Sometimes we find things that really click with our personalities. I’ve always been interested in fashion and I have a pretty classic aesthetic – i.e. Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Brooks Brothers, J. Crew, Yves St. Laurent, Coco Chanel. Not that I always buy or wear these designer garments, particularly Yves St. Laurent and Miss Chanel, but these fashion gurus (or companies) make clothes that look best on me. I’m tall and have somewhat of a boyish figure. I’ve never been the edgy, punk, trendy, goth-type customer, nor do I do well with floaty, flimsy, ulta-girly fashion. I fully appreciate those aesthetics, but they’re just not me.
When visiting New York City for the 2011 Romance Writer’s of America Conference, I had a chance to spend some time tooling around the city. My daughter, who has a B.S. in Fashion Marketing and was working at Armani in NYC at the time, was dying to see the Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was shortly after he tragically took his own life. Of course, I complied. What I saw blew my mind. The depth of creativity that this man portrayed in his fashions was beyond anything I had ever seen. There was such freedom in his designs it was truly inspiring. On exiting the museum and entering the gift shop – the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gift Shop is one of my favorite places on earth – I had to get something Alexander McQueen. There were books, greeting cards, scarves – and pencils. Pencils! Savage Beauty Pencils! They were thin, long, elegant and divine and they were screaming my name.
Fast forward to New Year’s Day, 2014 and I realize I am using one of two of my LAST Alexander McQueen pencils. Impending disaster. Panic sets in. What am I going to do if these two pencils are sharpened into pure nothingness? When I write I don’t use pencils very often, but when I do they must be SHARP. I had visions of these beautiful pencils being ground into a mass pulp of wonderous reptilian dust. What to do?
Buy more.
Easier said than done.
Finally, through Ebay, I found a set of twelve for $37.50. Who in the hell pays $37.50 for a set of pencils? Well . . . me. And I will savor every single one of them. Whenever I use these pencils I am reminded of pure creative energy, and their long, tapered elegance encourages me to find the savage beauty in myself, and the world around me.
It’s weird what inspires us. For some it can be art or fashion or poetry or nature. For me, on this New Year’s Day of 2014 – it’s pencils. Savage Beauty pencils.