Elegance

My wife and I went out to lunch today at a local place called Endolyne Joe's, for our first time eating inside a restaurant in many months. Then, because it was such a gorgeous day (temperatures mid-70s, with a light breeze), we went for a walk in a nearby neighborhood, looking at houses and imagining other people's lives. My wife especially enjoys seeing houses that in some way she considers 'elegant,' meaning having a unique and creative style and beauty (often looking like something out of Poirot or Miss Marple). While we were walking today, she commented that the Panama straw hat I was wearing was somewhat elegant, which started a discussion of a vlog that she watches sometimes by a woman giving instructions in how to dress elegantly but inexpensively - which in turn led to us talking about how we could shop thrift stores together to find elegant clothing for ourselves and could then start our own blog about the Elegant Old Couple, etc. And then she said, "Well, you already shave with a lot of elegant stuff, so you're on your way." And I thought about it and realized that she was right: I do have some elegant shaving gear... and I love it.

Elegant, from American Heritage Dictionary
“Characterized by or exhibiting refined, tasteful beauty of manner, form, or style.”

I find elegance in simplicity most often.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That's why I chose an Edwin Jagger DE87...


... over the DE89:
Same shave, almost the same price, but the faux ivory looks more elegant, IMHO.

I find myself agreeing with this guy more and more these days, and appreciate elegance when I come across it.

In his latest book, Joy on Demand, the Google veteran [Chade-Meng Tan] describes his path from someone who was “constantly miserable” to a much happier guy. How did he get there? Sometime in his mid-20s, he discovered that he wasn’t stuck with self-loathing; temperament, he found, is malleable.
Successfully reshaping your mindset, he argues, has less to do with hours of therapy and more to do with mental exercises, including one that helps you recognize “thin slices of joy.”
“Right now, I’m a little thirsty, so I will drink a bit of water. And when I do that, I experience a thin slice of joy both in space and time,” he told CBC News. “It’s not like ‘Yay!”” he notes in Joy on Demand. “It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s kind of nice.’”
Usually these events are unremarkable: a bite of food, the sensation of stepping from a hot room to an air-conditioned room, the moment of connection in receiving a text from an old friend. Although they last two or three seconds, the moments add up, and the more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy, Tan argues. “Thin slices of joy occur in life everywhere… and once you start noticing it, something happens, you find it’s always there. Joy becomes something you can count on.” That’s because you’re familiarizing the mind with joy, he explains.

Great thread! Yes, elegance is about style. And standards. It’s got nothing to do with money. I think of old movie stars that embody elegance. Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. 

I recall back in the day when business offices went “casual “ dress. I found that it was difficult to pull off casual and maintain professionalism and style. For many people it was just sloppy. I was a corporate lawyer so I maintained my standards.  Clients expected their counsel to be professional, well groomed and properly attired-and dare I say, elegant.  Well tailored suit, well maintained and polished shoes, crisp cotton shirt and an Italian silk tie. Conservative style and, if I do say so myself, elegant. I found it more challenging to pull off elegance and style in the casual context. More variables in play. With suits you have a rotation depending on how many you had and they went with certain shirts, socks and ties. There was a little more flexibility with blazers but it wasn’t as broad a range of options that casual provided.