my dad, who recently died, and to his grandmother before him. It’s shaped like a cube, with delicate flowers painted on each side, and it’s heavy in my palm. But I rarely pick it up, because I have no papers that need weighing down. The object occupies valuable space that might otherwise be used for a book, tissues, or anything else that I actually use. Still, I keep it, along with a few other pieces of what you might call “sentimental clutter”—personally meaningful yet impractical objects: a box of old birthday cards, a chipped seashell, a loyalty card for a café that no longer exists.
Sunday Best is a brand new feature here at TIG that we plan on making a recurring one. Each Sunday, we will bring you a cross-section of interesting articles, links, ideas, music, culture, and anything else we think might be interesting or entertaining⏤the perfect supplement to your Sunday and one we hope you will add to your routine.
THEY SAY all good things must come to an end, and that is now true of our bestselling Windsor Bamboo Top Handle Wicker Handbag. Introduced in 2018 while we were living in Spain, and it has been a runaway bestseller ever since. Like many of our other wicker and rattan items, the Windsor is completely handmade by artisans in sunny Spain, about an hour by train outside of the city, past acres of sweet-scented orange groves and a castle ruin nestled high in the side of a mountain ...
WHETHER IT WAS due to the arrival of athleisure about six years ago or the arrival of the pandemic three years ago, we've been dressing up less for a long time now. And even as lockdown restrictions have been lifted and we're hoping to make our way out of this chapter in our lives, some of the habits we've developed over this time have remained, such as the casual way we've been dressing during this time ...
I READ SOMETHING recently that stated that the sales of colour cosmetics dropped 33% in 2020, and that sales of cosmetics overall dropped by 15%. While I did buy a few new eyeshadow palettes during that time despite not having anywhere to go (perhaps it was for the odd Instagram selfie), I did actually reduce spending on these items ...
IN THE SECOND week of May, just after the Bank Holiday, we decided to spend some time back in London. We normally visit several times a year, but since 2020 was the year of the Great Lockdown, the last time we had been was the May previously to meet up with a friend from Spain—it was hot then and perfect for traipsing about. P had heard that there would be a heat wave this time around
LAST SUMMER, five months into lockdown and two hours past midnight, I found myself glaring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror with five drops of Bertolli extra virgin olive oil drizzling down my nose. After an evening spent picking at my pores, I had found a buried Reddit thread suggesting I massage my skin with oil to rid it of the tiny grey spots that dotted its surface. These little nuisances—or “sebaceous filaments”—are not acne but passages that carry oil from the pores to the skin’s outer layer. Everyone has them, and they are not visible to the human eye except from an intimate distance. But, under lockdown, with the distance between my visage and the mirror shrinking with each passing day, I’d become obsessed with purging my face of these invaders.
A CLOSE FRIEND recently remarked that she was low on energy, inspiration, everything. I brought it up to P who wondered, Do you think that maybe it's late-stage pandemic? He said that he was reading an article about how when we were in the height of lockdown, we accepted it and could mentally cope, but now that vaccines have been rolled out and it feels like we're nearing the end of lockdown life, we're remembering what life used to be like and it seems so very nearly within reach ...