Why is legacy important?

No. 50 - Escape the matrix!

What does it matter what you leave behind? Our legacies are these mysterious time capsules that only open once we die: you don’t get to hear the eulogy at your funeral, just as you can’t quite be so sure what will live on after you depart this plane. Sure, you can start a company or an organization branded with your name (or not), but for most people, their legacy lives through their friends and family. Because a legacy is something that, much like bragging about what brand you’re wearing, is a relatively gauche conversation topic (I want to be remembered for my shiny hair, my devastating wit, and my high cheekbones!! Or whatever), I’ve always been disconnected from the idea of legacy: it’s kind of none of my business, right? Yes, it matters what I leave behind, but if I can’t really be so sure exactly what that is, why harp on it?

So if we aren’t stewards of our own legacy, who is? More importantly, whose legacies are we stewards of? I have a friend who throws fabulous parties and, embarrassingly, until a few years ago (due to her lack of a very large space to host them) I didn’t even know this about her. After a beautifully executed event with a toast that left the entire sunny patios-worth of guests warmed to the core, I told her as much. “Yeah, I know - my parents are incredible hosts and its just something I grew up with.”

I boldly and dramatically tell stories like my mother, my husband uses the widest vocabulary (and precisely, I may add) I’ve ever heard, and my friend Emily throws great parties. This is what legacy is. Deciding what you want to live on in the world. You inherit so many beautiful important intangible irreplaceable things from the people who raised you, the people you spent your formative years with. If the way we exist in the world is influenced so directly by our environments, then why isn’t our sense of style?

The way you present yourself, if done well, is a pure representation of the influences on you from the world. The challenge with an ever-widening lens in what we are both inspired by and have access to, we are connecting less and less to the clothing we wear, the brands we support, and the things that connect us to our actual, real world. If your aesthetic preferences come from the internet, from trends, from a life that isn’t real to you, you reject your legacy, and it becomes one and the same with the zeitgeist.

Our cultural inheritance is also an aesthetic inheritance, we are influenced, in one way or another, by those who came before us. When I was 16, I wore some of the bohemian silhouettes of my peers, but always gravitated towards more classic, tailored looks. Couldn’t seem to figure out why, just that it called to me. Then I went to school in Boston at 18, where everyone had been wearing classic, tailored clothing their whole lives - it was woven into the fabric of their upbringing, passed down to them not only through their families, but through their environs. It took me years to realize that my delayed inheritance came from my East Coast parents - those images that had arrived in my minds eye had just been refracted through a California childhood, carrying the warmth and informality of where I grew up even as I reached toward something that had been quietly waiting in my lineage.

I write often about my own influences, the people, things, places, events that inform what I gravitate to. The reason this is important is because it feels good to be inspired, it feels good to connect the dots between a memory you can just make out the shape of and where your center of gravity sits. It’s what makes us unique, it’s what makes us human and what makes us different from each other and from the algorithm. It’s what we can do to check our pulse and know we’re alive, that we haven’t turned into the computers we’re afraid will take over the world.

The bad news is that the computers already have: it’s why everyone looks the same, dresses the same, retains the same ideals of beauty. The machine doesn’t win because it bests us in a duel, because it develops a mind of its own - the machine wins because it deprives us of our humanity, little win by little win it removes any semblance of individuality, boosting only what achieves maximum consensus appeal until our choices become unmoored from personal meaning. Perhaps more insidiously, the machine has already trained the very taste-makers and fashion executives who we imagine are leading these trends, so that even those deciding what’s ‘cool’ are themselves responding to patterns the algorithm has already validated. Tiny cuts, each of them, until we all look the same, dress the same, think the same, and our legacy becomes indistinguishable from the machine itself.

So what do you want your legacy to be? If someone wrote a book about you and described how you style yourself, would it be indistinguishable from someone clear across the country or world with the same access to TikTok?

Things that feel both truly me, and connected to my legacy

Mens bi fold wallets - a worn, bifold wallet will always remind me of my dad

Denim button downs - exemplary combination between East and West

Woven bags - I bought my first woven bag in Morocco over a decade ago and haven’t looked back

Nature inspired jewelry - a nod to my California heritage, I will always lean towards earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings that feel organic: leafy, flowery, pearl, or handmade

Pussy bow or dramatic neckline blouses - even when a simple silk button down would have seemed too formal, I have always loved taking it to the next level in a way that feels clean and sharp

Brown riding-adjacent boots - nothing feels more appropriate for fall than a comfortable, versatile boot that harkens memories of early morning crisp rides in the California mountains

P.S. - you’ll notice I’ve changed the naming conventions of my posts for easier finding / flagging :)