DORÉ

Much like you can’t define light without dark, you can’t define love, without heartbreak and grief. We wanted to honor love and all its complexities by shinning a light on the underbelly of the beast, because without the lows, there would be no highs.

If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of your life.

It seems to me, that if we love, we grieve. That’s the deal. That’s the pact. Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence. It occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. Within that whirling gyre all manner of madnesses exist; ghosts and spirits and dream visitations, and everything else that we, in our anguish, will into existence. These are precious gifts that are as valid and as real as we need them to be. They are the spirit guides that lead us out of the darkness.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in one’s eyes.

What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were daily little miracles, illumination, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark, here was one.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

Look 1:
Blazer, Acne Studios; Tights, Calzedonia

Look 2:
Shirt and pants, Chloé

Look 3:
Sweater, Gucci; Shorts, Pretties

Look 4:
Dress, Beaufille

Look 5:
Dress, 3.1 Phillip Lim