Good morning,
2021 is nigh! I hope all of you are safely enjoying a holiday season that’s as lovely as you are. I hope you’re savoring a guiltless moment of rest, and I hope you’re doing so while reminding yourselves to appreciate all those smaller things in life.
I’ve been thinking about life, as a concept, a lot, because as of this month, someone I love very deeply no longer has one. A few weeks ago, my grandmother died, and while I typically prefer to go through these sorts of motions offline, I now find myself hankering to tell you a little bit about her and her 94 remarkable years.
My grandmother, Joan, lived the most deliciously madcap life. She spent sandy Hyannis Port summers with clambakes and Kennedys, and she helped lead her high school drumline to a state championship. In the 1940s, she worked in Warner Bros.' Boston public relations office, where she brought Hollywood’s glowing Golden Age to her hometown. She was the recipient of multiple marriage proposals that she, amazingly, rejected until her great love — a Marine lieutenant from the other side of town, my grandfather — swept her off her feet in the swirl of a snowstorm. They built a life rooted in compassion and adventure, in the arts, music, and sports. They ran a kind of global household, with an international delegation of friends from Israel to Central Africa whom I got to know over glasses of lemonade on their back patio.
She was really, really good at making friends. She was also, objectively, my favorite person. When my grandfather would pick us up from school, I’d often come home to find her in the kitchen beside the blender, getting an early start on happy hour with a frothy pitcher of margaritas. I was especially shy during these years, and I savored those moments I could observe the way she moved through the world — self-assured and rip-roaringly funny, warm like a winter nap, living for the honest thrill of it.
I’m grateful to have gotten to know all four of my grandparents when they were alive. Not everyone has that luxury, the luxury of time. They were all so different and so worth knowing. It’s such a lucky thing, to get to love like that.
This month, I wrote about:
The Los Angeles brand — launched on Kickstarter by two recent Stanford grads — making a big, sunny business out of patchworked deadstock.
Trinidadian-born designer, maker, and creator Solange Parris, and her journey from novice thrifter to circular fashion advocate.
The great loungewear pivot of 2020 — a pandemic-driven obsession or a category set to define fashion’s future?
Generation Z, who, in 2020, became fashion and beauty’s “It” influencers, top consumers, and most vocal activists.
Why fashion brands are still so hesitant to get on TikTok, and why they’ll have no choice but to get with the times in the New Year.
I read:
Our shared unsharing (Stella Bugbee/The Cut)
It’s time to stop looking to brands to save us (Whitney Bauck/Fashionista)
Reclaiming red lipstick from white feminism (Marilyn La Jeunesse/Allure)
The year of a thousand chocolate chip cookies (Cam Wolf/GQ)
A Night In with Rico Nasty (Steffanee Wang/Nylon)
Fashion media’s missed influencer opportunity (Alexandra Mondalek/Business of Fashion)
Patagonia’s new CEO plots a post-Trump future for the activist brand (Kim Bhasin/Bloomberg)
Biden is building a team that looks like the people it serves (Robin Givhan/The Washington Post)
TTYL,
Maura
This month, I’ve made a donation to the Alzheimer’s Association’s Illinois Chapter, which gives reassurance and hope to families facing Alzheimer’s while also advancing critical research to end the disease.