Foreign, Technically- On Process
The best part of any project is rarely the finished thing.
Where I Went
Finally made it to the Pomellato: Le Joaillier Révolutionnaire exhibition at Palais de Tokyo — my original tickets had been cancelled during the Paris canicule 1, so this felt like a long overdue visit. The show combined a retrospective of campaign photography from great masters — Helmut Newton to Herb Ritts — alongside the jewelry archives. The pairing worked: the photographs gave the pieces context, and the pieces gave the photographs a reason to be there. A pleasant mid-week stroll that earned more thought than expected.
What I Did
My third Pet Shop Boys concert — they delivered, as always. What I find most impressive is how two men in their 70s can hold a sold-out crowd with nothing but a microphone and a DJ deck. Okay there are flashing lights and visuals, but no backup dancers, no pyrotechnics. Just music and full commitment. Highly recommend.
Refreshed my hair color with Niko at David Mallet. We rambled about the canicule (a topic no one in Paris can stop discussing), the Robyn concert (10/10), and his brief but exciting stint as a flight attendant on Norwegian Airlines.
Somewhere between the color and the rinse, it occurred to me that Niko approaches hair color the way I approach everything I care about: methodically, with genuine enthusiasm for the details most people rush past. The result speaks for itself. A kind of process worth noting.
What I Ate
Lunch at Caviar Kaspia: smoked eel and poached eggs doused in caviar, with the crispiest pickles I’ve ever eaten. 10/10.
A week of post-birthday celebrations: Italian fare at Cassaro’s and proper French at La Société, both in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Closed out the week with lunch at Denis and dinner at Kiki at The Wilde in Milan.
What I Watched
Born to Be Wild on Apple TV. The episode followed Wam, an orphaned baby elephant found in a mud hole at two months old and brought to the Lusaka Elephant Nursery in Zambia for rehabilitation. He and his handler develop a special bond that is difficult to describe and impossible not to feel. I cried for both of them when Wam was released back into the wild.
What I Keep Thinking About
If I’m being honest, still the Versailles Ball. But more than the event, the process itself.
The research, the obsessing, the endless Etsy scrolling, the Instagram poll, the three wig fittings — none of it felt like preparation. It felt like the point. I am someone who connects deeply with the imagination phase: the period before an idea becomes a thing, when it still lives entirely in your head and anything is possible. Process, I am learning, is what makes my heart skip.
The Pomellato show is similar. Campaign photography alongside the jewelry archives — two kinds of craft in conversation with each other. What stayed with me wasn't any single piece but the evidence of process behind each one: the decisions, the iterations, the vision that preceded the finished object. Great things, it seems, are always preceded by a long period of obsessing.
Returning the wig to Antoine at his atelier felt like Cinderella’s pumpkin moment combined with the day after Christmas. We reminisced about everything that went into it — the fittings, the decisions, the Franglish. I think he may have been just as sad as I was to see it go. But the process — that part stays. And another project arrives.
What My Dogs Did
Spent the beginning of the week recovering from the Paris canicule, then jetted off to two weeks in the French countryside.
Notes from Italy, to follow.
canicule: French for “heatwave”