Now that plants are healthily climbing on the brick and mortar of the empty shop, I pretty much spend my days tending to our virtual storefront.
I get orders. By the way, thank you so very much to all of you, online shoppers from near and far: you are keeping État de Style alive!
When I get orders, first I clap my hands and dance around, then I pack them prettily and finally I walk them outside to the nearest pharmacy. For those of you from faraway lands: here, post offices are situated at the back of drugstore-type establishments where one can buy all kinds of essential and non-essential products.
So. After waiting in long socially-distanced lines outside, I get to go in, send stuff through the mail and SHOP!
Having successfully answered questions about my health and travels, I feel pretty smug being allowed to wander through aisles and aisles of shiny new things.
Once, a friend asked me what kind of makeup I found essential. What would I bring to a desert island, she wanted to know. I liked the question. I thought it was journalistically clever of her, since she was a beauty editor. Her choice was lipstick, she informed me. So was mine but I chose mascara. My eyes are very small and they tend to disappear when not curtained with the right kind of gook. Although I doubt that having visible eyes would be useful on a desert island, that was my answer which was conveniently different from hers.
To go back to the post office expeditions: weeks ago, I had already ordered a locally-made black cotton mask but I felt self-conscious wearing it. I love style as much as anyone else but I was uncomfortable making a fashion statement in such circumstances (after all, I chose a black one to match the rest of my wardrobe!). Besides the fact that it made me look like a diminutive Darth Vader, it seemed a little scary, I thought. I didn’t want to acknowledge the disease so blatantly.
Baby blue basics, fancy schmancy florals, designer’s and hand-made, masks are everywhere now. They don’t mean that we fear other humans, they show that we are protecting them.
They remind us that we are all connected, responsible for each other. They tie us all together. Underneath, we are the same fragile beings in need of care and protection.
Behind them, lipstick serves no purpose but we need to make our eyes bigger, brighter, more visible to all the other eyes we meet.
I bought mascara.
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