the dressing table

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I like the routines of grooming and preparation surrounding the dressing table, a key player in the (not the literal but certainly the ceremonial) beginning and ending of each day. This for me is almost always some elaborate series of attentions paid to the skin but the full setup* is stocked with all manner of tools and medicaments, cosmetics and paraphernalia. A great deal can be accomplished in this space, particularly in the realm of transformation, and it’s often a meditative process. It strikes me as a private space, too, where I am with myself (with the reflection of myself, too, causing that multiplication/division of identity a mirror always does for me).

*No coincidence that I show you only a fragment, though this is partly a matter of obscuring what the mirror would betray, which is a true, true—as I define it—mess (this, too, is private).

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This, I realize, sort of in conjunction with my bathroom and all its tools and potions and particulars, is the main reason I don’t like to be away from home. My current favorite products within familiar reach. This general arrangement, at once stylized and utilitarian, and the set of routines it facilitates, is one I don’t like mucked with.

Showing you a bit of it as I enjoy seeing how people store things; how their lives, their daily environments, really look. In this no detail is too small to interest me (sometimes it is only the small details that will interest me). I keep this space quite organized (there are cardboard dividers in the mugs to sort pencils and brushes into subcategories, I’d just used the lipstick when I took this), though I change it around often, too, rotating products in and out according to my rapidly shifting whims and preferences.

IMG_0247You’ll spot a number of favorites I’ve mentioned, and more.

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weekend distraction: closetvisit.com

closetvisit.com*
closetvisit.com*

If you are into women’s fashion, this site is so interesting to browse.

Different women† showcasing their favorite clothes and accessories, posing in various outfits and attitudes (usually in their homes).

I am fascinated by tiny details of the lives of others, and so am often curious to see how people arrange their living spaces, how they organize their belongings, how they display their treasures. A combination of images come together to narrate a style, and of course the items you choose to own can be telling. I like the idea of doing this myself. It would be a good exercise, just choosing the items I would want to share, and deciding for myself what some of my favorite options are.

†Mostly the kind of women who have a lot of clothes and quite nice houses, I guess not surprisingly. I like the idea of seeing a more normal subset represented, though (i.e. people who don’t own houses or designer clothes, but nonetheless have a purposeful and personal style), and don’t think I would find that any less interesting at all. I’d like to see the closets of men¥, too.

____¥ _The Closets of Men_ would be a great title, no?

*Unfortunately it is not possible to link to individual posts, they all come up as the same url.