I've always been suspicious of people who think fashion is shallow. Clothes are just frozen feeling. Every morning you choose what emotion to walk around in all day — you're just rarely honest enough with yourself to admit it.
Here are the words I dress for. None of them exist in English, which tells you something about English.
Meraki (Greek, μεράκι) To do something with your whole soul in it. To pour yourself into what you make — cooking, arranging flowers, getting dressed — until the thing you've made carries a trace of you.
Saudade (Portuguese) The Portuguese say this word has no translation and they're right to be smug about it. It's a longing for something you love that is absent — a place, a person, a version of yourself. But it's not sad, exactly. It's sweet in the way that aching is sometimes sweet. It's the feeling of the last evening somewhere you love, when you're already half-missing it before you've left.
Dolce far niente (Italian) The sweetness of doing nothing. Not laziness — nothing as productive as laziness. Pure, conscious, chosen stillness. The Italians understood that idleness, done well, is its own art form.
Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan) A look shared between two people, both wanting the same thing, neither willing to say so first. I include this one because it belongs at a candlelit dinner on a terrace somewhere in the Aegean, and you know exactly what I mean.
Hygge (Danish) Everyone knows this one now and I almost didn't include it, but hygge in summer is different from hygge in winter. Summer hygge is bare feet on warm stone. A shared carafe. A conversation that goes nowhere on purpose.
Ukiyo (Japanese) Living in the floating world. Being present in the beauty of the moment precisely because it is fleeting. The Japanese coined it during an era of great uncertainty — people responded by going to theatres, wearing beautiful things, appreciating what was right in front of them. I think about this one often.
Commuovere (Italian) To be moved to tears by something beautiful. Not grief — beauty. A piece of music, a view, a child laughing, a fabric that drapes exactly right. The Italians have a word for this and we just say "wow" and move on.
Eudaimonia (Greek, εὐδαιμονία) Often translated as happiness, which is too small. It means flourishing. Living in full expression of your best self. Aristotle's highest human goal — not pleasure, not comfort, but becoming.
These words are why EOS AURA exists.
Language fails us here in English. The clothes, I hope, don't.
- R.