Sometimes, our laundry basket looks like this:

And sometimes my husband comes home from work and fixes supper when the girls are tired of takeout and I am consumed by the tretis game that is twisting words around for a substack article that never ceases to feel unfinished and contributes exactly ten thousand one hundred and thirty-one dollars to our yearly household income. The next morning my dad makes the girls arepas for breakfast so I can enjoy in bed the coffee Jeff has been making for me for 14 years with exactly 1 and 1/4 of Splenda poured into very specific mugs in which he knows his coffee tastes best. My mom loves cleaning the girls’ water bottles because she says no one in the world can get to those nooks and crannies the way she does with the micro-brushes she buys for the task. My mother-in-law does school pick-up on Tuesdays and Thursdays when Anaís has dance and pick-up becomes a 2 hour journey. When the girls get home, grandma has already fed them. So when people ask me how “I do it all” I always say I don’t. I have a village. A little French commune with the type of socialism that only works at the level of a loving and unconditional family unit.

~

I get dressed every day. To honor my roles, yes, but also to soothe a relentless search. A longing. The illusion that I might finally find what I am looking for. I suspect what I am looking for is myself. So I search in the mirror. I search in the photograph. But the b-side only returns an empty reflection.

Curiously, it is only when I stop looking at myself that I seem to come closer. I realized this while driving my daughters to school, for it is in the confinement of the car that I have experienced the expansiveness that comes from keeping my eyes focused on the road, on the stop sign, on the lady riding her bike, on keeping my loved ones safe, on keeping strangers safe.

I dress for that. I dress to keep myself alive. I dress to keep others alive. I dress to confront myself by looking outward. I dress to keep going when the light changes from red to green, even if I am not quite ready.

But I have to be. Alexa is going off. “Time to go to school.” I can’t overthink the look. I rely on what I know works. A gestalt that is mostly chill in form and substance. Considered but never overstyled, restrained but not incomplete—the sartorial equivalent, perhaps, of the tenth rep in a set that doesn’t reach failure but still induces muscle growth.

~

After this paywall: what I’ve been wearing, plus a lot of non-affiliate links. If you’d like to continue reading and support my work, please become a paid subscriber. If you already are, thank you.

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My first instinct was to say “people who ask these questions have no personal style” when I saw this “recommended thread” on my instagram feed.

But then I thought: no one can gaslight me into liking what I dislike. My list is long and I won’t elaborate: berets. Denim overalls. Ties on women (?¿). Pussy bows. Suspenders. Sunglasses on top of the head. Tight vests. Espadrilles. Etc.

Personal style is personal precisely because taste is inherently discriminatory. You have to NOT like things, edit out, like something better than something else. Make distinctions. And further distinctions. Does that mean anyone wearing things from my list of dislikes doesn’t have personal style? NO. They wear them precisely because that’s their style. I may dislike their style. But that doesn’t make it any less personal and authentic. And hence, worth appreciating. Because the opposite: not being willing to appreciate things we don’t like on ourselves but others like on themselves, robs us of the gift of finding beauty in ugliness. Which in turn may become curiosity. And then a portal into expanded taste.

A tragedy, and a bore. If you ask me.

Am I being postmodern here? Am I saying the concepts of ugliness and beauty do not exist? They do. Except they are not universal. Or perennial. They may change with repeated exposure, aperture, softness, culture.

Or not. Maybe you like what you like and you hate what you hate and stick to it, which is usually the result of years of experimentation (hopefully! I recommend not missing out on the stage where we make a lot of mistakes before we arrive at those inamovibles). Maybe I will never like skinny jeans no matter how cool they look on Emmanuelle Alt (and recently on Amy Smilovic), but how silly would it be for me to say that Emmanuelle Alt has no personal style for wearing skinny jeans because I don’t like skinny jeans on me?

If anything, her stubbornness may be evidence of personal style rather than its absence.

And maybe my point here is:

I. The fact that someone wears something I don’t like doesn’t mean they do not have personal style. Personal style describes the consistency and specificity of someone’s choices, not whether I approve of them.

II. That concepts of beauty and ugliness should not be made so static as to become part of our identity, to the point where we miss out on beauty that is out there but our half-opened eyes won’t allow us to enter our vision field. Taste needs conviction, but it also needs permeability. Otherwise discernment starts looking more like religious dogma, and the only people we would be hurting would be ourselves—certainly not the person having fun wearing the skinny jeans we may hate.

Happy Saturday!

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Laura.

What happens is that, here and there, little things destabilize the usual recipe. A brooch, a chalina, a mesh shoe. Some of them stay for a long time and some of them inevitably disappear because they’re not practical or I realize I am happy with them existing in a photo but not on my closet or my body. So that’s probably why the speed of things does not really bother me as I do not often lose myself in newness or adopt every “core” but repeatedly comeback to my tried and trues and add the little things here and there.

One of the “little things” I’ve noticed for a while is this color combination of fuchsia and red, which I recently share within this carrusel of unusual hue combinations. Bright and daunting, I know. But such curiosity led me to remix all the fuchsia and red in my closet just to show you some ideas for this fall in case you’re in need of a little change, stuck in a rut, or just want something fun to play with. Obviously, nothing revolutionary (mostly because I’m not Phoebe Philo 🤷🏽‍♀️) but definitely worth my time for all the joy it brought to the last couple of busy and overwhelming weeks with kids back to school, ad portas of work and family trips, and the (too imminent) opening of my solo show.

FUCHSIA AND RED.

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And so I think I want something else. I want to be…I want to be Cathy Horyn! I want to go to every Fashion Week, disappear into a hotel room and write about what I saw on the runways.

I work hard for it. I do a lot of things that lead nowhere, but one day something sticks and I get invited to a couple of great NYFW shows. I’m almost there.

But when I have killed the tiger, I’m scared of the skin.

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Day i: dentist cleaning appointment, UPS store, quick stop at Marshall’s for kitchen tongs:

We’re no longer playing cool

Day ii: Take Bianca to an eye exam, take Anaís to get dance clothes for the fall, lunch date, pick up my drawings from the scan place, rewrite art statement, choose work for my upcoming show, edit wall texts:

Day iii: roadtrip to the beach, last summer hurrah!

Day iv: but after a few days, I inevitably felt the need to return to neutrals. Especially at the beach, where black, white, and shades of ivory feel ironic and unexpected to me:

And then I doubled down.

Day V. But I’m not one to abandon an assignment. Let alone give up on myself

~

Last weekend of summer. Girls are back in school on Wednesday. I am finishing up my fall exhibition. Maybe attending NYfW? We’ll see.

~ staying shallow.

L.

The “privileged” label (and the MAGA inquisition) also arrived while I was spending time with remarkable women who have carved their paths in this difficult fashion world. Women who reminded me of the importance of merit-based inclusion: the kind that rewards excellence over hype. The kind that rewards diversity stemming not from random things we don’t get to choose such as the color of our skin or which side of the border we are born on, but from the ones we do have control over: alchemizing an interesting concept with distinct beauty into wearable garments, paying employees a living wage, working with quality materials, honoring our origins while learning from what other cultures have to teach us, and generally going the extra mile, doing the absolute best we can with the resources available to us. In short, for the content of our character.

Regardless of my “extreme right” beliefs, I say all the above devoid of a trace of shame, even though it hasn’t become very fashionable in the art and fashion milieu to see progress derived from free markets, individuality, and Western values as something worth improving rather than dismantling.

But back to meritocracy and focusing on the things that actually deserve our attention (and our hard-earned dollars), you need to check out the best luxury brands I saw in Colombiamoda: La petite Mort, Ballen, MAZ Manuela Álvarez, and Andrea Landa. And also the seven things worth fitting in my tiny carry-on on my trip back home:

1. Ballen Hamaca bag

   

   

2. Paula Mendoza Zendaya silver earrings

   

3. Sixxta marea red skort

   

   

4. Arkitect x Jorge Duque jeans

   

   

5. Velez Cleo asymmetric leather skirt:

   

6. Pajaro limon necklace

   

   And for a recap of what I wore during Colombiamoda, check out my instagram post:

Can you believe my kids start school in 12 days? Where did summer go?

~ ~ ~

Laura.

I find women who wear a nonconventional body covered in short shorts and a cropped halter not only conventionally beautiful but possessed by a level of unreachable coolness directly proportional to the exposed body part society has arbitrarily deemed undesirable, naturally unbothered by some random on the internet, making me wish I were like them.

But I am not. And like Mrs. Solomon, I have found comfort in the premise that I don’t need to be: that I don’t owe body positivity to anyone—including myself. That wanting to look a certain way, sculpt my body in a certain way, show my body in a certain way, is my prerogative (my body, my choice). That not wanting my body to look a certain way does not imply any judgment of someone whose body naturally does. That a healthier culture isn’t one where everyone is expected to desire the same bodies (whether conventional or nonconventional) but one where people with different bodies are treated with equal dignity and given equal opportunities.

I’ll go further: that embracing some of my insecurities, especially my desire to hide my post-pregnancy arms, taught me something far more valuable than forcing myself into clothes I didn’t feel good in for the sake of body positivity: it taught me to understand proportion as a creative exercise in its own right. Not just to flatter my body (in fact, the body finally got out of the way) but to give way to new armatures: shape, volume, and proportion. Triangles in conversation with hexagons, rectangles with cocoons, inverted triangles with squares.

It was then, by embracing my insecurities and employing proportions from fabric instead of the raw body, that I came to understand that, as much as clothing is rhythm, it is also geometry.

~

These days, I have become a little bit more comfortable showing my arms. But the fact that I found freedom in (self-imposed) limitations helped me more than forcing myself into clothes and performing a confidence I did not yet have. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Phoebe Philo’s inspiration, who must have sensed the need for women to find alternatives to tank tops and baby tees and, in 2015, gave me a starting point: the wide-sleeve top—the subject of today’s newsletter (finally landed that plane).

What does a big-sleeve top do other than hide my arms? It creates form independent of the body beneath it:

So today I’m presenting new and fresh outfit inspo using wide-sleeve tops (and their closest cousin, the cap sleeve) and some wide-sleeve tops currently in the market:

(Note before the paywall: If you enjoy this kind of outfit documentation and occasional cultural overthinking, please consider upgrading. Paid subscribers keep La Deeply Shallow going as I don’t do sponsored links.)

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The tyranny of expectations enforced by machine-like inner voices commanding fun, and the dissonant knot between the diaphragm and the belly button blocking its natural flow.

I connected so much to this 30-second tiktok because I often find myself resenting the picture that I want to take on vacation. The picture as a proxy for fun. The picture as a mediator between fun and me.

I tell myself that I am a visual person. That the camera mirrors and amplifies the beauty my eyes see. That why not live in retrospect?

But sitting on the beach, I realize that I don’t resent the picture as much as I resent wanting it. The loss of my childlike ability to have unmediated fun, to have fun without being watched. To feel it in my body. To go into the water and be one with the water.

I don’t think I can do that anymore, so I try to replace it with a picture.

But the ability to embody the joy, like a child, is gone.

And the picture is just a coping mechanism. It’s how I deal with it.

It is the symptom.

Immediately my mind goes into remedy mode. It prescribes an instagram break. A quiet departure. Resisting being watched. It will optimize my happiness. I will recover. I will be a child again.

I put on my daughter’s goggles and go after the feeling. I’m determined. I hold my breath. I jump in the water. I suspend life for 15-30 seconds to immerse myself in the temporary where I live but my phone cannot.

Otra bocanada.

I become one with the current. In the depths, it occurs to me that taking a picture is the equivalent of seeing myself seeing.

And writing is seeing myself thinking.

~ LdvK.

On the contrary. What most of us want is more capitalism where it works and better capitalism where it fails.

And honestly, better fashion at the Met Gala.

~

As you all know, I have not wasted a single opportunity to express my vehement opposition to socialism and the ways in which it appeals to people legitimately frustrated by the shortcomings of capitalism.

But that doesn’t mean I think capitalism is perfect. Or that there is no room for improvement in a system that has created extraordinary prosperity while remaining deeply imperfect.

So this time, precisely in honor of capitalism, I want to be innovative. I want to propose solutions rather than simply dismantle arguments made by those who (innocently or not) claim that socialism is the solution to $4,000 rent for a shoe box apartment in Manhattan and the presence of a ridiculous number of cereal brands in the cereal aisle.

Like a capitalist, I want to be constructive. Which is why I’m proposing four concrete ways to improve capitalism from where we stand—as individuals who understand freedom also comes with responsibility, and as fashion consumers with real purchasing power who don’t want it confiscated by the warmth of collectivism in exchange for a Varvara Stepanova uniform:

1. Exercise agency (No, it’s not just the algorithm’s fault.)

Fashion is often presented as something that happens to us: influencers disguising ads as heartfelt stories about their grandmother’s closet, viral trends, luxury marketing schemes…

And yes, those things exist. They are pervasive. And they are annoying. But as conscious individuals, we have more agency than we think.

And let me hold your hand while I say this: we are not victims of the algorithm: we can mute, we can unfollow, we can block, we can opt out, we can unsubscribe, we can log off. We can think for ourselves. (Guess under which system even that is forbidden.)

And whatever the reason we buy into something—an aesthetic preference, upward mobility (valid!), belonging, etc.—we can still research the brands we support. We can check labels. We can read websites. We can go down Reddit rabbit holes.

Who has time? I know.

But that’s what it takes to distinguish merit from its increasingly sophisticated costume: getting informed, reclaiming agency, knowing what we are actually incentivizing: is it excellence? Is it craftsmanship? Is it innovation? ? Is it the honest effort of a founder and their workers?

And I say this as someone who the other day walked into Walmart to buy corn on the cob and left with white barrel denim shorts.

I’m doing better. I’m not perfect.

And neither is capitalism.

2. Reward competence over identity.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to support women-owned businesses, black-owned businesses, immigrant entrepreneurs, local brands, or small creators. I do it myself.

But ultimately, a healthy, functioning capitalist society has to reward competence first. The best ideas, products, services, and creators should succeed because they create value and improve society at large—not because they meet certain demographic criteria.

Representation matters (hello I’m an immigrant), but excellence matters more: I don’t want you to become a paid subscriber solely because I am an immigrant. I want you to become a paid subscriber because my words are worth reading. Because the outfits are worth seeing. Because I’ve added some value—however intangible—to your worldview.

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3. Expand our taste.

If we don’t have the literacy to recognize value and merit, how are we supposed to reward it? We do it by expanding and questioning our taste. By looking constantly.

Look at the gatekeepers. Look at Lauren Santo Domingo. Look at Vogue. Look at Leandra Medine.

Read the fashion writers. Cathy Horyn has a lot to teach us. So does Valerie Steele. So does William Cruz Bermeo.

Look at people at the doctor’s office, at the local gym, on the subway, in neighborhoods you don’t usually visit.

Look at the DMV worker, the janitor, the school moms you (we) avoid small talk with.

Take note of the stuff that initially strikes you as tacky.

Ask yourself why. What exactly feels off? Is it the quality? The styling? Or is it simply unfamiliar? Is there something you considered bad fashion that is now widely accepted, or even aspirational? Is it made by a brand or creator you dismissed too quickly simply for being outside your frame of reference?

@oliviasara_23remember getting bullied for wearing ALL of these 😭 #styletips #outfitinspo #outfitideas #blackgirlfashioninspo

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The payoff of all this questioning? Diversity. Not imposed diversity, but organic diversity: a wider range of valuable creators, aesthetics, and ideas entering the market and making money because we are open enough to recognize them and buy from them.

4. Reward accountability.

If a brand fails to deliver on its promises, speak up. Not to create controversy or destroy its reputation (the market will eventually do its thing), but to provide feedback.

Reach out. Let them know the button fell off the 400 dollar pairs of jeans upon arrival (real story.) Companies improve when customers communicate expectations clearly.

If a brand listens, adjusts, and stands behind its products, reward that behavior. If it doesn’t, stop buying. Stop recommending it. If you are an influencer, do not accept their commissions for clicks or NYFW fancy party invites.

Accountability is not anti-capitalist. It is in fact one of the mechanisms that makes capitalism function by rewarding merit and directing attention toward people and companies that actually deserve it.

~

These ideas are obviously not substitutes for a president who doesn’t take planes from foreign governments, sensible regulation that doesn’t punish success while guaranteeing safety nets, strong institutions, or genuine market competition. It would be naive to think that consumer behavior can solve every problem. But politics is not the only arena in which capitalism is shaped. Markets also respond to culture, judgment, information, and individual choice. And that’s the locus of our power.

~

You may wonder why I feel so passionate and frankly so concerned about socialism becoming increasingly prominent in mainstream discourse, far beyond the moldy dusty academic spaces where it once remained circumscribed.

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen its consequences firsthand. I am one of many immigrants who did not experience the benefits of European social democracy (which itself relies on capitalism), but rather the reality of growing up in a Latin America terrorized by narco-terrorist communist guerrillas, where every childhood road trip carried the fear of kidnapping in the name of “the revolution”—a fear that, for many families, became a tragic reality and affected my country in ways difficult for most Americans to imagine.

I came to the United States attracted by the promise of a system that, while imperfect, allowed me to build, create, and improve my life in ways that would not have been possible in, say, Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela.

I don’t see why I wouldn’t want the same for the generations of Americans who come after me, just because some people, instead of building better on what already exists, prefer deconstruction.

And I don’t mean the Margiela type.

~

Laura De Valencia Kirk

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But it’s July. And after wearing pretty much print and color all summer, the pendulum is swinging for me: all I’m craving is neutrals but content creators on the internet are telling me we are “too Latina to wear black and beige”:

I find messaging like this deeply problematic. Mostly because it sounds like an imposition. And imposition is diametrically opposed to feminism. It is also an expectation, a stereotype in disguise, a performance of patriotism. It also assumes that Latinas wearing beige and black are trying to gain proximity to whiteness. Which is condescending. And ignores that some us are rebelling against exoticization. Making autonomous aesthetic decisions. Or simply want to dress like our cool moms in the ‘90s:

So yes. I am craving neutrals. It is an aesthetic choice. No need to read into it.

And in the absence of color, proportion and texture reign: remember I once told you about my design professor’ belief that if a design is good in color and not good in grayscale, it is not a good design to begin with? Same thing with outfits.

So without further ado:

Unapologetic neutral yet not boring outfits for the summer.

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Without much preamble:

1. A cocooned button-down and a long sarong:

   

1. A long t-shirt that works as a dress:

1. Board shorts, naturally:

   

~

In honor of David Hockney.

The impossibility of permanence draws me deeper.

I enter a circumscribed timelessness,

shaped like a rectangle.

The force of a breath. I grow tired and float.

The docile surface of the pool.

_~LdK.

Which makes me question my role here. If you are not helping your readers, what’s the point?

~

JUNE OUTFITS

For dinner to celebrate A’s 11th birthday:

To go vote in the Colombian presidential elections:

Brunch:

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Every afternoon, my parents worried about how unsafe it was for me to get off the school bus because the door opened directly onto traffic. I was only 7 years old, living in Barranquilla where I was born and raised. My mom had to speak with the school to either assign me to a bus with doors on both sides or have the driver pull into our driveway before dropping me off. At the end, my parents had to start paying for private transportation.

When I moved to the States in 2007 I noticed something that initially seemed small but ultimately revealed something fundamental about this culture: the stop signs attached to school buses and the fact that people actually stop when they extend. A collective agreement, a social contract: millions of people, every single day, temporarily inconveniencing themselves because a rule designed to protect children deserved to be obeyed.

Some may take it for granted. But it was one of the many small things that made me fall in love with this country.

~

Some don’t feel that way. They believe the United States is primarily a force for oppression in the world, that Cuba’s failures are mostly the result of the embargo rather than decades of communism, that America is the terrorist and not organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah, and that chants of “Death to America” are a legitimate expression of resistance rather than an explicit rejection of liberal democratic values.

For the record, I don’t share that view.

~

In this year’s edit, I am returning to an idea I have expressed here many times: that two things can be true at the same time. That I can love the United States and what it represents while recognizing its past sins and its current challenges. That patriotism is not the denial of a country's failures but the willingness to defend what is good while being honest about what isn’t.

~

I can believe that capitalism has abuses while also recognizing that no other economic system has lifted more people out of poverty, which is precisely why the United States remains one of the most desired destinations for immigrants around the world.

I can believe that extreme concentrations of wealth deserve scrutiny while also recognizing that wealth creation itself is not immoral and has produced unprecedented improvements in human well-being.

I can acknowledge the grave mistakes and abuses committed by the American military while also recognizing the United States’ undeniably heroic and valiant contributions, from helping defeat Nazi Germany to protecting liberal democracies around the world. Venezuela being one of the most recent examples (it’s not over yet.)

I can recognize slavery as one of the U.S.’s original sins while also acknowledging that slavery was not unique to the United States and that this country ultimately built the institutions and moral framework necessary to abolish it and continually expand rights to more people.

I can dislike a president without confusing him for the nation itself, because the United States is an idea bigger than whoever temporarily occupies the White House, and its values (freedom of speech, individual liberty, pluralism, due process, equality before the law) not only work here more than in the majority of countries (once again, see where most people want to move to) but remain worth defending and celebrating.

I can criticize America's culture of consumption, excessive greed, while also recognizing that abundance is a privilege that much of the world has never taken for granted. That the opposite — the absence of free markets and systems such as socialism — can lead to the end of freedom and, again, is what many immigrants come to America to escape.

So this 4th of July I’ll wear the outfit, eat the hot dog, watch the fireworks, and celebrate the country that taught me that laws are not necessarily limitations on freedom but often the very conditions that make freedom possible. But also that patriotism and criticism are not opposing forces.

Thankfully, this is a country where we are free to practice both.

Happy 4th of July.

LdK.

Personally, I’m not afraid of technology. Like the ocean~ it is something I tend to cautiously ~sometimes recklessly~immerse myself in.

And while I am aware that AI is similar to any other technology in the sense that it won’t make me more talented the way a calculator won’t make me any better at girl math, I am not oblivious to the fact that it is still an unprecedented technology with its own set of unknown risks and challenges: the potential for job loss, the automation of life, the abuses of techno capitalism, the AI race between China and the United States (which I certainly hope the U.S. wins), environmental concerns surrounding AI data centers, the ways AI is being weaponized as a political talking point, and pretty much anything Byung-Chul Han has poetically warned about.

Those issues, however, are not things I’m going to address in this article mainly because 1. I’m not an expert 2. I simply don’t have the energy and 3. much of it is completely out of my control.

My scope here is much smaller:

How do I use Chatgpt without renouncing my voice and my humanity and without supplanting the incredibly painful task of writing whose difficulty, like that of anything worth doing in life, is directly proportional to its joy?

1. Grammar and spelling:
   As a non-native English speaker, I am incredibly thankful for someone (something?) telling me for twenty dollars a month, whether it’s “in” or “on”, “on” or “onto”, “lie” or “lay”. And even when I ignore a lot of the suggested corrections (no, I won’t add that comma,) and my best proofreading usually happens after I’ve already hit send, I am thankful that my articles contain proper grammar that allows people to understand what I actually mean.
   

2. Feedback and critique:
   I’d ask chatgpt:
   
   What would a New Yorker editor say about this piece?
   
   Would The Paris Review remotely consider this for the summer edition?
   
   What about the online one?
   
   How would Walter Kirn critique this piece?
   
   Fuck!! How would J.L. Borges critique this piece???
   
   Now, some feedback is valuable: AI Walter Kirn usually tells me to stop circling the point and simply say the thing I’m actually trying to say. To be more specific, less ornamental, and to trust that an honest observation is often more interesting than a clever sentence. AI Borges, on the other hand, usually praises my choice of words (flattering) while also dismissing some of my attempts at poetry (heartbreaking.)
   
   Most feedback, however, is garbage. Your capacity to recognize the difference is what makes your piece yours.
   
   Also, beware: Chatgpt will try to rewrite the thing for you, so I’d always say: “give me the feedback without rewriting it for me.” As I said, the friction of writing, the pain and the difficulty and the reaching for the elusive word are where joy and meaning reside.
   

3. Research, fact-checking, and steelmanning:
   Is what I’m saying true? True according to whom? What are my blind spots? Don’t be political. Stick to facts. Tell me the strongest, most charitable case against my own position. Be objective. Link the paper. Cite the source. Who paid for the study? Who sponsors the source?

So yes. I outsource a spellcheck I sometimes (deliberately) ignore. I outsource the fact-checking I myself have to quadruple-check. I outsource the (sometimes shitty) editor.

What I won’t outsource is what makes me capable of being a writer in the first place: my curiosity, my point of view, my taste, my fascination with words, my idiosyncrasies, my neurosis, my crazy obsessions, the stories I consider worth telling. Most importantly: the friction, the friction that often manifests in how I dress, that raw angst that relentlessly drives me to make the external match the internal as diaphanously as possible, the cruel tetris game of organizing my internal world in order to transfix it into words, the mystery, and the awe of seeing a thought materialize almost as if by divine intervention, a joy worth protecting from a technology I approach the way I’d approach anyone with a narcissistic god complex I have no interest in venerating, let alone genuflecting before.

~L.m.D Kirk R.

Packing, for me, started with one self-imposed limitation: bringing only a carry-on. Not because I feel morally superior about it but simply because I did not want to deal with airport carousels or cobblestone streets. And while I need to have options, I also think creativity thrives within boundaries: style is, among many other things, an exercise in editing.

“I hoard almost obsessively, and then the real power is in the minimization of those things, the taking away and the subtraction.”

—Solange, for The Gentlewoman

With the exception of one night in Sevilla, I was traveling to the Basque Country, which in early June is ideal for outfit repeating: cool enough for layers, not cold enough to panic-buy another sweater.

So this is how I made it happen:

Day I. Sevilla

Weather: warm

Activities: walk, dinner, concert.

Day II. San Sebastián

Weather: nice and warm

Activities: walk at Playa La Concha promenade, watch the sunset, dinner at La Cepa and Basque cheesecake at La Vina.

Day III. San Sebastián

Weather: chilly and a bit rainy

Activities: get a massage for my achy shoulder, walk around town, some shopping, visit the main Churches, pintxos and Basque cheesecake in the old town

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I came to the Basque Country looking for gray and yellow light. Rain falling over wet ground. The mountain that emerges immense and dry from the bottom of the sea.

Venía buscando gris y luz amarilla. Lluvia sobre mojado. La montaña que emerge inmensa y seca del fondo del mar.

Jeff and I flew into Bilbao from Sevilla where we attended an Alejandro Sanz concert with my brother and his wife on saturday. From Bilbao, we took a bus to Donostia-San Sebastián. Our final destination. We take these solo weekly trips every year but we haven’t done one since 2023.

The mountains on the way felt very Upstate New York. As always the search for the reference, for the mirror, for what is familiar. We dream in long distances without knowing how to feel in kilometers.

~

The bus is moving very fast. I cannot take a picture of the typography painted on the wall washed by time. I could describe it. But the illegible image imposes itself over the word. I do not intend for anyone to live through me.

That I live suffices.

~

I am still on the bus from Bilbao to San Sebastián. We enter a tunnel.

Outside, the sun remains.

~

Monday.

I thought I was coming here for the most Michelin-starred per capita place in the world but what I have encountered is the most well-dressed people per square foot I have seen in a while. Nothing fancy. No one dressing to impress. Just people making a little effort, dressing for the weather, in a considered manner:

The light today was as grey and yellow as I hoped for. I got to wear my Louisa Charlotte Oates trench coat.

It was a beautiful day.

—

“Exit” in Basque is irteera.

They call beans aluvias. Probably the most beautiful word I have heard in my life. I think it’s spelled with a B. But I like it with a V. Aluvias.

Ch’s are written with X’s.

There are magnolias in Donosti too.

—

We are sitting on a street overlooking the ocean sipping on lefotover txakoli from Bar Sport where we had the creamiest sea urchin bisque.

We called the girls on facetime and then stayed a little longer enjoying the view.

Es la ola que arropa la gran roca de la orilla. Para luego replegarse. Dejarla húmeda y descubierta. La excusa para insistir. Infinitas veces /

It is the wave that wraps around the great rock on the shore. Only to retreat. Leaving it wet and exposed. The excuse to insist. Endless times.

—

Tuesday.

We crossed the border from Spain to France to visit Biarritz for the day. The taxi dropped us off at Champ Lacombe, a contemporary gallery owned by Lucy Chadwick. From the insistency through constrained spaces from Mazzuchelli’s red inflatables, we went to the local Les Halles food market, which we wandered through before sitting down at Le Saleya for lunch.

The most stylish people seemed to appear one after another in the Carrefour across the street. They kept appearing when we headed to have a glass of wine by the ocean. A woman walking behind her husband.

A boy with the fluorescent puka necklace staring at the sea while his mother drank her rosé at the table next to us.

We finished our glass of wine and walked into a surprisingly empty Chanel store, in contrast to the one in Miami where last week I saw approximately 20 people waiting in line. Biarritz seemed like the perfect place to replace my 10 year old Chanel slip-ons, so we asked the amenable sales associate for the classic beige and black in size 36. I tried them on. They were too big. He brought the 35s. Too small. While I waited for the 35.5s, a fly from outside landed on a pointed-toe flat shoe the sales associate said Matthiew Blazy presented for resort right there in the historic Biarritz casino we could see from the store window, where Coco Chanel opened her first store

He came back. No 35.5s.

~

We kept walking and a dolphin t-shirt in yellow with the words “feel good club” emblazoned in black appeared on the window of a local surf shop. There was one left in my size.

Jeff and I left the store with the t-shirt and a distinct feeling that a day was not enough for Biarritz, that there had to be more to this town of wild hydrangeas and old (stale?) glamour. We sat at a café and decided to book a hotel room, buy toothbrushes at one of the omnipresent french farmacias, and stay the night.

That evening, at Hernani, we had the most memorable meal of the trip. Basque fish and steak with a sort of Hasselback potatoes and a sangría that ruined all future sangrías for us. On the walk back to the hotel, the Atlantic suddenly opened up at the end of an alleyway. We ignored Google Maps and followed the light instead, catching the sunset alongside surfers still insisting on a few last waves before the sun disappeared.

We made our way back through narrow roads lined with more pink and lilac wild hydrangeas. A neighborhood far from the touristy area where the Chanel store was located. A block party had taken over one of the streets we were supposed to cross. It seemed to be a motorcycle convention. I saw the woman with the lizard earring next to the woman with the amazingly draped jeans.

I saw the woman with the extraordinary hair texture and the guy with also great hair and the shorts in the perfect length.

Then I saw the boy.

The same boy I had seen that morning with the fluorescent necklace.

He was getting off a bus with his mother, across the street from me, kilometers from the place where I had photographed him earlier.

The next morning we went for breakfast. Lucy Chadwick’s husband and son came in and sat at the table next to ours.

~

More from Biarritz:

~

Saturday.

More events defying the tyranny of expectations:

The yellow Havaiana knockoff flip-flops I bought at that Chinese bazaar along with the glitzy green unbranded swimsuit on Thursday to lay on Playa de Ondarreta, during a rare sunny day in San Sebastián that wasn’t on the forecast.

The yellow flip-flops that ended up serving as the ingredient for the most originally unexpected outfits of the trip paired with my linen Bottega skirt and at night with my Gushi Studio necklace.

Or that the next day a water drop from the ceiling of Barajas airport fell onto the page of Alejandra Pizarnik I was reading while waiting for our taxi:

“It was her crying, her modest and silent crying, that covered her face, not to wash it, like a beneficial rain, but to bring to her entire being the testimony of her misfortune, her terror, her lost life.”

~

Or that we checked in our hotel and headed to the Prado and the first painting I saw was the one with the key.

And then a few more steps and I ran into a painting I have been obsessed with for years: The Auto de Fe in the plaza Mayor by Francisco Rizi. When I thought I was going to the Prado to see Goya and Las Meninas.

Auto de Fe was bigger and more imposing in person than I could have predicted when I would zoom in on it to meticulously study on my screen every lament on the heretic’s faces, their sambenitos, every look of moral superiority on the clerics and the punitive audience.

~

I went to bed that night in Madrid before going back home the next day. Back to a life I don’t ever feel I need to escape from. Where there is no urgency to take the photograph that contains all the enjoyment.

That morning before heading to the airport, I looked at the pictures from the trip, unsure about what to do with all the beauty captured in them. After scrolling for half an hour, I finally reached the last photograph. It was one I took the night before while we walked to our hotel. It was of a Bar front entrance named “La Realidad”.

The reality.

The penultimate picture, from the ceramic tile walls of Los Gabrieles restaurant read “la vida es un sueño”.

Life Is a Dream.

We exited the hotel and headed to the airport.

Alejandro Sanz is playing in the taxi:

“es tan bonito eso de soñar, y tan violenta la verdad.”

~

I need to write all of this.

~

On the plane, I cameback to Pizarnik.

Libre. I want to start with the word libre. The last word I saw the morning I left Madrid. The last photo I took.

~

Next week: what I wore for a week in the Basque country.

🐬 LdK.

But going through the same clothes hanging in my closet over and over again, the ones that settle me, the ones that remind me of the person I want to be, project myself to be, think I can be, or failed to be, has felt less like stagnant creative energy and more like stability. Finding myself legible to myself.

Perhaps the discomfort that drives me to declutter is what I need to reckon with. I will, eventually. But I guess a good start would be to think about it as Clothing Domestication (a theory by ) or as an attempt to remove the fantasy I buy something for through repetitive wearing. Through rubbing them not just against the flesh and body but rubbing them against the mundane circumstances of my daily life. The toothpaste chunk that ends up in my t-shirt. The ketchup on the Chick fil a booth that ends up in my pants. The piece of gum that gets stuck on my shoe at the gas station.

Going back to the same pieces, locating novelty in small gestures. I am not saying this is how I will always approach style, but it is what has felt sustainable lately. These are the things I find myself wanting to rewear this summer:

i. ‘90s board shorts

ii. This yellow/black dress I’ve had for 4-5 years

iii. This scuba top and skirt

iv. This skirt I’ve had for 2 years and this dragon t-shirt my husband has worn for 20 years:

The things I want to continue wearing are not necessarily the things currently being prescribed to me as new, but the ones that still communicate the things I want to say. Which I don’t always fully know what they are. But thankfully there are clothes for that. For both the illegible and the unsayable alike.

Happy Sunday! It’s my birthday! Go vote if you are Colombian!

~Laura.

One of the packing tips that doesn’t work for me is repeating the same thing over and over, mainly because my Caribbean upbringing got me used to showering twice a day on hot days and putting on a fresh change of clothes. To me, it’s almost inconceivable to repeat clothes when it’s this hot and I’m stopping at gas stations and hanging out at gymnastics studios, etc. So since I am not doing sudoku packing and making one thing work multiple times, I’m pretty much packing outfits. Friday road trip this, Friday night this, Saturday that, Sunday road trip this. So perhaps what keeps it cohesive for me is not necessarily repetition of clothes or even a color palette, but simply a mood, so let me show you what that is at the moment:

4-hr Roadtrip TLH-TAMPA

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They are one of those things that look incredible on some people: , Rachel Starrett, Phoebe Philo models. But when I try them on, I feel completely swallowed by my clothes.

When I got my first pair of loafers in the early 2000s (Dieppa Restrepo! bring them back!) I immediately realized something felt off unless there was a little bit of skin somewhere in the equation.

I think part of it is that I need the subtle sensuality of an ankle creating friction against a traditionally manly shoe. A manly shoe I associate with the red brogues I wore for 12 years of my life during Catholic school. But perhaps also with my Caribbean upbringing, where perpetual summer made exposed feet feel instinctive and natural.

And then there’s proportion. Because at 5’1”, I need the skin aspect of big/slim/skin (a great proportion theory authored by Amy Smilovic) to create shapes that make me feel interesting.

~ ~ ~

I know in this postmodern world we live in, we crave perennial and universal truths more than ever, but unfortunately (or fortunately), fashion leaves room for subjectivity. Perhaps not for consensus, but for personal convictions that feel real to us individually. So I am not by any means saying this is an absolute truth, just that this is what feels right to me. And perhaps something I can give you in this world of sameness is not necessarily a hot take but a POV, one that perhaps doesn’t please everyone but is at least my own.

So I’ll say it:

I think closed-toe shoes look better with some ankle or foot exposed:

And I figured the outfits I put together below would be helpful not in proving a point, but simply in exposing my own subjective POV:

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It’s incredible how fashion has become strangely educational in this sense: in living with the void, in testifying against fantasy, in revealing desire as something never truly satisfied, only displaced.

In real life, May has been filled with events, parties, and travel with family and friends. It is, in many ways, the life I once dreamed of, and yet desire keeps migrating, fashion revealing the instability of its own goalposts

~ ~ ~

What I wore for school recitals/plays:

What I wore for making art, writing, errands, pediatrician appointments, and school drop-offs

What I wore to flight to Bogota:

What I wore to be the godmother of my best friend’s daughter’s Baptism:

What I wore for dinner with friends in Bogota:

Last year I was in Bogota for fashion week during this same time. But this year my motherly commitments prevented me from attending: my oldest’s dance recitals coincided with its opening, there’s also my youngest’s birthday party which we are doing before all the end-of-the-school-year craziness ensues, plus my parents and in-laws were going to be away for various reasons.

Motherhood, like art, pulls me outside of myself. But not entirely. I have never experienced my role as a mother as martyrdom, nor as submission. More as a series of tradeoffs. A kind of decentering, a recognition that there’s something else outside of myself that is also more powerful than me. Call it spiritual, call it mystical. I’m not sure. I’m not trying to name it.

Sometimes by naming things, I run the risk of ruining them.

<3

L.