Mostly Wrong..

This is “None of These” because I am not greater than sum of my parts, a phrase people often like to use to describe someone who is vaguely interesting. With varied interests and an eagle eye for detail, I’m more of a sum of the opposites, a mathematics principle where any number added to its opposite equals zero.

 

Philosophically, its the unity of opposites theory, and you can read more about Heraclitus and his arguments with Homer here. I very much enjoy my world being the whole that is kept together through the tension of the unity of opposites.

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Economics, ecommerce, craft, data, the nexus of design and function, the intersection of speed and quality, the occasional theatrical tangent and the odd chorus from ‘Cabaret’ - it’s all connected if you look at it right.

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Music has been a part of my life since I was a child. I studied theory of music, piano and classical guitar to a relatively advanced level. I played bass guitar in a band - the usual stuff. One of the greatest regrets of my life is giving up classical guitar. 

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I occasionally pick up the old git-fiddle (mostly when nobody is listening) and write plays (occasionally performed in front of people). I collect sartorial socks because someone has to, use fountain pens exclusively (ask me what I’m using to write this :P), and have a collection of hand made paper (thank you to a creative and wonderful artist that I get to call friend), and have built one or two semi-custom mechanical keyboards that go thock instead of click (thank you to interesting people who indulge my curiosity). I’m an adult ballerina which means the real ballerinas indulge me a couple of times a week - sometimes they even let me do the odd chassé at the back of the group.

I find odd trinkets, pottery, ceramics, punk pins, leather bits and bobs, art deco teacups, (of course I have a vyinl record collection that I have actually collected over a few decades) wristwatches and the like - still searching the world for a Tudor MilSub, one of the ones issued to the South African Navy in the 1970’s, and a not at all rare but as yet unfound, very specific Swatch from June 1984.

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I live in the sun but collect vintage coats. My coats have wardrobe hanging space, the rest of my clothes are in a chest of drawers. I’m not joking.

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I’m somewhat precocious and very definitely a pedant. People who love me say I have an eye for detail. People who find me insufferable say I'm unbearable. I can count on three fingers the former.

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I'm obsessed with bespoke tailoring (would be the phrase de jour thing to say) except it is born quite simply out of the fact that nearly all of our clothes were made for us by a dressmaker while growing up. More about that HERE.

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​I read The Rake with a smidge of irony, Permanent Style with love, and spend far too long on tailoring IG accounts, oh, and The Armoury. I know an embarrassing number of Monty Python lyrics. I have a largish collection of satin gloves, but who doesn’t? Born in one country, raised in others, currently keeping a home base elsewhere - and thanks to a forgetful father who forgot the whole “register at the embassy” thing, I’m not technically a full citizen of anywhere. Passport control is always an adventure. It also either makes me very cosmopolitan or very suspicious, depending on who’s asking.

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​I am aesthete which is a fancy word for appreciator of art. I think fancy words are art as well. I came to art through my mother, and then after being forced to choose art as a subject because I got kicked out of French for correcting the teacher. (Precocious knob).

I have no artistic talent. I have a deep love for art and art history.

I came to Rodin through Camille Claudel, I came to Jacques-Henri Lartigue through Renée Perle. I wanted to be a muse when I was a teenager. I wanted to be fascinating. With no talent and little beauty, instead, I became fascinated.

This led to a life-long passion for so many artistic movements.

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My passion lies with the Bauhaus movement, more especially the expressionist Wassily Kandinsky.

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This little blog is about the things that keep me up at night: ecommerce economics, coordination problems, behavioral patterns in consumer behavior, and why bespoke tailoring is actually a perfect lens for understanding value in markets.