ISO: Vintage La Perla and the Myth of Leisure
Inside every yearner lives two dueling bell hook’s essays.
The first, “Greed: Simply Loving” provokes in me a deep shame. It’s maybe the reason I’m so eager to correct an interest in fashion with an interest in desire.
The essay says things like “Widespread addiction in both poor and affluent communities is linked to our psychotic lust for material consumption. It keeps us unable to love. Fixating on wants and needs, which consumerism encourages us to do, promotes a psychological state of endless craving.” It says things like…….. “To maintain and satisfy greed, one must support domination. And the world of domination is always a world without love.”
It gives me no pleasure to confront the idea that my fixations could undermine my dedication to a love ethic. I turn instantly to justifications, some of which I do believe to be true. I do find it to be a worthwhile endeavor to be critical of each sartorial yearning. I do think delaying the consumption of clothing by primarily buying second hand slows down the ability to instantly gratify as instinct. As I wait for alerts to funnel through my inbox, I lose interest in certain desires. Others, I cling stronger to. I don’t know how bell hooks would feel about my dedication to saved eBay search alerts, but I do know how she felt about satin!
In the second essay, “Women Artists: The Creative Process” I find relief. There, hooks writes, "I am a girl who dreams of leisure, always have. Reverie has always been necessary to my existence. I have needed long hours where I am stretched out, wearing silks, satins, and cashmeres, just alone with myself, embraced by the beauty around me. I have always been a girl for fibers, for textiles, and for the feel of comforting cloth against my skin.”
If I am to picture myself in the same scenario, I am putzing around my apartment adorned in La Perla. “Vintage La Perla” was one of the first searches I saved on eBay. I like watching as the bras, robes, bathing suits, and nightgowns funnel into my inbox. I love how delicate and textured each piece is. I like that they are from a time before me, most likely worn by another woman putzing around her apartment. And mostly, I like that they are Italian.
The luxury brand was founded in Italy in the mid 1950s, long after my family had immigrated to America. I doubt my ancestors would associate Italy with leisure but I don’t know their Italy and I never will. Italy, or the idea of it anyway, is somewhere I travel to if not only in my mind when I am consumed by my own leisurely desires. Even the mere idea of a robe made of Italian silk can satisfy my touristic instincts.
In practice, I rarely find myself in such situations. I like to think about this Sunday afternoon more than I’ve experienced it. For hooks, this practice can propel her into a creative state: “When I have adorned myself just so, I am ready for the awesome task of just lingering, spending uninterrupted time with my thoughts, dreams, and intense yearnings, often the kind that, like unrequited love, go unfulfilled. Lately, in the midst of that solitude, I find myself writing, spinning words together in my head so as not to lose or forget the insights, the sharp moments of clarity that come during this quiet time, that surface amid the luxurious smells of expensive French lemon verbena soap and fruity perfume, a book in my hand. More often than not I end up breaking the reverie to reach for pen and paper, to write.”
Access to my inner life requires a type of pragmatism stripped of performance. La Perla has no place in my practice — it’s is merely a myth to me, like Italy or cashmere. To be in the flow of leisure, the type that inspires hooks to put pen to paper, I require a more utilitarian form.
I have written to you in my cotton Agnes B. cardigan, mere steps away from a closet full of silks I am thinking about.
As a treat for paid subscribers here are some perfect La Perla pieces I have found on the world wide web just for you. ISO turned one year this month! Support a local yearner through the fall of media as we know it by becoming a paid subscriber <3