#112 - Real Estate Brain Rot

After much fanfare and speculation, The Real Housewives of New York finally premiered this week. Re-premiered? New cast, same city.

I still think they should have committed and made it Real Housewives of Brooklyn but hey, what do I know? It does open in Brooklyn which really lets you in on just how far we’ve come in the 14 seasons since the original RHONY wherein the cast outright mocks Alex for having a brownstone in Cobble Hill because it’s “not chic enough”.

Like, we all know who got the last laugh there babes!

Anyway, one of the women starring on it is Jenna Lyons, former head of J. Crew.

She’s literally the reason we all wear cardigans.

- The Bestie succinctly summing up the overall impacts Jenna Lyons’ has had on fashion/ready-to-wear

She also owns a gooooorgeous SoHo loft.

Like, I am in love with her apartment. So much so that I have now watched every single YouTube video tour available—and would you believe there are more than 10 of them?? She’s tracked her whole journey with this place and as a super nosy person who loves to see How The Other Half Lives, all I can say is, thanks Jenna!!! I loved scoping your medicine cabinet layout! I didn’t even know Goop made their own products (also, discovered last night on the way home from a weed event that they actually also have brick & mortar stores? Or, at least one store in SoHo, which boggles my brain).

But one of the wives one of the new Wives is a real estate agent.

She walks in and we cut to her talking head, “Oh, Jenna's place is unsellable. I don't understand what she's doing with it. She has this huge closet, and this huge bedroom that take up two-thirds of the space. It's just it would be impossible to find a buyer.”

And like, okay??? Your point is?!?!

Jenna has a massive closet because she owns a fuckton of clothes and is too chic to do the shoes facing back/front to make more room. Her bedroom is luxe and I want a heavy crushed velvet bedspread (and the faith to believe it wouldn’t be ruined by a hairball).

What I learned from my intake of YouTube tours, is that Jenna Lyons levelled the floors and installed the walls. Her home is fit to her specifications.

She didn’t design it for some imaginary future buyer. (Also, in what world would someone who can afford to buy that loft not afford to renovate it to their exact standards that’s dummy money babeeey!)

I’m really sick of “traditional wisdom” that encourages the delay of living and enjoying life for some imaginary future capital bump. It’s stupid and I hate it. We don’t need to hoard wealth or live in Ralph Lauren Home catalogues in order to be happy. We need to make the spaces we live in happy and pleasant and full of joy because truly, what are we waiting for?

And Jenna Lyons has built this space for herself from the ground up, she owns it. (In New York City of all places! Can you imagine?) I don't think she's planning to sell it.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's nothing in her brain that ever calculated in a future imaginary buyer, because she is someone who's very dedicated to living her life and surrounding herself with things that she likes. And she was the head of fucking J Crew for 10 years she can afford do whatever the fuck she wants with it, which I think is wonderful.

I actually think it's genuinely inspiring to see a woman simply say:

Yeah, I want my bedroom to take up a third of my apartment. I love having a large bedroom. Like I love spending time in there.

- Imaginary Jenna Lyons

A few months ago I got really into watching British interior designers. They have a way with color that I really admire, and there were a few maximalists that I fell in love with listening to talk about their home design philosophy.

(Don’t you just love when people care about what they do?)

Anyway, Siobhan Murphy said that when she walks into bland minimalist horridly monotone homes she sincerely asks the people living there, “Is grey your favorite color?”

And something clicked.

I think that that is the thing is like we're delaying this enjoyment, actual life enjoyment for all these like little bursts of instant gratification. There is also something to be said about society moving towards a “link please” mode instead of treating things as inspiration and enjoying the journey of cultivating spaces that reflect and say something about our personalities rather than treating everywhere as set dec for TikTok videos.

There is an increasing irritation I’m having with the lack of ability for people to actually live in the moment and enjoy their lives. Every single shot of a crowd is full of people holding their phones above their heads for the entire performance.

It feels like no one is interested in capturing the memory, they just want to make sure that they have proof their life is Being Lived even if it feels like a hollow enjoyment.

For all the Evil Capitalism of the Barbie movie marketing palooza, I’m finding it hard to be mad that there are a bunch of women and girls who are unapologetically wearing pink. I grew up in a time when pink was the least wanted option (remember Real Men Wear Pink t-shirts? also the Don’t Feed The Models shirt that all the antm girlies wore was bright pink), where “I’m not like other girls” was the coolest thing you could say about yourself.

Soooo many Mary-Kate girls were secretly Ashley’s. And they knew it too! But they also knew what the “right” answer was.

I’m glad women don’t have to pretend to hate themselves to have a good time anymore. I’m so glad we’re all getting dressed up in our little outfits and Making A Day of going out to the movies. It’s fun! It’s fun for fun sake.

Theme Party Summer babeeey!!!

Life is to be lived. Capture a memory instead of a photo. Stop thinking about  how we are perceived rather than focusing on our perception.

We didn’t record ourselves this much 10 years ago and I think the memories were better for it. I think the body dysmorphia that is inevitable when we stare at photos of ourselves is not our fault and we are not being protected from it by these greedy little algorithms that were designed to get us addicted to the dopamine hits of notifications and DMs.

(Every time Instagram feature for a while was just making it one less step to engage. You don’t have to respond with words, just send an emoji reaction to someone’s story. Now you can like it—even easier no thoughts just hit that heart!)

Things take an investment of time but we’re encouraged to let things rush past in an effort to get to the next thing.

The point of buying a house is to own something that is yours. Not to make sure the interior has the most bland specifications possible in order not to “devalue” the home. I harbor no illusions that I will ever get out from under a landlord’s thumb in some way or another, but I also at least paint my house a little bit and like waking up where I live because it looks like I live here.

Anyway, I liked the first ep of the relaunched RHONY because the drama felt appropriate to the first episode (thinking a restaurant is too lame of a choice, fighting over cheese) and the girls seem fun and game, and none of them live above midtown and maybe even take the Subway!

Don’t let people you haven’t even met yet influence how you live your life in the moment, serve lots of cheese at dinner parties, and if you ditch your friends maybe resist posting Instagram stories about going to Casa Cipriani instead!

From the vault:

Last year: #53 - Stray is a very sweet little video game

Two years ago: #9 - It's So Hot. Milk Was A Bad Choice.

Hot takes on home renovation: #51 - If you give a girl a drill...