The Art of an Extraordinarily Ordinary Life

I found myself sitting in a therapy session, asking myself a question I hadn’t said out loud to another person before:

How can I want and have the ordinary parts of my life without allowing them to convince me that I am ordinary?

A few years ago when I started this Substack, I was fresh out of my split and my ego was bruised. Not lightly bruised, deeply bruised. My blog, Damsel in Dior, which I started in 2009 took off during my honeymoon in 2011 and it became a whirlwind life of beautiful pictures, editorial stories, travel around the globe and a life well lived of product collaborations, sitting front row at Chanel and Dior, book deals, and so much more. For years, being “Damsel in Dior” wasn’t just a job, it was an identity.

I could point to and say: see, I'm not ordinary, I built something extraordinary out of my own life!

When my marriage ended, Damsel in Dior didn’t die with it, but the grief made it impossible to keep showing up for a platform built around that “life.” So, I stopped forcing it and sadly the space became a bit stagnant. Energetically, I was just far less inspired to continue posting to Damsel in Dior. But being the writer, content creator and “OG” blogger of 17 years that I am, it felt so strange and foreign not to have a platform outside of social media to post to.

Not long after, I started Basic.

I named this Substack Basic on purpose. It wasn’t cute or ironic and certainly wasn’t a branding choice. At the time, it was an insult that I decided to keep. “Basic” was a version of myself that I was absolutely terrified of becoming once the story, the marriage, the fashion week trips and the proof that my life was “picture perfect” was all stripped away.

I named is “Basic” because I felt like just another ordinary, basic bitch. I mean, what do I really have to say on here that you aren’t already heard? But bearing a writer, content creator and “OG” blogger for 17 years that I am, it also felt foreign to not have a platform outside of social media to post to. Curiosity has always pulled at my heart and I have always obsessed over the little things I discover and love and want to tell someone about. And I don’t do it because I think it is what makes me extraordinary. I live my life this way every single day.

My original blog name, Damsel in Dior, was meant to inspire readers to live a life not like a damsel in Dior distress but to get dressed every single day like you’re dressed in Dior. Even if you aren’t.

And I think “Basic” is really just the next version of that.