Wear the Beautiful Things

By Jussara Da Silva

There is a strange thing we sometimes do when we really love something: instead of enjoying it more, we begin enjoying it less. The handbag we wanted for months finally comes home with us, and because it is beautiful, expensive, delicate or simply important to us, we become almost frightened of allowing it into our ordinary life. It stays inside the dust bag because the weather isn’t quite right. The shoes remain in their box because there might be too much walking. The silk scarf is saved because today doesn’t feel special enough. The beautiful dress hangs untouched because surely there will eventually be an occasion more deserving of it. The good perfume sits almost completely full because we don’t want to waste it on a normal morning. The earrings we adore are somehow too beautiful for lunch. The coat we’ve been waiting all year to wear stays home because there is a small possibility of rain. And none of this is particularly irrational. When we own something we genuinely value, of course we want to protect it. We want beautiful leather to remain beautiful, delicate fabrics to remain intact, shoes to keep their shape, jewelry to avoid unnecessary damage, and objects we spent meaningful amounts of money on to last for as long as possible. Caring for things is a good instinct. But I think somewhere between caring for an object and being afraid of what might happen to it, we can accidentally create a rather funny situation in which the things we love most become the things we experience least.

I think luxury makes this especially interesting because so much of luxury is supposedly about experience. We talk about the feel of beautiful leather, the weight of hardware, the softness of cashmere, the movement of silk, the construction of a coat, the sound of a clasp closing, the way a perfectly made shoe changes how you walk, the way a beautiful piece of jewelry catches the light, the scent of a perfume as it changes on the skin throughout the day. These aren’t qualities designed only to be observed from a distance. They are tactile. They require participation. You cannot fully experience a handbag’s leather without touching it. You cannot understand how a coat moves without walking in it. You cannot experience perfume without allowing some of it to leave the bottle. And yet the more precious an object becomes to us, the more tempting it can be to treat it almost like museum inventory. We remove it carefully, admire it, perhaps use it for exactly the right occasion, return it home and immediately begin inspecting it for evidence that it has encountered the world. A tiny scratch appears and our heart sinks. A shoe develops its first crease and suddenly we are looking at the crease rather than remembering the evening we wore the shoes. The bottom of a bag touches something we wish it hadn’t. A drop of rain lands on leather and for a moment the entire weather system feels personally offensive. I understand it because there is pleasure in keeping beautiful things beautiful, particularly when craftsmanship itself is part of why we bought them. But sometimes I think we have to remember the other half of the relationship. A handbag was designed to be carried. A shoe was designed to walk. A coat was designed to leave the house.

Perfume may be the clearest example because perfume almost forces us to confront the absurdity of saving beautiful things forever. Every time you spray a perfume you love, there is slightly less of it left. The entire purpose of the object requires its disappearance. You cannot preserve the bottle at exactly the same level and simultaneously experience what is inside it. You have to choose, little by little, to let it go. And I think there is something wonderful about that. The perfume disappears from the bottle but enters your life instead. It becomes the scent you wore through a particular summer. It attaches itself to a coat. Someone begins associating it with you. Years later you smell it unexpectedly somewhere and an entire period returns. The liquid has been used, but perhaps that isn’t the same as the perfume being gone. It has simply changed form. Perhaps some beautiful things are supposed to disappear a little while we enjoy them. Clothes do this more slowly. Shoes crease. Leather softens. Knitwear changes. Denim begins forming around the body. A watch develops tiny marks that can only be seen when the light hits it in a particular way. Jewelry loses the untouched perfection it had beneath the boutique lights. A bag begins sitting differently after years of being carried. We often describe all of this as wear, and technically that is exactly what it is, but wear is not always evidence of destruction. Sometimes it is evidence of participation.

There is, of course, an important distinction between allowing something to live and treating it carelessly. I don’t think loving your belongings means throwing a beautiful bag onto a wet pavement simply to prove that you’re relaxed about material possessions. There is no virtue in unnecessarily damaging something you value. If an object requires proper storage, store it properly. If leather needs protection from certain conditions, be sensible. If a garment needs specialist cleaning, care for it. Repair things. Maintain them. Respect the work that went into making them. Part of owning beautifully made things can be learning how to preserve them well enough that they remain with us for years. But preservation should serve enjoyment rather than replace it. There is a difference between thinking, I want to take care of this because I want to use it for a very long time, and thinking, I cannot use this because I need it to remain exactly as it looked on the day I bought it. One extends the relationship with the object. The other can prevent the relationship from beginning at all.

And perhaps this is where the idea of the “special occasion” becomes so interesting. We have created categories in our wardrobes without necessarily realizing it. Everyday clothes. Work clothes. Holiday clothes. Dinner clothes. Occasion clothes. The good bag. The really good bag. The jewelry we wear constantly. The jewelry that waits in a box. The perfume beside the sink and the perfume hidden away for something important. Some of these categories are practical. Of course you probably aren’t going to wear an evening gown to buy groceries, and there are garments designed for specific settings. But I think “special occasion” can sometimes become an endlessly moving target. You buy something for special occasions, an occasion comes, and suddenly you think, Maybe not this one. Perhaps I’ll save it for something even more special. Then another comes. Still not quite enough. Months become years, and the object remains beautifully preserved for a life event important enough to justify finally enjoying the thing you already own. But who exactly decides when a day has earned the beautiful bag?

Maybe this is why I love seeing beautiful things used in ordinary settings. There is something incredibly stylish about removing an object from the environment we think it requires. Pearls with an ordinary knit. An evening bag with denim. A silk scarf with a simple shirt. A dramatic coat worn for coffee. Beautiful shoes underneath an otherwise completely uncomplicated outfit. Jewelry that could easily be reserved for dinner worn at eleven in the morning. Not because every outfit needs something luxurious or because ordinary clothes need to be “elevated” to become worthy, but because the contrast removes some of the seriousness from the object. Suddenly the beautiful thing isn’t waiting on a pedestal for the correct occasion. It is participating in someone’s life. Sometimes that actually makes it look more luxurious because it communicates familiarity. The person isn’t treating the object like a costume she has temporarily borrowed for an important evening. It belongs to her world. She knows it. She wears it. She has allowed it to become ordinary enough to become personal.

Fashion has always contained this tension between fantasy and everyday life. We see extraordinary objects in extraordinary contexts: runway sets, campaigns, red carpets, beautiful boutiques, perfectly lit photographs. Everything around the object tells us that it is special. Then we bring it home, where life is considerably less controlled. There are crowded restaurants, unexpected weather, coffee, public transport, car doors, narrow tables, children, dogs, suitcases, airports, rain, snow and all the other wonderfully inconvenient things that happen when an object leaves a campaign and enters reality. Perhaps part of loving fashion is accepting that transition. The object cannot remain permanently inside the fantasy where we first encountered it. Eventually, if we are going to use it, it has to enter our world. And our world will leave marks.

There is something particularly beautiful about older luxury pieces for exactly this reason. Sometimes you see a vintage bag and the thing that makes it captivating is not that it somehow escaped time untouched. It is that time is visible. The leather has softened. The hardware has changed slightly. The shape is no longer as rigid as it once was. There may be small marks and imperfections that would have horrified the first owner on the day they appeared. Yet decades later, those things can give the object character. It looks as though it has belonged to someone. It has existed somewhere. It has been carried. And perhaps this is one of the contradictions of luxury: we often love vintage objects precisely for the patina we spend so much time trying to prevent on our own new ones. We admire evidence of somebody else’s life while being terrified of leaving evidence of ours.

Of course, not every object ages beautifully, and not every mark becomes charming. Sometimes damage is simply damage. Sometimes a stain ruins a dress. Sometimes a scratch really is frustrating. I don’t think we need to romanticize every imperfection or pretend we are delighted when something expensive is damaged. But maybe there is a middle ground between carelessness and fear. Maybe we can be disappointed by a scratch without allowing that scratch to change our entire relationship with the object. Maybe the first mark is upsetting and the tenth becomes almost invisible. Maybe one day you stop noticing them completely because the bag has become so connected to your life that perfection is no longer the most interesting thing about it.

I think the psychology of saving our favorite things goes far beyond fashion too. People have beautiful plates they almost never use because they are waiting for guests. Candles they don’t burn because they are too nice. Stationery they don’t write on because the paper is beautiful. Bottles of champagne saved for an occasion nobody has defined. Towels reserved for visitors. Books kept pristine. Flowers we hesitate to cut. We create tiny museums inside our homes filled with things intended to make life beautiful, and then sometimes remove those things from life in order to preserve their beauty. There is something almost endearing about it. We are trying to protect pleasure. But pleasure protected indefinitely eventually becomes something else: possibility. The possibility of enjoying the candle. The possibility of wearing the dress. The possibility of opening the bottle. And possibility is lovely, but eventually it has to become experience or it remains only possibility.

Maybe this is also why an ordinary Tuesday deserves more respect than we give it. We spend most of our lives on ordinary days. The birthdays, holidays, weddings, celebrations and extraordinary dinners are wonderful precisely because they are exceptions. Most mornings are simply mornings. Most lunches are simply lunch. Most times we leave the house, nobody has sent an invitation requiring us to dress beautifully. If we reserve everything we love for exceptional days, we may accidentally reserve a large portion of our enjoyment for a very small portion of our lives. Why can’t Wednesday be worthy of the earrings? Why can’t the perfume be sprayed because you like the smell of it? Why can’t the good handbag come to lunch? Why can’t you wear the beautiful coat to buy coffee? Maybe nobody notices. That doesn’t matter. Perhaps the pleasure is simply yours.

And I think there is an important difference between making every day “special” and simply allowing ordinary days to contain beautiful things. I don’t think we need to wake up every morning determined to transform life into some elaborate cinematic performance. Some days you will wear the easiest thing in your wardrobe and barely think about it. Some days you won’t care which bag you carry. Some days practicality wins completely, as it should. The point isn’t to create pressure to perform beauty constantly. It is almost the opposite. You don’t need a reason. If today you feel like wearing something you love, that can be enough. It doesn’t need to correspond to a celebration, an invitation, a photograph or somebody else’s expectation. The special occasion can sometimes simply be that you wanted to wear it.

There is a lovely confidence in people who seem to understand this instinctively. They don’t necessarily own the most extraordinary wardrobes or wear expensive things constantly. They simply use what they have without turning every beautiful object into a ceremony. The scarf is tied onto the bag. The jewelry is worn until it becomes almost invisible to them. The coat is thrown over the chair. The handbag sits on the floor beside their feet because it has accompanied them everywhere for years. There is affection without preciousness. And I think that relationship can make objects feel more luxurious than perfect preservation ever could. Luxury becomes something experienced rather than displayed.

It also changes the idea of value. We often calculate whether something was “worth it” through price, quality, resale value or cost per wear, but enjoyment is difficult to put into a spreadsheet. Perhaps a bag you carry constantly and eventually mark slightly has given you far more value than one that remains immaculate because you were too nervous to use it. Perhaps the expensive perfume you finish was more worthwhile than the bottle you preserved until the scent changed. Perhaps the dress you wore repeatedly until everyone in your life recognized it gave you more than the dress that remained pristine waiting for the perfect event. This doesn’t mean everything needs to be used constantly to justify owning it. Some objects are genuinely occasional. Some are collected because collecting itself brings pleasure. Some pieces are important precisely because they are rare. But if the only reason you are not using something you love is fear of reducing its perfection, perhaps it is worth asking what kind of value you actually wanted from it in the first place.

And this is particularly relevant when we buy things because we genuinely love them. There is so much discussion around whether we should buy something, whether it is worth the money, whether it is timeless, whether it will hold value, whether it fits our wardrobe, whether it is trendy, whether it is practical. Those questions can be useful before making a decision. But once you have made the decision, once the beautiful thing is actually yours, perhaps there comes a point when the analysis can stop and the enjoyment can begin. You chose it. You wanted it. You brought it into your life. Now let it have a life.

Maybe that means your favorite handbag eventually develops a softened corner. Maybe the soles of your beautiful shoes tell the story of everywhere you walked in them. Maybe the coat you thought you would preserve forever becomes the coat you wear so often that people begin associating it with you. Maybe the silk scarf catches perfume. Maybe the jewelry becomes slightly scratched. Maybe the bottle slowly empties. Maybe years from now you look at those things and don’t see damage first. Maybe you see dinners, journeys, ordinary mornings, holidays, conversations, places, people and all the little moments in which the object happened to be there.

Because there is another possibility we rarely consider when trying so hard to preserve something: one day our lives may change before the object does. The dress we are saving may no longer fit the same way. Our taste may change. We may move somewhere with completely different weather. The occasion we imagined may never arrive in the form we expected. The perfume may eventually turn. The beautiful shoes may sit untouched until we realize we no longer want to wear that kind of shoe. We cannot preserve ourselves alongside our possessions. Time is moving whether we use them or not. And perhaps that is another reason to let beautiful things participate in the chapter for which we chose them.

I don’t think this needs to become a grand philosophy about living without regrets. It can remain something much smaller and more joyful than that. Maybe tomorrow you simply open your wardrobe and reach past the bag you always carry toward the one you usually save. Maybe you put on the earrings that seem slightly too beautiful for what you’re doing. Maybe you spray the perfume without calculating how much remains. Maybe you wear the coat even though the destination is completely ordinary. Maybe nothing significant happens at all. You go out, come home, put everything away, and the day becomes one of thousands you eventually forget. But for those few hours, you enjoyed the thing you once wanted badly enough to bring into your life. I think that is enough.

Maybe tomorrow there will be no dinner reservation, no birthday, no holiday, no invitation and no particularly good reason to dress differently. Maybe it will simply be Thursday. Wear the earrings anyway. Carry the bag. Spray the perfume. Put on the coat you’ve been waiting to wear somewhere worthy of it. Let the shoes crease. Let the leather soften. Let the bottle slowly empty. Take care of beautiful things, certainly. Store them properly. Repair them when they need repairing. Appreciate the craftsmanship that made them worth caring for in the first place. Allow them to last. But don’t preserve them so perfectly that they never become part of your life. Maybe the scratch you are so afraid of will one day become almost invisible among years of memories. Maybe the dress doesn’t need a better occasion. Maybe the beautiful plates don’t need guests. Maybe the perfume doesn’t need an evening. Maybe the special occasion is simply that you are here, you own something you love, and today you felt like enjoying it. The beautiful things weren’t only made to be kept. They were made to be enjoyed.