A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 29 – Chic or Foe?
May 18, 2020
“Incorporate Chic Anchors Throughout Your Home and Life” is the title of Day 29 of Fiona Ferris’s book, 30 More Chic Days. Fiona encourages us to quietly add small habits of beauty into our daily experience. Not only are these small rituals beautiful in and of themselves but they serve to support the chic elements of our lives. It’s all too easy in the rush of a busy life to lose focus of our sincere desire to live an elegant life and drift into … less beautiful and fulfilling ways of living.
Our chic anchors serve as the guardians of our heart’s desire. Having only smaller, luncheon-sized plates protects our higher goal to eat small portions (the plates are too small to support a huge, heaping helping.) Having a lovely capsule wardrobe in a “boutique” styled closet-dressing area gently upholds our desire to experience a peaceful and confident dressing experience first thing in the morning. These low-cost yet surprisingly effective environmental factors quietly uphold our chic lifestyle even when we are too busy to think about our overarching vision of a beautiful, elegant way of living.
Just as important as the presences of our foundational chic anchors is the act of removing our problem anchors. These problem anchors hold us down to the hum-drum. When Fiona writes about evaluating her clothing each season to weed out the “frumpt-able” (as she does here), she is removing problem anchors that are holding her back from living the chic and beautiful life that she desires.
The concept is a bit similar to Marie Kondo’s question (focused on de-cluttering), “Does this object spark joy?” In Fiona’s context, we ask ourselves if the object, habit or way of doing things lifts our daily experience up or does it make us feel dragged down? Making sure that we have many small chic anchors in our homes and our habits helps us keep and enjoy the chic, beautiful elements of our wonderful lives.
Fiona gave me the idea for one chic anchor for my house: the cloth napkins that we use at dinner. It is a very small, low-maintenance upgrade to our family dinner but the colorful cloth napkins make the table pretty. Another big chic anchor that adds beauty and ease to my day is the concept of the capsule wardrobe. When I know that everything in my closet is gorgeous, it is easy to get dressed. In the same vein, laying out my clothes the night before helps me feel calm and confident about my appearance the next day (because any potential apparel problems were identified and fixed when I had plenty of time.)
